M.S. Bellows, Jr.

I'm so old, I remember when software that spread into the wild and infiltrated other people's computers and did harmful things to them that the users didn't ask it to was called "malware" instead of "AI" and the perpetrators were prosecuted instead of given billions in venture capital and government contracts.

Fun fact: the U.S. Constitution does not require citizenship to vote. I'll repeat that: the U.S. Constitution does not say that only citizens can vote. It does not ban non-citizens from voting. A federal *statute* contains this requirement, as do many states' laws. But if the law was changed to, eg, allow any permanent resident to vote as well, that would be fine constitutionally (and probably a good idea imho). So don't let people get away with just assuming that "only citizens can vote" is a given. It's not. It's a policy choice.

Yeah, yeah, Facebook, but this is brilliant: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1MCCancxKy/ "My favorite thing about The Odyssey is that when you notice how the poem is structured, the whole thing starts looking like Odysseus is just making up an alibi after coming home from a 10-year Fuckboy Tour of the Mediterranean. See, the parts of The Odyssey that Homer narrates directly are surprisingly grounded. At the beginning we see Ithaca, Telemachus travels around looking for news of his father, and so on. At the end Odysseus returns, kills the suitors, and everyone is happy (except for the suitors). The gods interfere constantly because this is ancient Greece, but mostly it's a story about people doing people shit just like The Iliad. But in the middle section, the narration very conspicuously shifts from Homer to Odysseus himself. He's explaining to the Phaeacians why it took him ten years to sail home from Troy, and suddenly we're dealing with one-eyed giants, cannibal armies, a witch who turns men into pigs, magic bags full of wind, six-headed sea monsters, and a trip to the Underworld. Odysseus tells his story to the Phaeacians while he is stranded, broke, and in desperate need of a ship home. And remember that Odysseus is not merely capable of lying – lying is basically his superpower. He routinely invents elaborate fake biographies for himself at the drop of a hat, to the point that even Athena is impressed with his capacity for deception. He is canonically the original male manipulator. And it makes sense why Homer depicts Odysseus telling all of this to the Phaeacians instead of the much-less-gullible Penelope, since you can imagine how his story would have gone over with her: "Odysseus, the Trojan War ended 10 years ago. Where have you been all this time?" "See what had happened was, we were gonna come straight home – but then when we were in sight of Ithaca, my men opened this magic bag of wind while I was asleep and it blew us to the other side of the ocean." "Why did they open the bag after you told them not to?" "Ah, well, see, I sort of forgot." "Your men all died because you had a magic bag of wind that you forgot to tell them not to open and then took a nap?" "No, they were all fine! But see, then a cyclops and some giant cannibals killed most of the men, and a witch turned the rest into pigs. But don't worry, they got better." "They got better?" "Well sure, the witch changed them back after I slept with her." "...I see. Well, I suppose you had to save your men." "Exactly! And so after a year with her-" "You slept with her for A YEAR?" "Hermes told me to, baby!" "The god Hermes told you to fuck another woman. For a year." "Penelope, who am I to question the will of the gods? So then we went to the Underworld, and after a quick detour back to see Circe again-" "YOU WENT BACK?" "It was important, babe! She had to tell us how to avoid all the sea monsters!" "The sea monsters." "Oh, sure – loads of sea monsters out there. The sea is lousy with monsters these days." "Uh huh. And did you sleep with her again?" "I mean, it would have been rude not to..." "ODYSSEUS." "Will of the gods, baby, will of the gods! So anyway we're headed home for real this time, but the men ignored my extremely excellent advice and ate one of Helios' sacred cattle while I was asleep, and Zeus killed them all. Damndest thing. So I wash up naked on this beach with a beautiful nymph, and well, one thing kinda led to another..." "Did you sleep with her for a year too?" "Of course not!" "Well, that's a relief." "It was seven." "SEVEN?" "She bewitched me! I was bewitched! Can't fault a guy for what he does when he's bewitched, can you?" "And did you meet any other women on this epic journey of yours?" "Well, there was this teenage princess..." "ODYSSEUS!" "Nothing happened, babe, I swear! I just washed up naked on the beach right in front of her. Nice girl, you'd like her." "Odysseus, this is the second time you've just happened to wash up naked on a beach right in front of a beautiful woman." "I know! Crazy, right? Anyway, when I told her parents everything that had happened, they were so amazed that they gave me all this gold and a ride straight home so I could be with my beloved." "After 10 years." "Well yeah, straight home after 10 years. Don't forget the sea monsters, babe!" "The sea monsters that you are conveniently the only person left alive to have witnessed." "I don't love where you're going with that..." "Odysseus, do you know what I did while you were gone?" "...Waited faithfully for me?" "I raised your son, ran your kingdom, kept a hundred men from taking your throne, and spent three years weaving and unweaving the same fucking burial shroud every night to keep them off my back." "That's... actually very clever." "Thank you." "You know, between the two of us, that's really more my–" "Finish that sentence and I'm sending you back to the Cyclops."

@ingalls@m.ai6yr.org One of my best life experiences came after I spent a day at a girl scout camporee, teaching backcountry safety and first aid to each group of girls as they rotated through, from high schoolers down to the itsy bitsy tiny little Cindy Lou Who-sized Daisy Scouts. One thing I taught each group was a simplified mnemonic from my Wilderness First Responder training, reminding rescuers to always make sure they personally are safe before moving in to help others. That night, the entire camp had a show. Each scout troop put on a little skit or sing a song or something in front of everyone else seated in an amphitheater made of split logs. When that tiny little Daisy troop filed on stage, they lined up carefully with very serious looks on their tiny faces, and then they all chanted in unison: "today we learned, Rule number one, I'm number one. Rule number two, what happened to you?" Then they continued, still in unison: "This has been a test of the Daisy Troop 7 emergency response system. If this had been an actual emergency, it would have sounded something like this": ... and then they all started screaming and running around the stage wildly, waving their hands in mock panic. I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY OR PROUD ABOUT ANYTHING IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!

#IHopeJohnRoberts decides that instead of continuing to lie in his motel room bed having a hungover moral crisis, he should go out and find some oatmeal or something soothing like that for breakfast, but when he opens the door he startles at the dead rat lying on the doorstep and stumbles and falls to one knee, skinning it badly and tearing his last remaining pair of pants, so he goes back inside and curls up on the bed again, blood from his knee staining the dirty sheets in a slowly widening circle.

When he wakes up this morning after his stoned, passionate night with a woman who wasn't his wife, #IHopeJohnRoberts isn't too hung over and feels contented, not guilty, because she was so sweet and pretty and generous and creative in bed that he will remember it forever as the peak erotic experience of his life, and his only ambivalence is that he isn't sure whether that's in spite of her having a penis or because of it.

As he lies on the cheap motel room bed, hung-over and nearly broke and bleeding from his knee and experiencing a dark night of the soul, #IHopeJohnRoberts falls back asleep and in a dream is visited by three rats, who remind him that he hasn't studied for an important test and also point out that he's naked in public and then chant that he's a failure and laugh at him scornfully, having somehow transformed into the shades of Antonin Scalia, his father, and his 1L Constitutional Law professor.

Dear #Canada: Kick our ass, please. Take care of yourselves, and kick our ass. #ElbowsUp Your American friend, Scott

#IHopeJohnRoberts had a lovely very drunk and very high time with the woman who is not his wife and that she did that thing to him that his wife only would do on his birthday, and when he gathered his inebriated courage and asked if he could also do the thing to her that *no* lover had ever let him do before, she replied laughingly, "that's the only way I *can* do it, honey!", and then afterwards when they both had to go pee they played that kids' game where they crossed swords, and then went back to bed.

They think we're idiots. The problem, as the last presidential election demonstrated, is that more than half of us are.

As he becomes increasingly drunk on vodka and Sprite served in the flimsy plastic-wrapped plastic cups that came with his cheap motel room, #IHopeJohnRoberts doesn't find himself led into moral error by the ladies his new hobo friend has brought over – but let's be honest, he probably will, especially since one of the ladies has just produced a spliff, which John hasn't tried since he was an undergrad at Harvard, and honestly that was mostly the shake and seeds the Harvard Square dealers sold to rich kids who didn't know any better.

#IHopeJohnRoberts now is completely crossfaded on vodka and weed and so is the topless woman next to him who incidentally is the same one that aroused him so much when he saw her earlier in another guy's room with clothespins on her nipples and his new hobo friend is doing something complicated to the other woman on the hotel room's tipped-forward cuck chair and did I mention that the Chief Justice is completely crossfaded and also please remember it's been a very long time since his wife left so I believe we should politely draw a curtain across the sordid scene for now. For now.

In his terrible dream, #IHopeJohnRoberts 's wife appears to him as he's standing in his old schoolyard worrying about the test he's unprepared for, and points at his nakedness and laughs and laughs and laughs and then walks away intimately arm in arm with Clarence and Ginny Thomas, heading towards a cheap motel exactly like the one he's currently asleep in.

Jesus, these people: "These advocates, many of whom support the Make America Healthy Again movement, are touting an addictive substance [nicotine] linked to tobacco use as a natural product that can be used for everything from improving focus to protecting against cognitive decline." https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/09/20/im-pulmonologist-heres-why-new-wellness-claims-about-nicotine-worry-me/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzkwMDQ5NjAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzkxNDMxOTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3OTAwNDk2MDAsImp0aSI6IjMxN2NjYTVhLTlmM2MtNDRhYi1hYzE5LTNiYmZmODQxZWY1ZSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9oZWFsdGgvMjAyNi8wOS8yMC9pbS1wdWxtb25vbG9naXN0LWhlcmVzLXdoeS1uZXctd2VsbG5lc3MtY2xhaW1zLWFib3V0LW5pY290aW5lLXdvcnJ5LW1lLyJ9.N8w-perJyxpIZpLcQn8x3T86p3c5f64RCWcbn0XgUNA

There's a new bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent is the U.S. But permanent Standard Time would be healthier and safer. (In fact, the U.S. tried permanent DST back in 1974, but stopped bec people were being killed commuting/walking to school in the dark.) https://aasm.org/advocacy/position-statements/permanent-standard-time-is-the-optimal-choice-for-health-and-safety/ So why isn't permanent ST being proposed? Because GOLF INDUSTRY LOBBYISTS want that extra hour of daylight after work so their customers can play more. https://golfweek.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2021/06/05/golf-daylight-saving-time/76507737007/ Really, it is time to tear the whole fucking political structure down and try again. Aaargh. #DST #PermanentDST

#IHopeJohnRoberts then falls back asleep, having not even opened his eyes, and then really truly awakens a couple hours later, and oh okay *there's* that hangover, ow, and he stumbles to the bathroom and pukes and rinses his mouth, and looks at himself numbly in the mirror and remembers more about last night, and oh yeah *there's* that religious guilt and conservative transphobia, and now he wants to throw up again, even before he realizes that everyone's gone and he's alone in the room and his new hobo friend has taken some of his clothes and most of his money (from his wallet and under his mattress, leaving only the stash hidden under the dirty towel in the closet), and oh my god his head hurts so badly and also his heart and also he suddenly has the trots.

#IHopeJohnRoberts 's terrible dream continues, with St. Peter appearing to him in a blaze of lithium-fire white light, asking whether he has completed all the Hail Marys the priest assigned him as penance for his anti-democracy rulings, and Gabriel standing behind Peter eagerly fingering his flaming sword as John nervously tries to think of an answer besides the truthful. "no, I blew it off."

Not a surprise. But when they say "intellectual diversity" they actually mean "not lose our more conservative subscribers," and they know that's what they mean. They trade truth for $.

It's not that hot in Kansas City today but it is very humid, so when he sees that the prostitute who is passing him the lit joint has taken her top off #IHopeJohnRoberts isn't even that surprised but just accepts the joint, takes a hit (not even coughing that much), and finishes his vodka and Sprite, feeling the crossfade spread pleasantly across his whole body and barely noticing as the topless woman curls up next to him on the motel room bed and presses her bare breasts against him.

#IHopeJohnRoberts still is hung over and struggling with moral ambivalence and also keeps remembering the thing with the clothespins that he thought he'd use on her but that she actually used on him.

Well, cra... I mean, yay. We were cleaning out an old piece of furniture and found this box full of decades-old undeveloped #film and disposable #cameras. Any suggestions for where to send these for decent-quality, affordable developing/digital conversion?

It's almost like juries don't believe DOJ is operating in good faith anymore, to the point it's even affecting straightforward drug and violence prosecutions. Jeanine Pirro’s office fails to convict accused MS-13 ringleaders twice | CNN Politics https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/24/politics/trump-ms13-conviction-jeanine-pirro

#IHopeJohnRoberts falls into a pleasant sleep in his surprisingly comfy Greyhound bus seat, finally just letting all his anxieties fall away for a blissful while, and so doesn't notice that his bus to Portland isn't passing through Baltimore and Wilmington and then New York, but rather Frederick and Cumberland and Morgantown. #PWM #PDX

Going through a big Rubbermaid bin from the garage holding old electronics. Anyone need a CAT-5 crossover cable or some S-video adapters? How about an internal A: drive for reading floppy disks? Or proprietary printer cables?

I'm a well-educated guy, but not in finance. To me, it seems like the market is a massive bubble and will crash any second, but I've thought that many times in the past and usually been wrong, bec. big investors live in a completely different universe than I do. So I'm curious: do you think the market's going to crash in the next year or two? And are you (like me) relatively unsophisticated in the world of financial markets, or do you actually pay close attention to this stuff?

#IHopeJohnRoberts's ridiculously low-rent motel room in K.C. is right next to a large Black Baptist church that holds its first Sunday service at 6 a.m., and also that his room has no air conditioning so he slept with his window open, and the gorgeous but very loud and very awake choir got him up bright and early so he thought what the hell, threw on clothes, stepped over the crushed dead rat on the threshold of his room without noticing it, and went and sat in the back of the church, where people gave him puzzled smiles at his whiteness and stranger-ness and casual clothes, but still seemed nice, and all through the service he just quietly thought about things, left $20 in the distribution, and then quietly slipped out at the end.

#IHopeJohnRoberts 's Greyhound bus makes a long stop in Kansas City and he finally realizes he's going to Portland, Oregon and not Portland, Maine, and he feels really stupid both for his initial mistake and for not realizing it earlier, but also he's finally recovering from his intestinal problem and is super hungry, so he buys some spare ribs at a nearby barbecue joint filled with Black people near the bus station and oh my god it's so good he no longer even minds his accidental adventure and he stays there well after finishing his meal, just enjoying the music and watching people very unlike those he usually associates with but actually not so different, until the proprietor, a bald man with massive guns and wearing a pristine clean apron, very courteously explains that people are waiting for his table, and he apologizes and goes outside and stands on the sidewalk for a long while, savoring the sense of simply not giving any fucks at all about any of his usual concerns, and then he walks back to the bus station, confirms that his ticket will allow him to get on a later bus if he wants, fetches his small duffel bag and his paperback copy of "On The Road," and walks back out into the town, with no idea what he'll do next.

Pinto Sally. #CarTroubleASongOrPoem #HashtagGames

This morning when he awoke on a sprung mattress in the 7th and K Street rent-by-the-hour motel room he paid cash for last night, #IHopeJohnRoberts retained yesterday's sense of giggly excitement at his unexpected escape from expectations, and that after disingenuously texting his assistant that he was taking the vacation his wife had scheduled to Martha's Vineyard, he then stepped without concern over the crushed dead rat someone or something had left on the threshold of his motel room, smashed his phone under his heel, dropped it in an outdoor waste can on top of the empty malt liquor bottles and used condoms and syringes, and, toting his duffel and wearing his Bohemian Grove ballcap, walked cheerfully, whistling, in the direction of the bus station, stopping at a used bookstore along the way for a slightly dog-eared paperback copy of Kerouac's "On the Road."

#IHopeJohnRoberts 's really pretty good-tasting lunch hamburger was topped with unwashed #cyclospora-tainted lettuce so that he spends several hours in the Greyhound bus's tiny lavatory instead of gazing out the big window, and therefore he continues not to realize that his secret independent trip to "Portland, Maine" has just taken him through Indianapolis and that he's now en route to Peoria.

When he got to Union Station, #IHopeJohnRoberts understood that the best way for him not to be recognized or tracked was to travel by bus, so he found his way to the Greyhound/FlixBus area and bought a ticket for cash on the first bus to someplace reasonably far away, which is how he finds himself en route to Portland, Maine in a surprisingly comfortable seat next to a talkative, sprightly, older woman who immediately launches into a hilarious, hourslong explanation of the drama in her church and large family circle, all in some Eastern European language he does not understand.

As he wanders around downtown Kansas City near the bus station, trying to remain anonymous and wondering what to do next, #IHopeJohnRoberts has trouble finding a motel or hotel that will accept him without showing ID or leaving a credit card and therefore creating a record that would lead to him being discovered and his adventure cut short, and when he finally does find one that will take cash without ID, the room smells funny and once he's inside and unpacking he realizes that in every hidden place, behind the curtains, on the shower rail, in the closet, under the bed, even tucked into the Gideon bible at John 3:16 like a bookmark for God's sake, the proprietor has hidden those little pine tree-shaped automotive air fresheners, which end up making the room reek like a forest had a baby with mothballs, and because he has no choice he stays there anyway but as he falls asleep tonight he wonders how long ago someone died in that room and how long it had taken before they were discovered and whether the owners had replaced the carpet and mattress or just cleaned them.

Today #IHopeJohnRoberts has a meeting with Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett to debrief their House testimony yesterday about Court security, and he tells them he's really grateful they're advocating for more security and asks whether any of the congresscritters commented on his recent experiences with something leaving dead, crushed rats on his doorstep, or him being detained on a mental health hold in a locked psychiatric facility over the 4th of July weekend without anyone on the Court staff noticing, or about about Alito and Thomas and Kavanaugh threatening him on behalf of a satanic Federalist cult apparently run by Leonard Leo, and as the two women sit there in absolutely stunned silence he remembers that he hasn't actually told anyone about any of these things and so they couldn't have shared them with Congress or gotten him any more security but now they do know and he wonders what will happen to him next, and he decides that since the Court is on summer recess anyway it's probably a really really good time to just get the fuck out of Dodge, and he stands up while they're still sitting there, leaves the building, and goes home before they can call anyone else to get involved. https://rollcall.com/2026/07/14/supreme-court-justices-emphasize-need-for-security-funding

Subtoot: fuck T-Mobile and fuck all the tech companies and fuck every single development in the world since 1999 except Obama's election and my daughter getting engaged.

Now #IHopeJohnRoberts 's intestinal upset continues, and that the TP in the tiny (and now smelly) bathroom on the Greyhound bus is super scratchy.

Yeah, the toilet tissue keeps ripping through, and the tiny Greyhound bus lavatory is out of soap. #IHopeJohnRoberts

When his Greyhound bus finally stops somewhere long enough for a meal, #IHopeJohnRoberts is mildly puzzled because he doesn't remember there being a town called Columbus between D.C. and Portland, Maine, but ofc there are lots of Columbuses and he's so engrossed in his book (Kerouac's "On the Road") that he thinks no more about it and keeps his nose buried in his paperback while scarfing his hamburger and then gets back on the bus and continues reading as it speeds him on towards Indianapolis.

@riley@toot.cat @Guillotine_Jones@beige.party @overholt@glammr.us Actually, that language pretty much comes from dicta in the federal court decision allowing one AI company to settle copyright infringement claims for $1.6 billion. That decision said that the only way around such claims is to destroy the physical book after extracting the information, because then you're not stealing, you're transforming. An absolutely unintended consequence on the court's part, but the AI companies all are running with it.

@overholt@glammr.us Also from the article: "Anthropic described the project as 'our effort to disruptively scan all the world’s books' in an internal memo, which noted 'we do not want it to be known that we are pursuing this project'."

Watch recommendation: the 2026 documentary "Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story." https://www.imdb.com/title/tt41702551/ A young woman starts a late-night 1970s NYC public-access show, and becomes an important advocate for gay rights, HIV education, free speech, and ultimately for sex-positive aging. Unexpectedly enjoyable and informative.

I'm so old, I remember being taught that the United States government allocated powers evenly among three separate branches so that no one official would have too much power. Also, they didn't know back then about continental drift. Trump 50% tariffs target Canadian autos, alcohol and cheese | AP News https://apnews.com/article/trump-canada-50-tariff-autos-alcohol-cheese-ca268ef24992b16695954c4c2e5eae6a

In case any English-only USians want to watch today's #WorldCup final without subscribing to Fox Sports, the game is showing in Spanish on Telemundo and streaming audio for free on iHeartRadio. The only glitch I haven't been able to solve is that the two streams are out of sync by about 20 seconds, and I haven't figured out how to pause the audio stream successfully to make them match.

This morning when he woke up #IHopeJohnRoberts realized Kagan and Barrett had squealed on him because his phone had 79 messages from people expressing concern, and when he looked out his bedroom window to see what kind of day it was he noticed several black Explorers parked down the block with men in dark glasses inside them, and so he just threw some clothes, a picture of his family, and the emergency cash they kept in a fake soup can into a duffle bag, pulled the brim of his favorite Bohemian Grove ballcap low over his face, and slipped out his back door and across his neighbor's yard, beginning his summer vacation earlier than planned but with a jolt of adrenaline and uncertainty that actually made him feel happy for the first time in quite a while.

If you're having trouble deciding who to root for in the #England vs #Argentina #WorldCup semifinal, just remember to support the country that isn't fecklessly flirting with fascism instead of mounting a solid principled defense to it. See? Easy!

I don't want to make the rest of you feel bad but I have the best wife hard stop.

Fuck those six Democrats in particular. US House approves $1 trillion defense bill that would boost security ties with Israel | The Times of Israel https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/us-house-approves-1-trillion-defense-bill-that-would-boost-security-ties-with-israel/

R.I.P., Mr. Berry. @leahmcelrath.bsky.social

@lunarloony@dosgame.club @ifixcoinops@retro.social But it's easy to explain fedi to normies! Just compare it to email! "Imagine if Twitter or Facebook worked like email. If you only exchange messages via AOL, then if Elon Musk buys AOL it goes away and you're fucked. But no billionaire can buy 'email,' because it's just a protocol and there are thousands of servers. If one server goes away, email still works! Twitter and Bluesky and Facebook each use a single, corporate-owned server. But there are thousands of fedi servers, no one can buy all of them or commercialize them, if one turns Nazi all the others block it – and there's no ads and no algorithm. You see posts by the people you follow and what they share, in chron order. Simple!"

Hmmm. I just tried a new cocktail: the Rothko #1, basically a Negroni-and-tonic made with Old Tom gin. It's good! The tonic + less-botanical gin makes it less overpowering than a regular Negroni.

How much should it cost to reupholster a simple square ottoman?