CBS is just going to become more Trump controlled media. Apparently, in addition to the everything else, he's getting free airtime.

There were several comments on that video saying it was AI-generated. I'm pretty sure they're right.

That's OK. I didn't watch it.

Apparently, Trump is now attacking the Cracker Barrel for being too woke.

On topic because I always assumed Cracker Barrel was deliberately targeting racist customers, but apparently I'm wrong, the way people who thought Cobert was really a right wing newscaster were wrong.

I'm not even sure if the linked substack "author" (who admittedly I've never heard of before) is a real person, rather than a generated persona that's been attached to some generated books. The profile has a "fake twitter account" vibe to it.

They appear to have deleted their linked Bluesky account - or been banned, conceivably. Yeah, they resemble a blue-wave slop account.

Instagram profile text extra-sus:

writer, , AI story creator. and the Enchantians, a sense of Darkness, invasions they are watching you on Amazon

(nothing under that title on Amazon)

Instagram profile text extra-sus:

writer, , AI story creator. and the Enchantians, a sense of Darkness, invasions they are watching you on Amazon

(nothing under that title on Amazon)

As long as they don't bread steak, deep fry it, and cover it in something that's supposed to be gravy.

4 https://bsky.app/profile/helldude.bsky.social/post/3lugmba5zcs2l

Meanwhile RFK Jr. can only act on the policy intersection of "seems pro-health to a relatively stupid person" and "does not inflame the manosphere by recommending anything other than fast food." Cane-sugar Coke for everyone! Artificial colors out of your Steak n' Shake! No more vaccines!

I'm waiting for "used seed oils" to be listed as a cause of death.

13: Murder conviction for humble submissive tradwife that was secretly poisoning her husband by cooking with canola oil.

Every now and then I see someone on Facebook posting a quote allegedly from some liberal, and it will be some nice liberal sentiment that is totally not in the style of the person quoted.

AI has advanced beyond my ability to tell whether Colbert's voice has been faked here, but I feel confident he didn't do that video. It's not in his style -- not in his voice.

It's tinged with bitterness and recrimination and -- perhaps most important -- it's not funny. He didn't do this.

It's clearly fake and I blame scrapping for material while traveling. Home now and the kind of traditional mediocrity you expect from me will resume post haste.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Colbert actually does with the opportunity. He's fully capable of burning bridges -- of doing absolutely anything -- and he really did tell Trump Go fuck yourself.

He's got some number of months to do pretty much whatever he wants.

(And of course, the OP was presented with appropriate skepticism and I did not mean to suggest that the post was inappropriate.)

I'm hoping he gives a long screed about all the fucks stealing Tolkien names for their evil.

It could totally happen!

And now that you mention it, I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. I suppose it's too late for you to get a Colbert writing gig.

17: meh. What's he going to do? Tell people to blockade Alligator Auschwitz? Start using his millions to finance urban guerilla movements? I think we're past the point of more snark doing any good. Colbert doesn't want to upset the apple cart any more than any other wealthy liberal celebrities.

I'm not really expecting the revolutionary vanguard. But I don't think it is unlikely that he could make a key contribution towards damaging CBS's profitability and thus make the point that selling out to Trump isn't a profit-maximizing move.

18 fuck yes.
21: Hopefully he can at least one up Bari Weiss. There have to be more than 200m blue dollars left in the valley.

In personal bellwether news, a Trump yard sign that was put up after the election has been taken down.

It's within 100 yards of a school so the removal may have been for legal reasons.

Kara Swisher had a bummer explanation that it's mostly about the finances of the CBS merger, and that pleasing Trump was a side benefit. Apparently the show was losing about $40 million per year because it's just such a huge number of employees.

Top-rated show in its time slot losing a lot of money is not impossible, and in Hollywood accounting many things are possible. But even if it is losing (or "losing") big bucks, that's a skill issue, and solvable. You're still out-drawing your rivals.

She was making the case that this is actually the end of the late night format altogether.

It's also CBS (and maybe TV in general) deciding to be only for the elderly.

28: Colbert is elderly! He's 61!

Which is six or seven years younger than the median CBS prime-time viewer.

28/29: They also said that only 25% of his show is in the 18-55 year old target demographic, IIRC. It already is an elderly show.

That would explain why all the ads are for death.

30: good grief. (quick google) and the median BBC primetime viewer is 61!

I have not regularly watched a broadcast TV show since we dropped cable. That was like 2010 or so.

Honestly surprised. I assumed that soap operas and things would pull in a younger crowd than that. Mind you, I've watched the BBC on broadcast once in the last fifteen years and that was the London Olympics opening ceremony. (Even the election and the coronation I watched on iPlayer.)

I wonder if Trump appreciates Cobert's "micropenis DJT" joke?

Anyway, "we're going to fire you next year" is probably not the best way to try to control an employee.

I haven't watched a broadcast TV show since I watched Jeopardy at 7 pm last night.

I'm losing at this game, aren't I?

But do you watch regularly?

39: Jeopardy? Yes. Just about always on Tuesday and Wednesday nights with my stepdaughter, because that is a routine, and routines are sacred for her. Fairly often on Thursdays and Fridays because I'm pretty routine-oriented myself. Most weeks that's all the TV I will watch.

I was surprised to learn that there is now one hour Jeopardy for celebrities.

E. Messily introduced me to dropout.tv, which is really, really funny.

I don't really believe the CBS accounting story but even if true I doubt they get out of the late night business altogether without the merger with the Trump administration, and I doubt that Colbert will be followed by nothing. They'll probably give a slot to a former Fox host, maybe one who got tired of working in the administration.

The Greg Gutfeld Genocide Hour is my guess. I don't believe CBS either.

Reddit is really not even trying to be sad about Hulk Hogan's death.

Bluesky is trying to not be too happy.

I will never get sick of that tweet where he's mourning the death of Bam, and Bam is like "Still here, bro, but miss u too!"

Bam could do a funny tweet now.

I am enjoying this entry from the "author"

"It's not for me to judge whether hulk Hogan with a good life for you know whatever. But I grew up with him and it's a sad day. The other day Ozzy and now this there's going to be another one who's next someone protects Stevie nicks now and the people from led Zeppelin in the boss and bunch of movie and I can go on"

Apparently this quote from Andre the Giant may be apocryphal, or if he said it, just pro wrestling "feuding."

I don't like to speak badly of people. I have grown up thinking and being told that if you cannot say something nice about someone, you should not say anything at all. But I must break that rule in this case because I hate Hulk Hogan very much. He is a big ugly goon and I want to squash his face.

Someone protect Stevie nicks

I heard she survived a landslide.

Every second of Colbert I have seen in the past five years or so has been on YouTube. We barely even turn the TV on any longer.

I barely even own a TV.

Some of my presidents are barely pedophiles.

I think we're past the point of more snark doing any good.

Oh sure. I'm just thinking he's going to be funny. The failure of the Colbert Report to forestall fascism was clear proof that comedy isn't a solution.

Vonnegut calculated the political influence of art:

When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high.

Art can help us survive, but it won't save us.

A guy named Art might do both.

But it is too late for another effort now. For this time it is his destiny to die, or, as some say, to be carried off to New Zealand, where he can wait for better days.

57: Yeah, I think the big dilemma for folks like us is the question of how do we not feel like shit about everything. Colbert and Jon Stewart have always been helpful to me that way.

The first 11 minutes of this Daily Show -- it's about antisemitic Elmo -- cheered me up.

56: I mean, maybe, but the actual timeline is
March 1965 US escalation in VN, first combat troops deployed, first anti-war protests, foundation of various antiwar groups - war has 75% public support
January 1968 Tet Offensive, majority of US population against US involvement for the first time
January 1969 start of US withdrawal from VN begins
September 1972 Almost all US combat troops out of Vietnam

Now, what strikes me about that is that it's a really rapid and successful public effort to change a major government policy. Compare it to something like, you know, equal rights for women, or civil rights, or the Iraq War, or banning abortion. It took longer than Vonnegut would have liked, sure, that's understandable, but I don't think you can really point at it and say "this shows the utter failure of public protest".

It's really much easier to be sexist and racist than it is to fight a war on the other side of the world.

I kinda think you can point to the Trump administration and say "This shows the utter failure of public protest". Not universally, but you cannot budge a shameless administration that's determined to wreck everything you hold dear, and protests are not necessarily a pain point.

Colbert and Jon Stewart have always been helpful to me that way.

Mostly, but I also blame them for screwing up in 2010 when their big thing was the "Rally to Restore Sanity," which was far too much "lets all be nice to each other" and not enough "fuck the Republicans." It was not the tone we needed at the time, and was part of the setup for a huge Democratic loss.

I mean, you can't treat protests as a binary, right? There's a tipping point at which they get people reacting, even if sometimes the result is counterreaction - see George Floyd, but more positively Korea 2019, millions in the streets every day for two weeks until the president resigned.

Oops, I think I meant 2016-17. And the result was impeachment & removal not resignation.

South Korea is just really good at this. Of course the onset of democracy is in living memory for them.

I worry about how few data points go into that 3.5% number. It's not like a whole petri dish.

Protests have three primary potential effects:

1. They demonstrate the size, determination, and organizing abilities of a political coalition. This is somewhat devalued in our context, where social media can reduce organizing costs, and where gerrymandering blunts the impact of issue coalitions that don't enjoy the favor of entrenched party interests.

2. They raise public awareness and the morale of participants. The former is kind of a wash in our media environment.

3. They can, if they are sustained, disruptive, strategic, and confrontational, raise the costs for a regime to operate, perhaps rising to the point of a direct challenge to its control of a region. This is very uncommon in the US; police are violent and cruel, and the nation is large. The only recent minor successes have been on the part of right-wing reactionaries.

I hold that protest culture in the US is most commonly just a way for liberals to feel good that they have done a thing.

Did someone say 3.5%? Was that the thing about how many people need to be participating for it to have a political effect? Sure, I can't imagine that was meant to be a binary proposition.

My worrying is binary.

The South Park guys do appear to have taken up the battle.

It's not exactly actually funny, but I hope it drives him crazy.

I agree with 68. South Korea is not a useful example for the US -- its history, culture, geography and demographics make its government susceptible to progressive populist influence in a way that the US is not.

Yeah, the US government knows exactly how to ignore traditional protests.

I am standing at a train station in Latrobe watching a train full of John Deere tractors being pulled past. Therefore, I understand America perfectly. But I can't explain it.

I'm even watching the Dollar General truck arriving to restock the generals.

Just had a long conversation with local who was speaking very approvingly of Amtrak expansion and was wearing a bicycle helmet with a Trump-Vance sticker.

Greensburg has a pretty shitty train station, but better than Latrobe.

There's like a little fire outside in a pile of stuff at the coke plant. That seems wrong.

By 'little', I mean in comparison to the coke plant.

Apparently, Pittsburgh doesn't even have a train-level platform.

Which I guess I forgot. I've been here before.

3.5% is the new 10,000 hours.

It feels like protesting energy peaked at the No Kings Day protest and since then has been losing momentum. Maybe its just the summer doldrums and things will get busy again in September.

He's going to pardon Maxwell and she's going to say comically self-serving things, then it will get busy.

Maybe? Those of us on the left have always known Trump is a pedophile, its not like this is new information for us. The Epstein thing is a civil war amongst the MAGA, I don't see them coming out to our protests.

Meander, so angular.

87: what in the world? Doesn't look natural, but no reason to dig channels like that. No help from wikipedia or Google. And how did you find them?

I clicked on 87 and found myself in a totally unfamiliar place which I eventually figured out was at the opposite end of the world.

I wish I was in some Australian mountain range
Yeah, I wish I was in some Australian mountain range.
Got no reason to be there, but I imagine it would be some kind of change

No mountain range, more of a river bed, but still seemed to apply.

I found them by accident while wasting my weekend pursuing a pet obsession alone with my laptop spending a relaxing afternoon discussing geography with some friends.
I've no idea. Straight channels suggest control by underlying geology, but there are normal looking meanders all around that section.

I hope the Ghislaine Maxwell pardon and her recitation of her newfound facts is rolled out in the hammiest, glitchiest way possible.

"Donald Trump's penis, which I saw under innocent circumstances when it was not near anybody under the age of 18, is large and not at all shaped or colored like a cheeze doodle."

||
NMM to Tom Lehrer
|>

I'm glad I noticed the quotes in 92 or I'd be worried about Moby.

90.1 before someone got the message in 93?

93 alas, but he had a good run. (And wouldn't the Tom Lehrer song "NMM To Tom Lehrer" have been great?)