@crestrider I was talking about bruce, who took the time to write an entire homophobic, transphobic, racist, anti-drag piece in response to me (as a gay man) during Pride, not you.

"I ended up being attacked here on Splice Today by "another writer" who "loves to overuse quotation marks" in the comments section". I plead guilty to the overuse of quotation marks but who is attacking who here Mary? I made 3 comments on your Corporate Pride piece all of which were focused on public indecency at my cities annual San Diego Gay Pride parade and none of the comments attacked you or even mentioned you. I pointed out the beyond the pale indecent behavior of what takes place at the parade where children are present and you call that "homophobia" and for describing the details of what the parades participants engage in you accuse me of having a "fetishized fantasy" but say nothing about the people who are actually doing these lewd acts in front of children. They are the real fetishizers here are they not? Your only response was "parents have agency over where they bring their children". If these kind of over the top displays of public indecency happen at events like the SD Gay Pride Parade which takes place on a public street for the whole community to see at least they should have a public advisory notification for the parades attendees which might read something like " Welcome everyone to the annual Gay Pride Parade. We hope you all have a great time today and enjoy all the festivities. For parents with children or minors under 18 we would like to notify you that there is a strong possibility that this event will contain nudity, displays of perverted exhibitionism and lewd and lascivious behavior among the parade participants. Those who are sensitive to these types of displays and behaviors should take this advisory into account when considering attending this event. We thank you all for attending and may each of you have a wonderful day!"

Nate Silver does not identify as a conservative, if we are not going to force people to accept labels they don't use themselves. I'm not a homophobe (yet) as much as the gay Left, with mutilating kids and prancing Drag Queens through kindergarten libraries, would like me to be. I was concerned though that Mrs. McCarthy found it hard to follow my article, though I wrote it in word salad as she notes, the patois of the white women Kamala voters. So here's a longer version of the same piece; maybe the connective tissue will help. Now I'm off to toast the Supreme Court decisions. https://brucemajors.substack.com/p/pride-isnt-it-queer

"Parents have agency over where they bring their children". The SD Gay Pride Parade is not held in a private setting. It is a public event held on public streets for the whole community to attend including young children. If the people in the parade would tone it down a bit and forego the lewd and lascivious public acts there wouldn't be an issue and to the point of this article they may even bring in more sponsorship for the event rather than alienating potential sponsors. A little more consideration for those in attendance including the young children of the community and a little less narcissistic self absorption would go a long way.

I think Pride parades have largely devolved into a place gays with no money to go to the beach can be naked and drink beer in th sun.

Parents have agency over where they bring their children. I attended Baltimore Pride and there were many children there taking part in the moonbounce and other children’s activities. Honestly your detailed description sounds more like a fetishized fantasy and classic example of homophobia versus something a child asks a parent at a parade. Might want to give that some more thought, because these comments say more about you than people celebrating love, joy and civil rights.

A parade coming to town is an occasion to spend a nice afternoon with the family watching the decorated floats go by with costumed people dancing and marching bands playing music. Imagine a tolerant minded parent bringing their child to the San Diego Gay Pride Parade which is a publicly sanctioned event on a public downtown street. "Here we are at the parade Billy. Let's see if we can find some balloons". "Hey mommy why is that man on the float with the really small underwear wiggling his tushy at us". "Oh it is just his way of expressing himself dear". "But mommy why is that other guy on the float with the really small underwear bending over and rubbing his tushy against the privates of that man behind him". 'Oh they are just showing pride in who they are dear. Would you like some cotton candy?"

Whining about "Pride is so in our face" oh my gosh look at all the twerking and thongs and drag queens on those sexy getups isn't something I have sympathy for. Don't look at it- you sure seem to have a lot of detail about it. We have to look at boring straight Hallmark channel crap 365 days of the year. People are fighting for civil rights that are being taken away from us as we speak. It's only thirty days. Be strong as you "look away."

I listened to Stevie Wonder and therefore am not worried about a thing. Nate Silver can be conservative and gay and so can you and I won't judge you for it any more than I should be judged for being liberal and gay. If you read my article you'd see that I'm in favor of smaller, more community-based celebrations of Pride. I don't like corporations pink washing/rainbow-washing for the sake of virtue-signaling. I will say this: I hate gatekeeping within the gay community as in, when people say I'm the "only kind of gay that's ok" and don't accept certain letters in the LGBTQIA+ alphabet. To me, no marginalized community member should marginalize anyone else or else that's just internalized homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, drag phobia, whatever. Love is love, everyone should accept everyone the way they are because who died and left you God, etc. That's just my $0.02. which is about what it's worth. Happy Pride!

In San Diego the city where I have lived for over 30 years there is a pride parade every year which starts in the predominantly gay community of Hillcrest and which is proceeded by a block party the night before. Hillcrest is a vibrant community with excellent restaurants and a friendly vibe and the block party gets rave reviews from the wider community both gay and straight. The focus is more about people getting together and having a good time and not on sexual orientation or identity politics. The pride parade is a different story. It’s basically a self absorbed raunchfest with guys on floats wearing G-strings twerking and doing the bump and grind with other guys. Not only is it an in your face display of public indecency it also violates the unofficial motto of the city. Stay classy San Diego!

In the recent polling Nate Silver has been discussing on X, in every demographic non-leftists are happier than leftists, usually by over 10%. Non-leftist gays (60%) are happier than leftist gays (49%) and even happier than leftist heterosexuals (57%). Black non-leftists are happier than both black and white leftists. Non-leftist women are happier than both leftist men and women. Etc. But worry Mary; don't be happy. https://x.com/NateSilver538/status/1935444439650205805

I'm afraid Jillian Michaels and lots of other gay people (like me) have started to find Pride disgusting and silly. The people who have taken over Pride organizations, to pay themselves high salaries and sometimes embezzle money, are professional activists. They don't represent gay people at large. They are part of the GayTM that needs to make trans issues central to gay organizations so they will have an "unsolved" issue to fundraise on. Many are not interested in drag, highlighting trans people, advocating transing confused kids, public nudity on sidewalks with kids, etc. etc. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/media/article-14669257/jillian-michaels-joe-rogan-obesity-trans-children.html

Update 2: Big Balls back. https://www.thedailybeast.com/nuts-plot-twist-as-elon-musks-big-balls-lands-new-government-job/

As Friday approaches I begin thinking about when the next episode will be available and when I will have time to see it. It's so good.

Update: Big Balls is out. https://www.wired.com/story/big-balls-coristine-doge-resigned-us-government/

The notion that Mossad is tricking us is about as laughable as believing that the media is preventing Americans from doing something about the genocide taking place in Gaza.

Of course Trump was never an isolationist. He's a nationalist who thinks American comes First and all (foreign and other) policies should serve that. Which means getting rid of most foreign policies that are anti-American. Hence looking a lot like isolationism, a word then used by his critics, who think "isolationism" is scarier than the interventionism they've done for decades.

Shutting down one of the two LIGO detectors is a stupid bean counter's error. Having built them at great expense, they must be maintained, and accumulate data. But how much of the $48 M budget is supporting admins, professors' salaries, and overhead at their universities? They and their research are great, but not really of practical value.

OK I saw it. It was a B. Not so bad. And wasn't actor Cillian Murphy, who is a director or producer on this, in one of the earlier iterations as an actor?

Now I don't know what to do. You are right that "Last of Us" seems to have lost all fizz (is that why Pedro Pascal left? or did his leaving take away too much of what was making it interesting?) But "Yesterday" was great and I love Jodie Comer, so...

I'm not seeing much correlation. The least religious states (% "highly" religious) per https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/02/29/how-religious-is-your-state are 41. Colorado 47% 41. Hawaii 47% 43. New York 46% 44. Alaska 45% 44. Washington 45% 44. Wisconsin 45% 47. Connecticut 43% 48. Maine 34% 48. Vermont 34% 50. Massachusetts 33% 50. New Hampshire Highest suicide rates per https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/suicide.htm Montana Alaska Wyoming New Mexico North Dakota Idaho Utah South Dakota Oklahoma Colorado

The most secular U.S. states (the mountain west) also have the highest rates of suicide.

I hear you, except violent crime has actually been decreasing in the USA for the past 30 years. You can look it up. Political violence may be on the rise, but it's just a tiny subset of violent crime. Another good reason to steer clear of politics.

Older outmoded consumer electronics technoogy is fun. I remember when I was running the @RonPaul booth at #cpac in 2007, after the Mitt Romney booth was abandoned when he withdrew from the primary campaign, coincidentally the day before CPAC, and his very angry DC organizer gave the booth the #libertarian Paul fans (her 2nd choice). Being a realtor who didn't have to work weekdays on a schedule, I took it over and began recruiting staff and looking for swag and publications. The Ron Paul phone tree/meetups answered, but not the first day. The first day my booth's "banner" was a copy of @reason magazine I had lying around that had a front page cover with a big photo of Ron Paul. A very presentable early 20s Ron Paul fan appeared and asked me if he could have it. He's never seen reason mag. I explained if he came back the last day I might give it to him, but I needed it as a visual. Then I told him I'd subscribed since my junior year in high school and that shortly before that it had been mimeographed by the graphic artists, Lanny Friedlander, who founded it. At the word "mimeograph" he cocked his head like a puppy trying to figure out what it's human is doing. I now know mimeograph is a great word for sorting people by age. If they are under 60, and definitely under 50, all their math quizzes and spelling tests are photocopied, or came out of a computer printer, or they don't even have tests. But if they are old enough they remember the look and smell of the mimeograph.

Such a great song. So sad youngin's don't know our music in the 60's and 70's was SO much better than their music is.

"If you only know a cup this way, you don't know the cup." David Thomas threw off sparks every time he opened his mouth.

A loving/moving biography of Les Baxter: https://lesbaxter.com/pages/biography

This is great. please add a blusky link one of these days.

Just saw it yesterday. She was terrific.

Kamala Harris makes a surprise SNL cameo appearance on the weekend before the election and gets rewarded with a slobbery kiss from SNL and their informal endorsement. Unlike the SNL portrayal of Kamala from early in October where she was humorously mocked this appearance was a cringe inducing fawning over her by SNL which came across as contrived and particularly unfunny ..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff-rqlU4ZWw...I'm sure this Kamala SNL appearance and portrayal by Maya Rudolph got Howard Sterns full approval though.. .For a minute there I thought SNL was getting back to it's roots of prioritizing comedy and being funny but I guess I jumped the gun on that. For SNL it is back to their primary objective of being left wing propagandists..

There was a time when the politically incorrect Howard Stern tested the social boundaries with his unique and edgy form of humor. In recent years Howard Stern has become a tyrannical establishment weasel. During the Covid-19 epidemic he said "When are we gonna stop putting up with the idiots in this country and just say it's mandatory to get vaccinated? F--- 'em. F--- their freedom. I want my freedom to live," He said this months after the data proved that the Covid vaccine did not prevent people from getting infected or from becoming infectious... In this recent butt kissing interview with Kamala Harris he criticized SNL comedian Maya Rudolph"s mocking portrayal of Kamala saying " I hate it. I don't want you being made fun of." How dare comedy get in the way of his political agenda. What a sad pathetic stooge Howard Stern has become.

Their best album. I will never stop listening to it.

Decades ago, I was at a party in my uncle's Manhattan high-rise apartment when the building suddenly filled with smoke and we had to evacuate down the stairs. My uncle grabbed a Picasso lithograph, and I grabbed a big tray of roast beef.

Great pic of Riverrun. Really miss that place!

In college I had a bartending job at Steak and Ale. Tips were good so I always had a couple hundred bucks in my wallet. It felt good to be a student and be able to walk into any restaurant that I felt like dining at. I rarely did that, but it was still a good feeling to know that I could.

As former Friendly's waitress of the year, Friendly's is always a yes. Wattamelon roll FTW