'The indictment charges Taylor with three counts of coercion and enticement, and attempted coercion and enticement of a minor to engage in illicit sexual activity, according to court documents unsealed Monday in the Eastern District Court of Virginia. Each count involved a different minor. Taylor was also charged with four counts of traveling out of state “with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct with another person under 18 years of age.” It’s not clear from court records how many victims are attached to those counts.'
"Dr. Nicole Saphier, President Donald Trump’s third surgeon general nominee, was grilled at her confirmation hearing Wednesday about her stance on childhood vaccines, voicing support for immunization as she seeks to serve in an administration that has moved to make sweeping changes to vaccine guidance.
Saphier, a radiologist and former Fox News Channel contributor, faced tough questioning about her views on the safety of childhood vaccines by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who pressed her to declare whether she believed there was a link between vaccines and autism — which widespread scientific consensus has concluded doesn’t exist, yet which the Trump administration has repeatedly pushed to revisit."
"Her latest ethics filing, dated Sept. 7, shows holdings with various healthcare and insurance firms, as well as processed food companies, like Coca-Cola, Yum Brands, the Hershey Co. and cigarette maker Philip Morris.
Before entering politics and throughout his tenure at the health department, Kennedy has criticized big pharmaceutical companies and insurance firms for alleged corruption and decried ultraprocessed foods as contributing to a nationwide chronic disease crisis.
Additionally, Saphier owns DropRx, a firm that produces controversial, unregulated tinctures — concentrated liquid extracts promoting focus and calm — that contain ingredients, including kava kava root, described by the FDA as potentially causing severe liver injury."
Today, I published two Substack newsletters. The first, an addition of my ( soon to be ) universally loved and respected garden journal " The Green Side Up" This edition is all about pruners. Pretty exciting stuff!
So currently Israel has set its party and alliance slate for the upcoming elections (parties need to declare which other parties they Are and Are Not willing to form coalitions with). So a couple of things from the list:
1) while obviously the two Arab-majority parties aren't going to sign on with Bibi, it's still unclear who they WILL sign on with (they only have to say who they are willing to work with in a "might" do it sort of way). They often have a habit of refusing to work with anyone which then marginalize them in the Knesset. Like a protest vote, but...the entire party's elected members
2) Bennett's alliance seems to be trying to unite the groups that pushed Bibi out of power in 2021, which would probably require some concessions to the Arab parties, but ALSO would lead to a fairly fragile alliance as the main goal is ousting the extremists which means then trying to do things in power can fracture the coalition and lead to the extremists coming back in
3) there's over 10 Major Parties running. Even Bibi's main alliance is of like 5 parties
4) liberal bloc favors deescalation with Palestine, however the various parties vary on statehood and if so, how. Arab parties want statehood fast-tracked which may be a non-starter, especially with Hamas still firmly controlling Gaza (unless we go for my guessed-for Three State Solution and they work on Only The West Bank First)
Overall the liberal parties mostly are running on security, by essentially noting Bibi and his allies Keep Provoking People and how that is Not Helping. A lot of them are pissed at the WB settlers but disagree on Specifically How To Handle It (some want them charged with terrorism, some want specific arrest and jail time provisions we can guarantee to the WB, and so on. Main thing is the WB won't jail them itself b/c they Will Get Lynched and then that will also cause diplomatic issues, so WB won't even bother. Israel needs to be the one jailing them to avoid Lynching, but Israel Should Probably Jail Them). IDF wants to avoid the chaos that they had when removing the Israelis who refused to leave Gaza when Israel handed it over to the Gazans (like 1600 people had to be forcibly removed, it was a whole media uproar people are still pissed over 20 years later) but then there's...how to remove them if NOT that. And it's not looking like there's really another option.
Do you believe there are enough parties overall to support ousting Netanyahu? They'd have to remove a few of his ministers as well. I am ignorant of all the myriad of details about which party supports what, but I can't believe the majority of Israeli citizens want to continue they way the country is going right now.
Every once in a while I begin to think the WaPo Editorial Board might actually be getting a clue as to what is happening in the real world. Then they go and say shit like:
> "If the founders of frontier artificial intelligence labs fear they’re in danger of losing control of their own inventions, then they should slow down the pace of AI development. These executives don’t need the federal government’s permission or direction to do so.
So, the EB decides that there should be no government regulations or guidelines for the overly fast development of AI. They think the industry will self-correct towards a controllable version, and some of the big players agree that slowing down would be a good thing: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Elmo the Man-child at xAI for example. OTOH, there's a shitwagon load of other AI companies that have not talked about this. The Fulvous Fuckwad is on the record that no guidelines should be established: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” (A warning to Pres Dipshit: even if you have what you think you need "in spades" the fifth card might be a diamond, leaving you with nothing but a busted Straight, and you ain't so good at bluffing.)
Built In has a list of 86: https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-roundup On its list to watch are Amazon, Meta, and Palantir. Does anyone reallllly think that Bezos, Zuckerberg, or Thiel et al will apply any sort of breaks when there's money to be made and a potential increase in power?
Andreesen Horowitz lists 100 AI companies and apps broken down by "The Top 50 Gen AI Web Products, By Unique Monthly Visits" and "The Top 50 Gen AI Mobile Apps, By Active Monthly Users." https://a16z.com/100-gen-ai-apps-6/
The bottom line is that the WaPo EB thinks the AI industry will self-guide because three of the biggies think the industry is moving too fast. They ignore most of the smaller companies which is their mistake: the up and coming firms need to force their way onto the playing field and I'll wager a large number of these firms will do whatever they need to in order to get to swim with the sharks (sorry for the mixed metaphor).
[NB: not all of the companies are working on LLMs but that doesn't mean that they won't consider expanding by not quite taking care that their products might be misused, or that their current software might be used off-label.]
They want both a level playing field and to raise the cost to break into the field for newcomers.
If some AIs put in guardrails and slow down, others will forge ahead and win the game. Winning the game is getting the money. After AI shakes out, there may be only 4 to 6 companies left profitable.
Organist Brother Jack McDuff was also born on this day in 1926 (100 years ago!). Here he is in 1964 with his quartet featuring a 21-year-old Geoge Benson on guitar:
If "the case was always wrongly decided" is a doctrine of judicial review at the highest level of our legal system why should anyone obey any court ever?
If he fucking tries the mother fuckers physically doing it need to die in prison. We already need to go after every son of a bitch involved in tearing down the east wing make them wish they had never been born.
I do think they can move to five instead of six. We don't get our food stamps or social security checks by mail anymore. Or tv guide. 95% of all mail is junk mail and bills. I think five days would do.
In the past, efforts to move from 6 to 5 were ended by Congress stepping in, because some people, particularly older people, called them to complain about the change.
I'm 73, I think those folks are all dead now. Except Grassley. I have the same box of checks, half used, I got in 2003. All bills received and paid online. Medicine delivered in 90 day lots and delivered again a week before I run out. BD and Holiday gifts PayPal'd or Zelle'd. Taxes, Fed/State/County all online. All I get is the ad paper once a week and maybe 10 junk mail cards/envelopes, at times for folks who haven't lived here in 40 years. And if a small package, what diff if it comes Thursday or Friday?
Since being made a nonprofit with government oversight (no longer a government agency), Congress has stopped every proposed change that would have allowed them to actually break even.
Was reading an interesting comment on another site about how the politician/influencer team-up relationship idea was always a fraught one and it's just a particularly extreme example we're seeing with having campaigned with Hasan Piker blowing up on El-Sayed.
In short: influencers cultivate small, dedicated audiences, especially compared to what a politician needs. The SMALLEST House district in the USA is still over 500,000 people. Many influencers get by with smaller fanbases than that, and they often inspire dedication and donations via pushing more niche ideas/trends.
Hasan Piker is a bigger influencer, he has 3 million followers. The state of Michigan is more than three times that size. And his followers are worldwide due to how the internet works, there could easily be less than 1,000 in Michigan itself. And we don't know how many of those followers are paid subscribers. Probably a much smaller percentage. But those paid ones mostly pay because he is extreme and says wild things (as seen by IRL streamers who get paid to act like asses in public).
Meanwhile El-Sayed needs to convince over 2 million Michiganders to vote for him. And one really must question...how valuable is Hasan then? Or is he more of a liability? And we have seen El-Sayed has concluded: liability.
I think we're going to see this play out more with various politicians and influencers in the next several elections. This was just a particularly extreme example. But it'll probably take a while for politicians to realize that influencers' followings don't necessarily mean they have the kind of influence the politician needs.
I don't think Dr. El Sayed needed Piker. I do think the right wing media is making it worse by highlighting Piker for months now. Not a strategy I would have used.
Tbf he did campaign with him in the primary so he did seem to think he'd be useful. But he might have had blinders on about how he could also be a liability
Living in the Detroit area, very little is actually being made of Piker. The attack ads against El-Sayed cherry pick quotes from a speech where he mocked people calling him dangerous and from comments he's made about reducing the number of people in our prisons. That second one makes the leap to claim he wants to let murderers and rapists free.
Edit: I don't know how much Piker is being brought up in certain social media corners, but I suspect the most noise being made about him is in places where no one was going to vote for El-Sayed in any case.
I'd love people to stop that. And all the other weird pontificator types who have no actual idea what they're on about. And most of the wellness influencers. And the diet ones.
Not every youth minister, but (almost) always a youth minister... 🤢😢🤬
'Former youth minister indicted on sex abuse charges after FBI investigation'
-- 'Jeff Taylor, 66, worked at the Falls Church Episcopal in the 1990s and early 2000s.'
https://wapo.st/4Ai9pbr (Gift link)
'The indictment charges Taylor with three counts of coercion and enticement, and attempted coercion and enticement of a minor to engage in illicit sexual activity, according to court documents unsealed Monday in the Eastern District Court of Virginia. Each count involved a different minor. Taylor was also charged with four counts of traveling out of state “with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct with another person under 18 years of age.” It’s not clear from court records how many victims are attached to those counts.'
Should have chosen animals instead, right Ka$h?
Still no drag queens.
Have you *seen* how republicans dress? No drag queen would be caught dead dressed like that!
A walking conflict of interest and hypocrite.
Sept. 16, 2026
By The Associated Press
"Dr. Nicole Saphier, President Donald Trump’s third surgeon general nominee, was grilled at her confirmation hearing Wednesday about her stance on childhood vaccines, voicing support for immunization as she seeks to serve in an administration that has moved to make sweeping changes to vaccine guidance.
Saphier, a radiologist and former Fox News Channel contributor, faced tough questioning about her views on the safety of childhood vaccines by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who pressed her to declare whether she believed there was a link between vaccines and autism — which widespread scientific consensus has concluded doesn’t exist, yet which the Trump administration has repeatedly pushed to revisit."
"Her latest ethics filing, dated Sept. 7, shows holdings with various healthcare and insurance firms, as well as processed food companies, like Coca-Cola, Yum Brands, the Hershey Co. and cigarette maker Philip Morris.
Before entering politics and throughout his tenure at the health department, Kennedy has criticized big pharmaceutical companies and insurance firms for alleged corruption and decried ultraprocessed foods as contributing to a nationwide chronic disease crisis.
Additionally, Saphier owns DropRx, a firm that produces controversial, unregulated tinctures — concentrated liquid extracts promoting focus and calm — that contain ingredients, including kava kava root, described by the FDA as potentially causing severe liver injury."
"former Fox News Channel contributor" ... disqualifying.
Who does she think she is, Jill Stein?
Today, I published two Substack newsletters. The first, an addition of my ( soon to be ) universally loved and respected garden journal " The Green Side Up" This edition is all about pruners. Pretty exciting stuff!
https://thegreensideup639.substack.com/p/nobody-leave-the-room-everyone-listen?r=insr
Then, an edition of The Brawl at the Poets Cafe - with poetry and some real nice photos of flowers and cute critters
https://brawlatthepoetscafe.substack.com/p/and-im-singing-because-who-else-but?r=insr
You should go look!
So currently Israel has set its party and alliance slate for the upcoming elections (parties need to declare which other parties they Are and Are Not willing to form coalitions with). So a couple of things from the list:
1) while obviously the two Arab-majority parties aren't going to sign on with Bibi, it's still unclear who they WILL sign on with (they only have to say who they are willing to work with in a "might" do it sort of way). They often have a habit of refusing to work with anyone which then marginalize them in the Knesset. Like a protest vote, but...the entire party's elected members
2) Bennett's alliance seems to be trying to unite the groups that pushed Bibi out of power in 2021, which would probably require some concessions to the Arab parties, but ALSO would lead to a fairly fragile alliance as the main goal is ousting the extremists which means then trying to do things in power can fracture the coalition and lead to the extremists coming back in
3) there's over 10 Major Parties running. Even Bibi's main alliance is of like 5 parties
4) liberal bloc favors deescalation with Palestine, however the various parties vary on statehood and if so, how. Arab parties want statehood fast-tracked which may be a non-starter, especially with Hamas still firmly controlling Gaza (unless we go for my guessed-for Three State Solution and they work on Only The West Bank First)
Overall the liberal parties mostly are running on security, by essentially noting Bibi and his allies Keep Provoking People and how that is Not Helping. A lot of them are pissed at the WB settlers but disagree on Specifically How To Handle It (some want them charged with terrorism, some want specific arrest and jail time provisions we can guarantee to the WB, and so on. Main thing is the WB won't jail them itself b/c they Will Get Lynched and then that will also cause diplomatic issues, so WB won't even bother. Israel needs to be the one jailing them to avoid Lynching, but Israel Should Probably Jail Them). IDF wants to avoid the chaos that they had when removing the Israelis who refused to leave Gaza when Israel handed it over to the Gazans (like 1600 people had to be forcibly removed, it was a whole media uproar people are still pissed over 20 years later) but then there's...how to remove them if NOT that. And it's not looking like there's really another option.
Do you believe there are enough parties overall to support ousting Netanyahu? They'd have to remove a few of his ministers as well. I am ignorant of all the myriad of details about which party supports what, but I can't believe the majority of Israeli citizens want to continue they way the country is going right now.
Parliamentary systems are even more chaotic than fucking jungle primaries.
Let's start that here in the US! Tea Party MAGAs versus the Jeebus MAGAs! Cage match!
Can we give them clawhammers?
"Totally obliterated."
They don't make Depends like they used to.
I was at that party too!
What has Don Jr. done this time?
He did Diet Coke--cutting it with Stevia! 😏
obliterated an eight-ball.
For breakfast.
It was a maintenance dose, OK?
Every once in a while I begin to think the WaPo Editorial Board might actually be getting a clue as to what is happening in the real world. Then they go and say shit like:
> "If the founders of frontier artificial intelligence labs fear they’re in danger of losing control of their own inventions, then they should slow down the pace of AI development. These executives don’t need the federal government’s permission or direction to do so.
[...]
Who is “we” here? Losing control of powerful software is indeed a frightening prospect. And the seriousness of that danger makes the labs’ responsibility — and liability — great. The “we” in Amodei’s essay needs to be the labs themselves." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/09/15/pacing-an-ai-frontier-does-not-require-government-labs-can-do-it/
So, the EB decides that there should be no government regulations or guidelines for the overly fast development of AI. They think the industry will self-correct towards a controllable version, and some of the big players agree that slowing down would be a good thing: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Elmo the Man-child at xAI for example. OTOH, there's a shitwagon load of other AI companies that have not talked about this. The Fulvous Fuckwad is on the record that no guidelines should be established: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” (A warning to Pres Dipshit: even if you have what you think you need "in spades" the fifth card might be a diamond, leaving you with nothing but a busted Straight, and you ain't so good at bluffing.)
Forbes has a list of 50 AI companies to watch and 20 startups (what are the odds that a startup will slow its pace of development without federal guidelines). See https://www.forbes.com/sites/sofiachierchio/2026/04/16/the-ai-50-brink-list/ for its list of startups and https://www.forbes.com/lists/ai50/ for its 2026 list of the top 50 non-startups.
Built In has a list of 86: https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-roundup On its list to watch are Amazon, Meta, and Palantir. Does anyone reallllly think that Bezos, Zuckerberg, or Thiel et al will apply any sort of breaks when there's money to be made and a potential increase in power?
Andreesen Horowitz lists 100 AI companies and apps broken down by "The Top 50 Gen AI Web Products, By Unique Monthly Visits" and "The Top 50 Gen AI Mobile Apps, By Active Monthly Users." https://a16z.com/100-gen-ai-apps-6/
The bottom line is that the WaPo EB thinks the AI industry will self-guide because three of the biggies think the industry is moving too fast. They ignore most of the smaller companies which is their mistake: the up and coming firms need to force their way onto the playing field and I'll wager a large number of these firms will do whatever they need to in order to get to swim with the sharks (sorry for the mixed metaphor).
[NB: not all of the companies are working on LLMs but that doesn't mean that they won't consider expanding by not quite taking care that their products might be misused, or that their current software might be used off-label.]
fnord
They want both a level playing field and to raise the cost to break into the field for newcomers.
If some AIs put in guardrails and slow down, others will forge ahead and win the game. Winning the game is getting the money. After AI shakes out, there may be only 4 to 6 companies left profitable.
Does a nuclear war have winners?
“If asbestos manufacturers think their product is unsafe, they can just stop making it.”
Organist Brother Jack McDuff was also born on this day in 1926 (100 years ago!). Here he is in 1964 with his quartet featuring a 21-year-old Geoge Benson on guitar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivYFzlapYTA
And here he is a couple of years earlier playing with sax great Sonny Stitt on the song "Ringin' In":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcGU-B1L1CQ
And from 1969's Down Home Style album, here's Brother Jack with "The Vibrator", Yeah, baby:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTe6dyT-8eo
GF and I saw George Benson. Just amazing.
If "the case was always wrongly decided" is a doctrine of judicial review at the highest level of our legal system why should anyone obey any court ever?
🎶Whatever Antipope Leonard Leo Wants...Leonard Leo Gets!"🎶
"And then he took off one letter, or maybe they covered them, or maybe they eventually removed them ..."
A tanker truck of Wite-Out was seen in the area.
Just embiggened the header photo, really beautiful.
I miss it already.
If he fucking tries the mother fuckers physically doing it need to die in prison. We already need to go after every son of a bitch involved in tearing down the east wing make them wish they had never been born.
I'm kinda glad I don't live in DC. Getting arrested for destroying construction equipment isn't what I need right now.
Funny the press won’t name names.
The fastest way is to seize all their assets. Since they love money more than anything, kick them right in the balance sheet.
Nah, the fucker driving the truck needs to be locked in a hole and left to rot.
Why don't we do both?
Works for me.
Does anyone know of a reason USPS shouldn't move to 3 days a week instead of 6?
Bueller?
I do think they can move to five instead of six. We don't get our food stamps or social security checks by mail anymore. Or tv guide. 95% of all mail is junk mail and bills. I think five days would do.
I get my medications by mail. But I think moving to 5 days would be ok.
Parcels are a growing segment of their services. People will bitch & moan if they have to wait.
I'm pretty sure they do parcels 7 days a week.
My son, the letter carrier.
I'm sure he could convince a half dozen coworkers to retire.
In the past, efforts to move from 6 to 5 were ended by Congress stepping in, because some people, particularly older people, called them to complain about the change.
I'm 73, I think those folks are all dead now. Except Grassley. I have the same box of checks, half used, I got in 2003. All bills received and paid online. Medicine delivered in 90 day lots and delivered again a week before I run out. BD and Holiday gifts PayPal'd or Zelle'd. Taxes, Fed/State/County all online. All I get is the ad paper once a week and maybe 10 junk mail cards/envelopes, at times for folks who haven't lived here in 40 years. And if a small package, what diff if it comes Thursday or Friday?
Those oldies are going to be super upset when they close them all together and replace them with Federal Express kiosks.
Hell, Congress stopped then going to 7.
Amazon was willing to pay for it.
Since being made a nonprofit with government oversight (no longer a government agency), Congress has stopped every proposed change that would have allowed them to actually break even.
And the pension fund thing. Pure mean-spirited fuckery.
That made all the other changes that had been proposed irrelevant, because there was no longer any path to breaking even.
For the longest time, whenever I heard RFKJ's voice, I racked my brains trying to think of who/what it reminded me of. Now, I finally have it:
Rev. Jim (Christopher Lloyd) from "Taxi."
Tell me I'm wrong.
He's got the same mental clarity as well.
Watching him at congressional hearings it’s clear he’s Jim.
You are not wrong.
Ron Filipkowski
@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social
· 5h
This slogan might need to be updated.
https://bsky.app/profile/ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3mvq345h2xs2p
We know that no matter how this turns out Trump succeeded in permanently defaming the Kennedy Center.
Like he took a huge dump on it.
Was reading an interesting comment on another site about how the politician/influencer team-up relationship idea was always a fraught one and it's just a particularly extreme example we're seeing with having campaigned with Hasan Piker blowing up on El-Sayed.
In short: influencers cultivate small, dedicated audiences, especially compared to what a politician needs. The SMALLEST House district in the USA is still over 500,000 people. Many influencers get by with smaller fanbases than that, and they often inspire dedication and donations via pushing more niche ideas/trends.
Hasan Piker is a bigger influencer, he has 3 million followers. The state of Michigan is more than three times that size. And his followers are worldwide due to how the internet works, there could easily be less than 1,000 in Michigan itself. And we don't know how many of those followers are paid subscribers. Probably a much smaller percentage. But those paid ones mostly pay because he is extreme and says wild things (as seen by IRL streamers who get paid to act like asses in public).
Meanwhile El-Sayed needs to convince over 2 million Michiganders to vote for him. And one really must question...how valuable is Hasan then? Or is he more of a liability? And we have seen El-Sayed has concluded: liability.
I think we're going to see this play out more with various politicians and influencers in the next several elections. This was just a particularly extreme example. But it'll probably take a while for politicians to realize that influencers' followings don't necessarily mean they have the kind of influence the politician needs.
There is a reason why I turn down official relationships with politicians.
Exactly! You have such different priorities!
I don't think Dr. El Sayed needed Piker. I do think the right wing media is making it worse by highlighting Piker for months now. Not a strategy I would have used.
Tbf he did campaign with him in the primary so he did seem to think he'd be useful. But he might have had blinders on about how he could also be a liability
Agreed.
Living in the Detroit area, very little is actually being made of Piker. The attack ads against El-Sayed cherry pick quotes from a speech where he mocked people calling him dangerous and from comments he's made about reducing the number of people in our prisons. That second one makes the leap to claim he wants to let murderers and rapists free.
Edit: I don't know how much Piker is being brought up in certain social media corners, but I suspect the most noise being made about him is in places where no one was going to vote for El-Sayed in any case.
So we can stop sucking Rogan's dick?
I'd love people to stop that. And all the other weird pontificator types who have no actual idea what they're on about. And most of the wellness influencers. And the diet ones.