Keyrock

Further confirmation that there are, indeed, no actual women on the internet.

Yeah, but there's also the chance that you will be confronted by Inigo Montoya. You have to think these things through.

Yahtzee likes a game:

Some moonshine from right here in Cackalacky. First time I've ever seen it, decided to give it a shot, glad I did. It tastes like a brandy, maybe it is, I don't know what are the prerequisites to qualify for the tag "brandy". Taste wise it's brandy and a pleasantly smooth one with shockingly low amounts of burn for north of 50% ABV. The scotch snob in me wants to complain that it's a simple flavor, not much in the way of different flavor notes, but that simple flavor does taste quite good, so thumbs up. They make a bourbon too, I'll scoop up a bottle for my dad for XMas, he's the bourbon drinker.

Some final thoughts on my Colombian vacation: * Cartagena is a beautiful city. I mean, it's got its ****ty parts, as all cities do, full on shanty towns, in fact, but the wealthier parts of town are pretty, in a modern touristy sort of way, and the Walled City or Old Cartagena is gorgeous. * Colombians sure do love meat. While it wouldn't be impossible to be a vegetarian there, it would be difficult. * Speaking of food, Colombians are giving Americans a run for their money in the portion sizes department. If you walk away hungry you have no one but yourself to blame because they serve you a lot of food and it's so delicious. * Renault and Mazda seem to be the dominant car manufacturers. I mainly noticed that because Renaults, while not unheard of, are pretty rare in The States. * Motorbikes EVERYWHERE. There are so many of them on the roads and they follow their own set of rules. By their own set of rules I mean (seemingly) no rules. They weave through traffic with reckless abandon. Thank God I didn't have to do any driving there. Stuff goes on on the roads in Colombia regularly that would never be permitted in the US. * The sun was relentless, I didn't see a single cloud the entire time I was there. I used so much sun screen and I still got burnt. My parents did better since they live in southern Florida and are now acclimated to that amount and power of sunlight. When I go back there I will have to swallow my pride and wear a shirt in the water. * Colombian women are spectacularly beautiful. I mean, they run the full gamut (men too). There are plenty of ugly and average women, but on the high end... * I now have family in Colombia (thanks sis) so I will definitely go there again. I really want to see Bogotá. Edit: Side-note: Bucket List item update: Visit 6 of the 7 continents (let's be real here, I'm never going to Antarctica) - 4 out of 6.

@majesticI have a differing view on this. I applaud Intel for taking the next step in helping crack addicts get work. It's one thing to help a recovering crack addict, but Intel went above and beyond by hiring a crack addict still smoking crack, on the job even, to their marketing team. Intel is being both brave and compassionate by helping this individual to become a productive memb... Okay, maybe not productive, but a member of the workforce. Bravo Intel. Bravo.

Do you think Biden & Co would actually have the spine to go against the rather powerful Zionist lobby and cut funding and/or pull Murica's blanket diplomatic protection of Israel? Because that's what I believe it would take to have any real effect. Quite a few US politicians, including Hair-sniffing Joe, have warned Israel to change their tactics, repeatedly, and it's had **** all effect. Bibi sees them as having all bark and no bite because, well, there's all the evidence in the world for that. Until the US grows the stones to cut ties I think we're going to continue getting ethnic cleansing full speed ahead.

It was just London as best as I remember.

I like Vice City and all but I would have much rather had a new setting. Hong Kong would be my first choice (Sleeping Dogs was awesome). If Rockstar is incapable of creating a new city/region, then take the game back across The Pond to Britain. At least that setting hasn't been used since the top-down games.

There's a big difference between catching the Ruskies with their pants down and attacking dug in and fortified troops that are literally waiting for you.

Islas del Rosario:

Muh Boys won and, essentially, secured a playoff spot, the Iggles got vaporized by the Niners just as badly as we got earlier this season, and the Commies... The Commies are irrelevant but, as a bonus, they also lost. It's been a great week of football.

What can I say, I'm a kiss-ass. We're going to Islas del Rosario tomorrow, hopefully I'll have some good pictures to share.

As soon as I heard about the Zapatos Viejos I had to see them. I love weird stuff like that.

Más fotos de Cartagena: This is the little slice of paradise we're staying at. The 360⁰ panorama is a bit choppy in parts because I was getting smacked by waves as I took it.

It sure is. They say that ignorance is bliss, but I find it very hard not to notice the similarities of today's Murica and the Murica of roughly a century ago, when the robber barons and crony capitalism (the term didn't exist back then, but it applies nonetheless) were running amok. It took FDR to pull this country out of it. Unfortunately, over the past several decades, many of the measures taken to prevent that from happening again have been systematically stripped away. Wouldn't you know it, crony capitalism is back and better than ever, baby! 2016 was a shock to the system to the establishment elites, which is at least partially why they have been attacking him as vociferously as they have ever since. I mean, there are STILL those today, in 2023, running with the Russia Gate narrative that has been THOROUGHLY debunked. The establishment elites will never admit this, not even to themselves, but it was their own hubris that was their undoing in 2016. The establishment elites, especially those on the left side of the aisle, welcomed Trump at first as he threw his hat in the race. They joked about how easy a victory it would be for them if Trump became the Republican nominee, which he did. People were popping the corks on their champagne bottles, even as poll numbers that should have been alarming to them came in, and were having President Hillary (turns my stomach to even type that) parties. Then the results came in.

Oligarchy. On the surface, the US is a federal republic and the elected politicians run the country. In reality, a large percentage of them are career politicians. Politicians should, if this were a truly democratic system, be beholden to their constituents and there are no doubt a few good men and women in Washington that are just that. The problem is that the career politicians aren't there to meet the needs of their constituents, they are there to do the bidding of the donor class since they are the primary funders of their reelection campaigns and the goal of a career politician is to keep getting reelected. The donor class are a group of ludicrously wealthy elites, these are your oligarchs. While they may not directly be running the country, they may as well be given that career politicians cater to them, not to peons like me.

Disagree. It's not even about him ending up in jail, I fully believe he would win the election from behind bars, in fact he would win by an EVEN BIGGER margin from behind bars if he's still eligible. The two things that would stop Trump from winning the 2024 election IMHO are a FELONY conviction (which I HIGHLY doubt they will get) since that would disqualify him from running for PotUS or death (read: assassination). And before you ask, I would not be the least bit surprised if the establishment tries to assassinate The Donald if and when they fail to convict him of a felony.

"Experts" have been predicting Trump's demise for nearly a decade. He's currently as popular as he's ever been. In fairness, that's not even half as long as "experts" have been predicting Putin's demise. How has that turned out?

I'm on vacation in Cartagena. Zapatos Viejos:

You know he has to be REALLY crooked to be too crooked for Congress.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/loongson-launches-3a6000-cpu-matches-14600k-ipc tl:dr - While the overall performance is still a bit lacking due to low clock speed, this is still pretty impressive performance given how far behind they were just a few years ago.

Make that 4 wins in a row for muh Boys and this time against a decent team. More of a nail-biter than I would have preferred, but a win is a win. While not mathematically guaranteed a spot yet, muh Boys are, for all intents and purposes, in. 1 more win will most likely wrap up the 5 seed, 2 more wins will pretty much guarantee it. You can pencil in 4 NFC teams for the playoffs (go ahead and use permanent marker for the Eagles). Eagles, Niners, Lions, and Boys. The NFC South and the 6 and 7 seeds are wide open.

These days I guess I would lean conservative if I had to be put on the highly reductive left/right spectrum but I share the hesitation to be jubilant about someone dying. That said, the someone in question had a hand in regime changes that led to some truly stomach-turning atrocities. Pol Pot often gets overlooked due to some of the 20th century's other great monsters being so famous, people like Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Josef Mengele, Shiro Ishii, Idi Amin, and Margaret Thatcher. Pol Pot was just as evil as any of them and Kissinger helped him come to power. I will spit on his grave if I ever pass it.