And people think I’m a fool for living in New Orleans. All your water are belong to us.

Desus and Mero interviewing David Lettermn is one of the most perfect interviews ever. https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/video/xnvqVqcIjAlW6JjWbCWqSFiN_BB484EG/

I’m sure it’s on a free service but it’s one of the finest moments in TV history.

I mean, people change but if he’s right wing now, it’s going to take us a generation to clean their mess up.

I went to summer camp and high school with Theo Von Kurnatowski and he’s a good dude. I took Art III with him and he wrote poetry. He’s probably the same person in private now but all the incentives in the “talk radio” podcast industry are to be the next Joe Rogan.

There was a time when I didn’t know what those words meant either and I strongly encourage blissful ignorance over doing research only to come away more ignorant. Every time you don’t know what something on the Internet means, read a scientific paper or another few pages of Tolstoy or visit a museum. You’ll be a happier, healthier person.

Wait until they cut Medicaid. People are going to be gnawing on rechargeable AA batteries like it’s chewing tobacco. Maybe C or even D batteries if they need more OnlyFans subscriptions to make rent. It’s going to be like when N.O.R.E. found out Doja Cat was in racial chat rooms showing feet. People are going to find out their crazy but hot girlfriend ate whole car batteries for 8chan.

This is the America Ted Cruz wants. Vote for me and I will make sure Doja Cat gets the purest lithium.

You can get lithium from the pharmacy if you act crazy enough. Farm fresh lithium too, not some old phone battery lithium.

I’ll believe Joe Rogan and comedians like Theo Von (who I grew up with, incidentally) have a big audience but who the fuck listens to all those other people? Podcasts aren’t like the AM radio of yore where people listened to Rush Limbaugh and then just passively listened to whomever was next. Most conservatives I know who are into talk radio listen to sports stuff like Bobby Hebert bitching about the Saints to calm down after a loss.

ESPN radio parodied it so maybe my experience is different. https://youtu.be/lb-FL5j3FTU

Well, one of the board members is his brother and the rest are loyalists so probably not until a shareholder revolt.

He probably thinks Palantir can seamlessly replace the NSA and not have any of those pesky Constitutional rights to worry about. (Not that the NSA gives a shit about the Constitution but they at least have to pretend.)

I live in the U.S. Well, sort of — I live in New Orleans and we have a different culture. But even I’m buying Canadian when there’s an option. I always rooted for Montreal sports teams or, if none exists, Vancouver anyway. (My Vancouver connection is because Pavel Bure was a beast in NHL 95 on Super Nintendo and I always picked the Canucks.)

Now it’s 100%. I found myself rooting for Canada in the four nations hockey final. Might as well bring back the Expos. I lived in DC for awhile so my Expos to Nationals fandom transitioned seamlessly. Well, they’re firing half of DC’s workforce and are cutting $1bn from the city budget. Move the Nats back to Montreal. The people need summer Youppi now more than ever.

I’ll still root for the U.S. Women’s National Team in soccer but that’s about the only thing I’m patriotic about these days. Trump fucking with Canada (and Mexico and Europe) is a disgrace.

Australia may not retaliate openly but, as an American, I hope they do a bunch of petty shit like exhaustively search and delay every shipment from U.S. and say, “We’re looking for fentanyl. We heard it comes from Canada and goes through America.” If you’re obnoxious enough, it can be just like a tariff.

Drew Magary is normally a sportswriter. People can have multiple competencies and he dabbles in politics but if sportswriters are mad and don’t know what to do, it’s not necessarily their role to come up with solutions. He knows more about the roster of the Minnesota Vikings than policy. Just that he’s frustrated is significant.

I would actually totally look into a Ute if they sold them in America. Are they like a Subaru Brat?

I live in New Orleans and barely drive, and even then I have a PHEV and solar so I basically use gas in my daily life. But my parents live in the suburbs and I like gardening so when I really need a vehicle, I need like half a truck. Putting the seats down in a hatchback mostly works but an electric Subaru Brat would be ideal for my actual needs.

Most Hispanics aren’t first-generation or 2nd generation immigrants and nor are they a monolithic group. Ted Cruz is Hispanic. Cubans in Florida whose grandpa ran a “night club” under Bautista fled after taking that ass whooping Castro and friends gave them are Hispanic. Even some new immigrants were right wing already and fear “the left” will be Hugo Chavez clones.

Being American (US variety), I know Trump doesn’t make those distinctions and anyone willing to work for ICE will probably harass anyone who isn’t a white male of Northern European descent — though they’re apparently harassing Germans now too — but 34% is about as good as you’re going to get if you lump all the Spanish or Portuguese speaking countries of the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, and the several regions of South America together as if they’re one group. People from Argentina and the Dominican Republic are probably voting differently.

In my experience, when a couple moves in together (ideally on the way to getting married), their thiccness level slowly converges until they reach an equilibrium on being thicc in the britches.

Which can be good or bad. I’ve seen friends get healthier and gain unwanted weight. I’m just a neutral observer. Some people need more meat on their bones. Some people need to hike every weekend instead of drinking a 30 rack watching sports or playing on the computer or whatever. Ideally, a couple adopts each other’s best qualities.

Thanks. Those are the “different historical reasons” I was alluding to but I couldn’t remember many details. Thank you for adding them.

Hard pass. Maybe the hardest pass of anyone considering running. He was a shitty chief of staff and a shitty mayor of Chicago. One of Biden’s smartest moves was to make him ambassador to Japan to keep him about as far away from the White House as you can get.

You should read about Louisiana (and especially New Orleans, then the largest city in the South) and how ridiculous the whole thing was. Basically, New Orleans didn’t want to secede but the state governor rigged the vote. So, the city surrendered without a shot fired. No casualties on either side. It was even admitted back into the Union and had congressional representation.

But the Union sent down a general from Massachusetts to run the city. He did some good things (like upgrade the sewer system) but women, especially, didn’t like the occupation and Union troops so he issued an edict:

As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter when any female shall by word, gesture, or movement insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.

He basically called New Orleans women prostitutes. And it was a PR disaster so bad that even European newspapers condemned him in editorials. One British newspaper wrote:

If he had possessed any of the honourable feeling which is usually associated with a soldier’s profession, he would not have made war on women. If he had even been endowed with the ordinary magnanimity of a Red Indian, his revenge would have been satiated before now. It required not only the nature of a savage, but of a very mean and pitiful kind of savage, to be induced by indignation at a woman’s smile to inflict an imprisonment so degrading in its character as that which seems to constitute his favourite punishment, and accompanied by privations so cruel… It is only a pity that so unadulterated a barbarian should have got hold of an Anglo-Saxon name.

He was popular with free black and poor white residents and not a bad administrator. But he was an incompetent general and politician so he was replaced and sent to take Texas, where he promptly lost.

New Orleans had no major economic or cultural ties to the Confederacy and lots of free black residents so it was just a bizarre occupation where women poured chamber pots on Union soldiers for treating them like whores and he got all pissed off. But he was also good at city management, I guess? I don’t know what to make of his legacy. He probably would have been an amazing mayor of a city in New England but instead got piss and shit thrown on him in a city that is still basically ungovernable.

In port cities that had lots of similar immigrants during the 1800’s, you can often tell what neighborhood someone is from by their accent. NYC (and other East Coast cities to a lesser extent) and New Orleans have some overlap because they happened to be the biggest port cities at the time and some neighborhoods had similar demographics. (Obviously, both cities have unique accents where demographics were different but there’s a lot of overlap due to that time period.)

The “neutral American accent” is supposedly originally from the Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa part of the Midwest, apparently by an accident of history. Walter Cronkite (a popular news reader as national TV broadcasts became ubiquitous) was from Kansas. Other national TV personalities happened to be from the area and it basically became the “TV” accent.

There were different historical reasons for it but it’s sort of like how “BBC English” became the accent people consider the default in England and Beijing Mandarin became “standard” Mandarin instead of Shanghainese. It’s just who was on TV/radio when media went national.