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bolverk

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by bolverk

  1. The former president has the final say in whether the bill will be brought to the floor. Apparently, the Speaker will meet with him sometime today, so we'll see if they can clear the schedule for a vote next week. However, I'm not optimistic since this Congress hasn't approved any assistance since December 2022. All of our allies are looking to us and begging for American leadership. Only yesterday, Japan's prime minister gave a speech to Congress asking for increased aid for Ukraine and saying the country would collapse without our support. I guess we'll see soon if the Western alliance of free nations still matters to some.
  2. I cannot imagine the motive here. Texas Surgeon Is Accused of Secretly Denying Liver Transplants A Houston hospital is investigating whether a doctor altered a transplant list to make his patients ineligible for care. A disproportionate number of them have died while waiting for new organs. For decades, Dr. J. Steve Bynon Jr., a transplant surgeon in Texas, gained accolades and national prominence for his work, including by helping to enforce professional standards in the country’s sprawling organ transplant system. But officials are now investigating allegations that Dr. Bynon was secretly manipulating a government database to make some of his own patients ineligible to receive new livers, potentially depriving them of lifesaving care. Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston, where Dr. Bynon oversaw both the liver and kidney transplant programs, abruptly shut down those programs in the past week while looking into the allegations. On Thursday, the medical center, a teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Texas, said in a statement that a doctor in its liver transplant program had admitted to changing patient records. That effectively denied the transplants, the hospital said. Officials identified the physician as Dr. Bynon, who is employed by the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and has had a contract to lead Memorial Hermann’s abdominal transplant program since 2011. It was not clear what could have motivated Dr. Bynon. Reached by phone on Thursday, he referred questions to UTHealth Houston, which declined to comment. Dr. Bynon did not confirm he had admitted to altering records. cont'd
  3. Wordle 1,028 4/6 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛🟩⬛ ⬛⬛🟩🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #306 🟦🟪🟦🟦 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟪🟪🟪🟪 Daily Quordle 809 4️⃣5️⃣ 6️⃣7️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜🟨⬜🟩⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟨🟩⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟩⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜🟨🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ClickWord.org Daily 433: 547 points (top 20% 🎊) 12 words: ⚛️🟪🟪🟪🟪🟧🟧🟨🟨🟨🟨🟩 💪 Best word: 126 points 🔥 Streak: 2 days #ClickWord #ClickWordDaily433
  4. Great little Easter Egg at the beginning of Episode 6. Call the phone number.
  5. Yeah, I've read a couple of articles on it, and the writers argue the point of the movie isn't the partisan politics. It seems that its intent is to scare the shit out of the viewer and disabuse anyone's notions of a modern-day romanticized civil war that many like to speculate about or yearn for. Basically, it would suck tremendously. From a guest essay by Stephen Marche, the author of “The Next Civil War”: “Not one man in America wanted the Civil War, or expected or intended it,” Henry Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, declared at the beginning of the 20th century. What may seem inevitable to us in hindsight — the horrifying consequences of a country in political turmoil, given to violence and rived by slavery — came as a shock to many of the people living through it. Even those who anticipated it hardly seemed prepared for its violent magnitude. In this respect at least, the current division that afflicts the United States seems different from the Civil War. If there ever is a second civil war, it won’t be for lack of imagining it. The most prominent example arrives this week in the form of an action blockbuster titled “Civil War.” The film, written and directed by Alex Garland, presents a scenario in which the government is at war with breakaway states and the president has been, in the eyes of part of the country, delegitimized. Some critics have denounced the project, arguing that releasing the film in this particular election year is downright dangerous. They assume that even just talking about a future national conflict could make it a reality, and that the film risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is wrong. Not only does this criticism vastly overrate the power of the written word or the moving image, but it looks past the real forces sending the United States toward ever-deeper division: inequality; a hyperpartisan duopoly; and an antiquated and increasingly dysfunctional Constitution. Mere stories are not powerful enough to change those realities. But these stories can wake us up to the threats we are facing. The greatest political danger in America isn’t fascism, and it isn’t wokeness. It’s inertia. America needs a warning. From a NYTimes critic: Despite some much-needed lulls (for you, for the narrative rhythm), “Civil War” is unremittingly brutal or at least it feels that way. Many contemporary thrillers are far more overtly gruesome than this one, partly because violence is one way unimaginative directors can put a distinctive spin on otherwise interchangeable material: Cue the artful fountains of arterial spray. Part of what makes the carnage here feel incessant and palpably realistic is that Garland, whose visual approach is generally unfussy, doesn’t embellish the violence, turning it into an ornament of his virtuosity. Instead, the violence is direct, at times shockingly casual and unsettling, so much so that its unpleasantness almost comes as a surprise. ***** There are no lofty or reassuring speeches in “Civil War,” and the movie doesn’t speak to the better angels of our nature the way so many films try to. Hollywood’s longstanding, deeply American imperative for happy endings maintains an iron grip on movies, even in ostensibly independent productions. There’s no such possibility for that in “Civil War.” The very premise of Garland’s movie means that — no matter what happens when or if Lee and the rest reach Washington — a happy ending is impossible, which makes this very tough going. Rarely have I seen a movie that made me so acutely uncomfortable or watched an actor’s face that, like Dunst’s, expressed a nation’s soul-sickness so vividly that it felt like an X-ray.
  6. Crossposting for more eyeballs.
  7. This is Christian Nationalism, and it is oh so very fucking dangerous. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick pushes pastors to run for political office During a private meeting at Ed Young's Second Baptist Church in Houston, dozens of right-wing Christians strategized how to win seats in the 2024 elections. As millions of Texans prepared to stare at the sky Monday to glimpse the total solar eclipse, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick joined his pastor Ed Young in a prayer circle at Houston's Second Baptist Church, where they embraced conservative kingmakers and called for pastors and believers to run for office. "If we don't win in 2024, we lose this nation," Patrick said ahead of the November elections, while standing on a small stage at the church's massive Woodway campus. "Today, it is a battle of darkness and light. There are people who pray to God, believe in God, raise their families in God's work and there are people over here who don't believe in God and want to kick God out. They hate God. That's the battle we're in." Patrick, a longtime member of the SBC-affiliated megachurch and one of the most powerful Republicans in Texas, attended the pastor's private luncheon organized by the American Renewal Project (ARP), a group founded by anti-gay Dallas political operative David Lane. The ARP has enlisted North Carolina's GOP Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson to recruit and train clergy and congregants to win seats on local school boards, city councils, county commissions and on the state legislature. The project's Houston meeting represented the first of 20 gatherings across Texas. "We need America to get out of the chaos and come back to peace," said Patrick, who called North Carolina's Robinson a friend. "Whether its pastors or just believers, they need to stand up and either run for office, support people running for office…" and register citizens to vote in elections. Patrick drew applause for praising anti-abortion state and federal laws and for verbalizing anti-immigration rhetoric alleging that "millions" of people including "criminals, sex offenders, and child abusers" were crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. He also claimed the Biden administration refused to do anything to stop the border "chaos" because migrants mean future Democratic voters. "I'd rather be kicked out of office for my positions than kicked out of Heaven for my positions," Patrick said. "Vote me into office and vote me into Heaven." The speech a little more than a month after Pastor Young delivered a ranting sermon during which he referred to migrants coming into Texas as "undesirables," "garbage" and "raff" and suggesting that the United States is already "lost through foolishness." Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Young referred to the Democratic Party as "some kind of religion that is basically godless" and called for his congregants to vote out local officials. On Monday, Lane, the founder of the American Renewal Project, said 50 pastors and religious leaders ran for various political seats in North Carolina in 2022 to fight in "a war between God Jehovah and the false god of secularism." Lane aimed to replicate his successes in Texas and encourage more than 100 believers to run for statewide office in the coming years. "The American culture is nothing but the manifestation of the false religion that's governing America," Lane said. "If we're going to save the country for our kids and theirs, we have to move into the public square in obedience to Jesus' Kingdom" which he believes was assigned in the Gospel of Matthew. Patrick echoed the need for Christians to prepare for a sort of spiritual warfare during the "battle" of November elections, his words seemingly in line with to the aims of Christian nationalism, an ideology that seeks to merge American and Christian identities. "If we get ready for battle in the election in 2024, I believe the victory will be the Lord's," Patrick said. "But we have to stand up and fight.” The lieutenant governor spoke with certainty when saying "we're all going to Heaven" in the room with pastors and others wearing pins of an American flag with a cross. "We're already saved. We're gone," he said. "But what about the future? What are our children and grandchildren are going to inherit?"
  8. Massive attack destroys one of Ukraine’s largest power plants A massive missile and drone attack destroyed one of Ukraine’s largest power plants and damaged others, officials said Thursday, part of a renewed Russian campaign targeting energy infrastructure. The Trypilska plant, which was the biggest energy supplier for the Kyiv, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions, was struck numerous times, destroying the transformer, turbines and generators and leaving the plant ablaze. As the first drone approached, workers hid in a shelter, saving their lives, said Andrii Hota, director of the state company that runs the plant, Centrenergo. ***** The plant supplied electricity to 3 million customers — but none lost power because the grid was able to compensate since demands are low at this time of year. Still, the consequences of the strikes could be felt in the coming months, as air conditioning use ramps up with summer. At least 10 other strikes overnight damaged energy infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said more than 200,000 people in the region, which has been struck repeatedly, were without power. ***** Russia has recently renewed strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities, and attacks last month blacked out large parts of the country — a level of darkness not seen since the first days of the full-scale invasion in 2022. The volume and accuracy of the attacks have alarmed the country’s defenders and left officials scrambling for better ways to defend energy assets. The strikes have also tested Ukraine’s ability to make quick repairs. Ukraine’s leaders have pleaded for more air defense systems to ward off such attacks, but those supplies have been slow in coming. “Today’s situation demonstrates that there’s nothing left to shoot down” the missiles, Hota said.
  9. Austria continues to be infested with spies. It's a long story with a bunch of names, so I've tried to clip and bold the basics. The link is to the original AP story if you want to read all of it. An espionage scandal rocks Austria, laying bare alleged Russian spying operations across Europe VIENNA (AP) — Austria faces its biggest espionage scandal in decades as the arrest of a former intelligence officer brings to light evidence of extensive Russian infiltration, lax official oversight and behavior worthy of a spy novel. Egisto Ott was arrested March 29. The 86-page arrest warrant, obtained by The Associated Press, alleges among other things that he handed over cellphone data of former high-ranking Austrian officials to Russian intelligence, helped plot a burglary at a prominent journalist’s apartment, and wrote up “suggestions for improvement” after a Russian-ordered killing in Germany. Ott is suspected of having provided sensitive information to Jan Marsalek, a fugitive fellow Austrian wanted on suspicion of fraud since the collapse in 2020 of German payment company Wirecard, where he was the chief operating officer. The warrant says chat messages provided by British authorities link Marsalek directly to the Russian intelligence agency FSB. German and Austrian media have reported that Marsalek is believed to have had connections to Russian intelligence since at least 2014. He is now thought to be in Russia. ***** Ott, a former police officer, was an intelligence officer in Turkey and Italy from 2001 to 2012 before moving on to manage undercover agents at Austria’s now-defunct domestic intelligence agency, the BVT. He was suspended from the BVT in 2017 when allegations emerged for the first time that he could be spying for Russia, but reassigned the following year to work for the Austrian police academy. In 2021, he was suspended pending further investigation into his alleged ties to Russia and taken into custody. Authorities concluded the evidence was too thin and released him about four weeks later. At the BVT, Ott served under Martin Weiss, the former chief of Austrian intelligence operations. Prosecutors alleged that Ott and Weiss have a “close friendship.” In the arrest warrant, they say that Weiss began to work for Marsalek and Wirecard after leaving the intelligence agency in 2018, and that he passed orders from Marsalek and Russian operatives to Ott. According to the arrest warrant, Marsalek said in a text message that he helped “evacuate” Weiss to Dubai. ***** Between 2017 and 2021, the Austrian warrant says, Ott collected sensitive information on people of interest to Russia “for the purpose of transmission to Jan Marsalek and to unknown representatives of Russian authorities” by conducting numerous searches in national police databases and making requests to other European police officers, including in Italy and Britain. Ott also allegedly requested data from the information system of Europe’s border-free travel area to ascertain whether suspected Russian operatives and former Wirecard employees were wanted or subject to travel restrictions. The warrant contains a long list of people who were spied on, including Russian dissidents, businesspeople and a former officer who had quit the FSB. ***** Five Bulgarian citizens who allegedly worked as part of a network with Marsalek were arrested last year in Britain and another in February. According to the Ott arrest warrant, chat messages between Marsalek and one of the suspects in that case, Orlin Roussev, that were seized by Britain’s MI5 intelligence agency point to further operations by Marsalek and his Austrian helpers. Just five weeks after Ott was released from custody in 2021, prosecutors say he requested the address of Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev in Vienna and supplied it to Marsalek. They say Marsalek later commissioned a team to break into Grozev’s apartment and steal a laptop and USB stick. Grozev, who tracked down Russian officers allegedly involved in the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in 2018 and Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020, relocated from Vienna last year after Austrian authorities told him they could no longer guarantee his security. ***** Investigators also found a lessons-learned analysis on Ott’s mobile phone that contained “suggestions for improvement” for Russian intelligence operations in Europe following the 2019 killing in Berlin of a Georgian citizen of Chechen ethnicity. A Russian man was caught and convicted in that case; German judges said he acted on the orders of Russian authorities.
  10. MAGA = Christian Nationalism = Theocratic Fascism They're all one and the same.
  11. Here's a tidbit of information that I did not know. He had roles in “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!” (1988), “The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear” (1991) and “The Towering Inferno” (1974). He was considered for the title role in “The Terminator,” but producers feared he was “too nice” to be taken seriously as a cold-blooded killer. He was working on a film called “Frogmen” shortly before the killings.
  12. Famine Has Begun in Northern Gaza, U.S. Official Says Samantha Power, the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, has said that a famine is underway in northern Gaza, which has been devastated by six months of Israeli military operations and is the part of the territory most cut off from aid. Ms. Power is the first senior American official to say publicly that famine has begun in the Gaza Strip, where aid agencies and global experts have warned for months that nearly all 2.2 million Palestinians would soon face extreme hunger. Northern Gaza, which was the first part of the territory that Israeli forces invaded last October, has been heavily damaged by the war and is far from the two open border crossings in the south through which nearly all aid is arriving. Aid agencies say that it has become all but impossible to deliver relief supplies to the north amid continuing attacks. UNICEF said on Wednesday that one of its vehicles waiting to enter northern Gaza had been “hit by live ammunition,” and that it had raised the matter with the Israeli authorities. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions about the report. Ms. Power’s comments came during congressional testimony on Wednesday, when she was asked by Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, about news reports that staff members from her agency had sent a cable to the National Security Council that said famine had begun in parts of the Gaza Strip. The cable was first reported by HuffPost. “Do you think it is plausible or likely that parts of Gaza, and in particular northern Gaza, are already experiencing famine?” Mr. Castro asked. Ms. Power replied that that appeared to be the case, and cited an assessment by the global Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative, whose methodology she described as sound. She did not specify what assessment she was referring to. Last month, the initiative said in a report that the food shortage in Gaza had become so severe that “famine is imminent” for the northern part of the enclave. “That is their assessment, and we believe that assessment is credible,” Ms. Power said. “So famine is already occurring there?” Mr. Castro replied. “That is — yes,” Ms. Power said. She said later in her testimony that the rate of severe malnutrition among Gazan children had become “markedly worse” since Oct. 7, when a Hamas-led terrorist attack prompted Israel to launch its military offensive in Gaza. “In northern Gaza, the rate of malnutrition prior to Oct. 7 was almost zero, and it is now one in three kids,” she said. She added: “In terms of actual severe acute malnutrition for under-5s, that rate was 16 percent in January and became 30 percent in February. We’re awaiting the March numbers, but we expect it to continue.” Ms. Power urged Congress to “press our Israeli partners to actually follow through with the commitments they have made” to allow more humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip. She also said that the United States had seen no evidence from its partner organizations that Hamas was seizing food aid on a significant scale. Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid meant for Gazan civilians, a claim that Hamas officials have denied. In February, the U.S. special envoy for humanitarian issues in the Middle East, David Satterfield, also said Israel had failed to provide evidence that Hamas was stealing aid shipments. “We are not seeing Hamas dictating where food is provided,” Ms. Power said on Wednesday. “I can assure you that if the government of Israel saw Hamas doing that,” she added, “we would be hearing about it.”
  13. You must live in Houston for it to take you 9 hours to drive to Lubbock. From Austin and San Antonio, it's usually about a 6-hour drive. From DFW, it's a little over 5 hours. From Houston, only College Station, Baton Rouge, Norman, and Fayetteville are closer than Lubbock. All other opponents Texas will have in the SEC are farther away from Houston. Starkville is 49 miles farther from Houston than Lubbock. Oxford (82 miles), Tuscaloosa (96 miles), and Auburn (167 miles). Every other SEC school is more than 300 miles farther from Houston than Lubbock. That said, only Houston fans of Texas will not be significantly inconvenienced by car travel with this move to the SEC. The average distance from each of Texas's major population centers to opposing schools of the Big 12 before the expansion (yes, this includes Ames and Morgantown): Austin (581 miles), San Antonio (652 miles), DFW (429 miles), and Houston (626 miles). Now, the average distance from each metro to SEC opponents will be: Austin (724 miles), San Antonio (820 miles), DFW (640 miles), and Houston (667 miles). So, on average, Austin fans will have to drive 143 miles further to get to an opposing school in the SEC. San Antonio (168 more miles), DFW (211), and Houston (only 41). In fact, Ames fucking Iowa is closer to DFW, Austin, and San Antonio fans than Athens, Gainesville, Knoxville, Lexington, and Columbia. To make the distance to SEC schools comparable to Austin, San Antonio, and DFW fans, you have to only include the 9 closest schools. All of the above isn't a criticism of the SEC move, but you are fooling yourself if you think it'll be more convenient to travel to away games under the current division-less SEC. Hopefully, when the conference goes to 9 games, we'll get ousux, aggy, and piggy as our three permanent rivals to at least keep the schedule anchored to our region.
  14. Satellites. That's just what "they" want you to think.
  15. I'm out of town. How did things fare in the Cherry Creek area of South Austin?
  16. Y'all see those lighter-colored flakes mixed in with the grounds? Those are Trump's "locally sourced" flavor crystals from the mean streets of South Florida suburbs, aka Adderall.
  17. Always loved that extra schwa for emphasis. It makes the landing a 10, too, if you bombastically add « OH BAH » before and « ÇA VA PAS, NON ! » Also, CRAPOTEUX works as a wonderful alternative for English speakers, especially if you stress each syllable with a weighty pause.
  18. So, uh, yeah, what was about it about rednecks again? Oh, yeah, this.
  19. Hmm. It seems Earl, here, is a veritable piece of shit. @YGIFS I seem to recall you always wondering why the nutcases on Surly haven't identified themselves. Well, we have one. Let's see what else that account has to say. AGAINST AID FOR UKRAINE. HANGS WITH TRAITOR FLYNN. DEPORT IMMIGRANTS TO A WAR ZONE. FEIGNS WHITE HETEROSEXUAL VICTIMIZATION. TELLS ISLAMOPHOBIC BULLSHIT LIES. ELECTION CONSPIRACIST.
  20. New Mexico is the only bordering state. These maps are from the NYTimes and were updated today at 1pm CDT: Coahuila's also across the border from Eagle Pass (Piedras Negras) and Del Rio (Ciudad Acuña). None of these options are ideal, obviously, but I just want to get the info out there for anyone who may know someone in need.
  21. John Stewart from last night (roughly 8 minutes): Interview with Amanpour after the above (nearly 15 minutes):
  22. Not a review but just general background on "the making of." I never played the game, so this was a good introduction. Really hoping this is as good as it sounds. ‘Fallout’ Finds the Fun in an Apocalyptic Hellscape TV’s latest big-ticket video game adaptation, from the creators of “Westworld,” takes a satirical, self-aware approach to the End Times. The scream was just right — bloodcurdling, if also very funny — and the practical effects crew had finally found the proper volume and trajectory of the water cannon. The idea was to film what might happen if you ripped a man from the throat of a mutant salamander, exploding its guts like a giant water balloon. All that remained was to decide what color of bile to slather on the actor (Johnny Pemberton) and on the salamander’s many teeth, which nuclear radiation had transformed into rows of humanlike fingers. Based on observations made during a visit to the Brooklyn set of “Fallout” in early 2023, Amazon had spared no expense to make the show, the latest genre-bending series from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the creators of “Westworld.” So it was no surprise when Nolan, on set to direct that chilly afternoon, was presented with not one but some half-dozen buckets of bile to choose from, in a variety of revolting hues. He settled on a pukey pinkish yellow. “This is the closest thing to comedy that I’ve worked on,” he said later by phone. With writing credits on films like “Memento,” “The Dark Knight” and “The Prestige,” Nolan has tended to skew dark. Comically exploding monster guts — this was new territory. “It’s a lot of fun,” he said. A fun apocalypse? Amid all the doom and gloom of most sci-fi spectacles and social media feeds? Yes, please. cont'd:
  23. UPDATE: The turtle tank aka the blyatmobile has been destroyed.
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