The Bezos' are not known for their philanthropy. So this donation probably has some hefty strings attached, other than attempting to make Mrs. Bezos the star of the evening. But what a lackluster dress. Schaparelli? really? Obviously, the falling off strap was diamond encrusted, and the dress laced up the back. Whoopee. It's like everything she wears. Because she wants to look like Sophia Loren (as she once said.) Her hair always looks the same, her makeup always looks the same. She's like a branded Bezos property with no personal touches. As with a branded object, everthing has to stay the same or else it is not recognized as such. The least she could have done was to put her hair up, or have the gown made of black velvet or some other material. But navy satin? or silk? Either way, it looks like one of those Mother of the Bride gowns when the Bride's mother has insecurity issues and has to show up her daughter. And they could have coughed up more than $10M for the Costume Institute. He makes that much sneezing.
Most of the celebrity dresses I saw this year didn't hit the theme that well anyway. There was one that was made out of actual movie film, and another one that looked like a Picasso painting come to life, but most of them were just.... dresses, with varying degrees of prettiness or tackiness. Serena Williams looked like a valkyrie though so that was kind of cool.
I saw one blog that said there was a sub-theme of "art and fashion include disabled bodies," and posted a couple of pictures I rather like: https://shadowkat.dreamwidth.org/2276788.html#cutid2 (second and third photos down)
"...Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos, who reportedly donated $10 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the privilege."
That's a lot of money and there is NO WAY the Met got it just for allowing Bezos the "privilege" of being preeminent amongst a crew of monsters.
That ten million dollars came with strings attached and those strings reach all the way to the Ai Jeff is peddling and trying to make inevitable. Museums worldwide are being pressured to replace human museum employees with Ai where feasible. Accounting, security, curation, exhibit design, informational graphics and even fixture construction are all targeted as places where Ai can replace humans.
The ruling class finance museums for many reasons- mainly taxes, but also prestige. They want the general public to accept Ai as an inevitable part of their life. They will dispense promotional material at the door informing the general public that the museum tour will now be infinitely more rewarding with the new improved museum grade Ai Museum Experience replacing all the snooty, inefficient humans who used to work at the museum. The general public will not accept Ai sportsball players. But the messgae to get on board with Ai can be sent in other places. We have seen it in the entertainment media already. Museums would just be another place where the message can be imprinted.
Thank you for THAT news about the Gala! All the bottles in the museum does bother me a bit, because who's going to be tasked with finding and disposing of them? It won't be bezos.
I loved the Ball without Billionaires, and I didn't like Mrs. Bezos' dress. I mean, it was OK, but Sargent's painting was Class; the met dress was just Rich Stuff. I may be prejudiced because Sargent is one of my favorite painters, and I got to see Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose in person a few decades ago, and had to be poked by a friend, to "move - other people want to see it, too."
Even the Vicar of Christ can be thwarted by a customer service representative.
About two months after Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago-born cardinal, became Pope Leo XIV in Vatican City, he put in a call to his bank back home, a close friend, the Rev. Tom McCarthy, told a gathering of Catholics in Naperville, Ill., last week.
The new pope identified himself as Robert Prevost, saying that he wished to change the phone number and address that the bank had on file, Father McCarthy said.
The pope dutifully answered the security questions correctly.
Then, the woman on the line for the bank told him that it wasn’t enough — he would have to come to the branch in person.
“He said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be able to do that,’” Father McCarthy said in a video clip shared on social media, recounting the new pope’s growing frustration as the audience laughed. “I gave you all the security questions.”
The bank employee apologized. The pope tried a different tack.
“Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” he asked, according to Father McCarthy.
She hung up...
A spokesman for the Vatican did not immediately return an email seeking comment on the bank episode.
The matter was sorted out thanks to the intervention of another priest who had a connection to the bank president, Father McCarthy said.
True Story: Sometimes I wish there was not a site edition
So at work place we got a lot of sites. Pre-colonial on up even, it is like a gigantic time capsule awaiting our shovels (or, rather, hopefully not, but that is why we do what we do, I digress).
Some of it is very fucked up on account lots of blowy up things.
Currently our block is an area that had not been tested before, and is right by a historic major road AND a major tributary to a river, so we're talking loot intensive here. But again, lots of areas be fucked up. There was one area, on pedestrian (walk about and look see) that I especially did not want to find anything because it is full of briar and bramble and autumn olive and is very very dense and ouchy. 99% of the time, I am slap happy about finding a site because a: it is what I do and b: makes it more interesting and c: we get to tell the story of every day people and understand a bit more about humanity thereby. And then there is that 1%.....
Yesterday, of course, I found something at the very end of the line, going right into the worst of the thicket. My arms look like I've been wrangling feral cats and forcing them to have baths.
Moral of the story: gonna be wearing long sleeves today.
You remind me of the long, hot summers when I used to work in a sort of cave under the shop cutting fiberglass insulation to fit ductwork parts, often having to climb on to the table to kneel right on the insulation. It must be some kind of fucking miracle that, as of my last X-ray, I still don't have lung cancer.
p.s. I just quit smoking last November after heavy smoking for over 60 years.
Today in History is that Louis the 14th (Louis XIV) moved court to Versailles, which is essentially the model for that orange bag of shit's "ballroom".
About this time of the very early morning, I check the index futures at bloomberg. I do this by opening a new tab and typing "fu", which ought to give firefox enough of a hint, but I always have to scroll past "furaffinity.net" to get to bloomberg.
Well, still no sign of my tax refund, and the ID.me approval keeps telling me to just wait. Hopefully by now they have received Form 3911 which has my account information on it and they can try depositing it again. It would be nice if I could actually TALK to someone at the office to explain what's happened, but evidently I can't as every phone system wants the same information, and they system doesn't pull up MY information so I can't get to the queue to hold for a person. My hope is that they will just send me a check in the mail already.
Heading down to Florida tomorrow to visit my dad. Today will be work and prepping for the trip. I don't have a bag to take, so it will be just me and my new purse with a cat on it plus a small carryon. I'm feeling a lot of anticipation about walking through the airport on my knee. Might request a wheelchair.
I am flying through OKC to Melbourne, FL. Security isn't an issue at either. The main problem is going to be making the walk in the Charlotte airairport.
AP: "In 1882, President Chester Alan Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese laborers from immigrating to the U.S. for 10 years. (The act would remain in effect until 1943.)"
You think MAGA white trash are going to flock to be cleaners, carers and do other low-paid, low status jobs? Pfft.
If the Dumbsreich actually did this, they'd lose an entire voting bloc and associated lobbying dollars from rich twats whose fortune is built on the exploitation.
Of course, if I put on my villain hat I could see a way around this using the U.S. prison population as indentured slaves (for jobs that could be monitored by thicko bubbas with guns), but then, I'm not a villain.
Why do indentured slavery where some nosy reporter or citizen can see the mistreatment, when you can make a taxpayer funded buck just housing people in crappy assed conditions no one is allowed to see?
...research from Northern Arizona University found that a global greenhouse gas emissions database produced by the Climate TRACE consortium...is underestimating vehicle carbon dioxide emissions in cities by an average of 70%...
...results in Environmental Research Letters analyzing the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from cars and trucks in the recently released Climate TRACE database...these findings, combined with a previous study noting similar discrepancies at power plants, raise concerns...
"Given the importance of vehicle CO2 emissions in cities, we carefully examined the Climate TRACE data which relied on promising new artificial intelligence-based approaches," Gurney said. "When combined with our previous study on Climate TRACE power plant CO2 emissions, our results suggest that the Climate TRACE data significantly underestimate over half of U.S. fossil fuel-based CO2 emissions in cities."
Seems like the climate models have been underestimating the rate of change for years. I wonder when somebody said, "Hmmm" and started looking for errors in the data.
The Debt Gala… the latest installment in the saga of Hollywood sister witches, Joanie and Evie Oyster 🦪💓🦪 https://chelseycrabbe.substack.com/p/the-debt-gala?r=jc9cg&utm_medium=ios
The Bezos' are not known for their philanthropy. So this donation probably has some hefty strings attached, other than attempting to make Mrs. Bezos the star of the evening. But what a lackluster dress. Schaparelli? really? Obviously, the falling off strap was diamond encrusted, and the dress laced up the back. Whoopee. It's like everything she wears. Because she wants to look like Sophia Loren (as she once said.) Her hair always looks the same, her makeup always looks the same. She's like a branded Bezos property with no personal touches. As with a branded object, everthing has to stay the same or else it is not recognized as such. The least she could have done was to put her hair up, or have the gown made of black velvet or some other material. But navy satin? or silk? Either way, it looks like one of those Mother of the Bride gowns when the Bride's mother has insecurity issues and has to show up her daughter. And they could have coughed up more than $10M for the Costume Institute. He makes that much sneezing.
Why can't all billionaires be Warren Buffett?
Because some are real-life Elmer Moffat and Undine Spragg.
(from Edith Wharton’s “The Custom of the Country”. A truly refreshing glass of hater-ade for anyone who shares my taste in books.)
Most of the celebrity dresses I saw this year didn't hit the theme that well anyway. There was one that was made out of actual movie film, and another one that looked like a Picasso painting come to life, but most of them were just.... dresses, with varying degrees of prettiness or tackiness. Serena Williams looked like a valkyrie though so that was kind of cool.
I saw one blog that said there was a sub-theme of "art and fashion include disabled bodies," and posted a couple of pictures I rather like: https://shadowkat.dreamwidth.org/2276788.html#cutid2 (second and third photos down)
Oh, those are quite neat! I love that a little person was able to wear an amazingly fetching gown too.
I think she was also the designer.
"...Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos, who reportedly donated $10 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the privilege."
That's a lot of money and there is NO WAY the Met got it just for allowing Bezos the "privilege" of being preeminent amongst a crew of monsters.
That ten million dollars came with strings attached and those strings reach all the way to the Ai Jeff is peddling and trying to make inevitable. Museums worldwide are being pressured to replace human museum employees with Ai where feasible. Accounting, security, curation, exhibit design, informational graphics and even fixture construction are all targeted as places where Ai can replace humans.
The ruling class finance museums for many reasons- mainly taxes, but also prestige. They want the general public to accept Ai as an inevitable part of their life. They will dispense promotional material at the door informing the general public that the museum tour will now be infinitely more rewarding with the new improved museum grade Ai Museum Experience replacing all the snooty, inefficient humans who used to work at the museum. The general public will not accept Ai sportsball players. But the messgae to get on board with Ai can be sent in other places. We have seen it in the entertainment media already. Museums would just be another place where the message can be imprinted.
An overlooked point
Thank you for THAT news about the Gala! All the bottles in the museum does bother me a bit, because who's going to be tasked with finding and disposing of them? It won't be bezos.
I loved the Ball without Billionaires, and I didn't like Mrs. Bezos' dress. I mean, it was OK, but Sargent's painting was Class; the met dress was just Rich Stuff. I may be prejudiced because Sargent is one of my favorite painters, and I got to see Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose in person a few decades ago, and had to be poked by a friend, to "move - other people want to see it, too."
7:02 WHAR TABS?
~Stroke1
That worked!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/nobody-gets-left-behind-tabs-wed
And just like magic, they appear!
Minute Cryptic - 6 May, 2026
"A cat's head poked into nest! Ready wings for descent!" (8)
⚪️⚪️⚪️🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣
🏋 3 hints – 1 over the community par (78,525 solvers so far).
https://www.minutecryptic.com/?utm_source=share
Hmm, this will take more thought.
bird food
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝗛𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲
Even the Vicar of Christ can be thwarted by a customer service representative.
About two months after Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago-born cardinal, became Pope Leo XIV in Vatican City, he put in a call to his bank back home, a close friend, the Rev. Tom McCarthy, told a gathering of Catholics in Naperville, Ill., last week.
The new pope identified himself as Robert Prevost, saying that he wished to change the phone number and address that the bank had on file, Father McCarthy said.
The pope dutifully answered the security questions correctly.
Then, the woman on the line for the bank told him that it wasn’t enough — he would have to come to the branch in person.
“He said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be able to do that,’” Father McCarthy said in a video clip shared on social media, recounting the new pope’s growing frustration as the audience laughed. “I gave you all the security questions.”
The bank employee apologized. The pope tried a different tack.
“Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” he asked, according to Father McCarthy.
She hung up...
A spokesman for the Vatican did not immediately return an email seeking comment on the bank episode.
The matter was sorted out thanks to the intervention of another priest who had a connection to the bank president, Father McCarthy said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/us/pope-leo-xiv-bank-customer-service.html
If you give it all to the poor, you don't have to deal with this sort of crap.
Back up to heaven all alone
Nobody callin' on the phone
'Cept for the Pope, maybe in Rome
Yeah. Claiming to be the pope never helped me much either.
Damned Protestants!
Ha ha, I get it.
True Story: Sometimes I wish there was not a site edition
So at work place we got a lot of sites. Pre-colonial on up even, it is like a gigantic time capsule awaiting our shovels (or, rather, hopefully not, but that is why we do what we do, I digress).
Some of it is very fucked up on account lots of blowy up things.
Currently our block is an area that had not been tested before, and is right by a historic major road AND a major tributary to a river, so we're talking loot intensive here. But again, lots of areas be fucked up. There was one area, on pedestrian (walk about and look see) that I especially did not want to find anything because it is full of briar and bramble and autumn olive and is very very dense and ouchy. 99% of the time, I am slap happy about finding a site because a: it is what I do and b: makes it more interesting and c: we get to tell the story of every day people and understand a bit more about humanity thereby. And then there is that 1%.....
Yesterday, of course, I found something at the very end of the line, going right into the worst of the thicket. My arms look like I've been wrangling feral cats and forcing them to have baths.
Moral of the story: gonna be wearing long sleeves today.
Cool story for realz.
My shower when I got home was painful XD All that salt being washed right into the new wounds
ow ow ow ow
I hate briar patches. Fuck that goddamn rabbit
You remind me of the long, hot summers when I used to work in a sort of cave under the shop cutting fiberglass insulation to fit ductwork parts, often having to climb on to the table to kneel right on the insulation. It must be some kind of fucking miracle that, as of my last X-ray, I still don't have lung cancer.
p.s. I just quit smoking last November after heavy smoking for over 60 years.
Does your toolkit include hedge trimmers and pruning shears? Seems like a good idea.
lol no. Sometimes a machete though.
Course nothing but a flame thrower is going through autumn olive
I gotta carry about 50lbs of gear with me already. I try not to add more to it XD
Machete!
Lithium batteries have really advanced the game of hedge trimmers and chainsaws for these matters.
Do you think a chainsaw would be the tool to fight the bamboo forest in my back yard with?
Today in History is that Louis the 14th (Louis XIV) moved court to Versailles, which is essentially the model for that orange bag of shit's "ballroom".
Somehow, Versailles was more tasteful.
I seen it!
It's pretty gaudy.
It is, but I think I was more shocked how small the Mona Lisa is.
And hard to see, in the wall to wall crowd that always stuffs the gallery to capacity.
I got up close in the 90s.
Have you ever seen the Libery Bell? Also shockingly tiny!
The way it is always depicted I would expect something at least my height and of a circumference to match.
Oh, I thought you said Liberty Belt. Too late now, I already non-commented:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDiXPx2OqPI
About this time of the very early morning, I check the index futures at bloomberg. I do this by opening a new tab and typing "fu", which ought to give firefox enough of a hint, but I always have to scroll past "furaffinity.net" to get to bloomberg.
I know who I blame for this.
Lol
Well, still no sign of my tax refund, and the ID.me approval keeps telling me to just wait. Hopefully by now they have received Form 3911 which has my account information on it and they can try depositing it again. It would be nice if I could actually TALK to someone at the office to explain what's happened, but evidently I can't as every phone system wants the same information, and they system doesn't pull up MY information so I can't get to the queue to hold for a person. My hope is that they will just send me a check in the mail already.
Heading down to Florida tomorrow to visit my dad. Today will be work and prepping for the trip. I don't have a bag to take, so it will be just me and my new purse with a cat on it plus a small carryon. I'm feeling a lot of anticipation about walking through the airport on my knee. Might request a wheelchair.
Request a ride in one of those electric carts when you check in.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP pardon BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP excuse me BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP excuse me BEEP BEEP BEEP exCUSE me BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP WILLYA JUST GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
We've done that for my mom, and it does get you through security a lot faster.
I once had to go through Frankfurt Airport in an electric cart--best transit of Frankfurt I've ever done. Horrible airport.
I am flying through OKC to Melbourne, FL. Security isn't an issue at either. The main problem is going to be making the walk in the Charlotte airairport.
Charlotte can be a long-ass walk. Plus, all travelers but (generic) you are idiots.
AP: "In 1882, President Chester Alan Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese laborers from immigrating to the U.S. for 10 years. (The act would remain in effect until 1943.)"
MAGA yearns for something similar today.
You think MAGA white trash are going to flock to be cleaners, carers and do other low-paid, low status jobs? Pfft.
If the Dumbsreich actually did this, they'd lose an entire voting bloc and associated lobbying dollars from rich twats whose fortune is built on the exploitation.
Of course, if I put on my villain hat I could see a way around this using the U.S. prison population as indentured slaves (for jobs that could be monitored by thicko bubbas with guns), but then, I'm not a villain.
That is probably the next stage being plotted by those Heritage Foundation cannibals.
Why do indentured slavery where some nosy reporter or citizen can see the mistreatment, when you can make a taxpayer funded buck just housing people in crappy assed conditions no one is allowed to see?
Miller will have it before too long, rest assured.
𝗖𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲 𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝗴𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲
...research from Northern Arizona University found that a global greenhouse gas emissions database produced by the Climate TRACE consortium...is underestimating vehicle carbon dioxide emissions in cities by an average of 70%...
...results in Environmental Research Letters analyzing the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from cars and trucks in the recently released Climate TRACE database...these findings, combined with a previous study noting similar discrepancies at power plants, raise concerns...
"Given the importance of vehicle CO2 emissions in cities, we carefully examined the Climate TRACE data which relied on promising new artificial intelligence-based approaches," Gurney said. "When combined with our previous study on Climate TRACE power plant CO2 emissions, our results suggest that the Climate TRACE data significantly underestimate over half of U.S. fossil fuel-based CO2 emissions in cities."
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-climate-scientist-large-errors-global.html
Maybe an early morning cocktail and back to bed. Pondering which self-inflicted means of self destruction will end the suspense just isn't appealing
Seems like the climate models have been underestimating the rate of change for years. I wonder when somebody said, "Hmmm" and started looking for errors in the data.
Is research even legal in the U.S. now? I thought everything was decided by the internet "influencer" who shrieks the loudest?
"accurate and reliable information on greenhouse gas emissions is a critical ingredient for society's response to climate change"
Not in my stupid country.
Just like "solving" the COVID crisis by restricting tests, our brain genius ruling class just shuts down research and publication.
I guess we'll have to call the whole thing off.
If only we could.
Trump’s only successful business ventures have been his beauty contests. The Miss Appropriation Pageant is his best by far.
What about Miss Anthropy? Or Miss O'Gyny?
Miss Chatelaine
https://youtu.be/dY-_m6vUTUY?si=QtQdF3UyoszD-DAC
Trade name registration pending.
Miss O'Gyny sounds like a drive through pap smear business
LOL