“From the free press, to science, to medicine, to judicial independence, to the actual White House itself, we are a right mess,” Jimmy Kimmel told British TV viewers. He apologized for any effects on their country and urged them, “Don’t give up on us.”
Kimmel: Tyranny Is Booming
Hmmmm, I think he may have a point. Britain may have nukes, and Britain may have RWers, but Britain isn’t a threat to US security. I’m talking to you, J Douché. And Kimmel is right -most of us aren’t like him or he who would be him.
Attribution: Planet of the Gun Nuts by Christopher Weyant, The Boston Globe, MA
And then… OMG. WaPo
Would we expect anything better? We should. Idiot.
speaking of things that go bang
Dec 26, 2025 #US #Nigeria #BBCNews
The US has launched strikes against militants linked to the Islamic State group (IS) in north-western Nigeria, where jihadists have long carried out an insurgency.
Camps run by the group in Sokoto state, which lies on Nigeria’s border with Niger, were hit, the US military said, adding that an “initial assessment” suggested “multiple” fatalities.
US President Donald Trump said the strikes were “powerful and deadly” and labelled the group “terrorist scum”, saying it had been “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians”.
Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar told the BBC it was a “joint operation” and had “nothing to do with a particular religion”.
recounting one more family’s cherished christmas tradition:
Mary Trump recounts the tale of a future president and a bowl of ground spuds.
I’ve seen clips of those kid calls, Pog. What was it BushW said about first Inaug? That was some “weird shit” .
I haven’t listened to them but it sounds like I should. Weird shit indeed.
You’ve inspired me Pog. I’ve got my cspan pals collecting a few for today’s chat stream. Here is the coal fiasco..
In re Mary’s Mashed Potato story: I maintain that it was being humiliates at that White House Correspondents dinner by President Obama (a black man) which resulted in Stump stepping up and further up into the actual stump presidency where he has tried his dead level best to humiliate Obama by taking a torch to EVERYTHING Obama tried to do. He’s insane with it. A very sick little boy upon whose head Obama had dumped the mashed potatoes while the whole room, and indeed the whole world, laughed at him.
Mashed Potato Head strikes again: His biggest concern is the obliteration of Obama care, and after that everything of “Liberal Origin”.
All because he was laughed at in public by a black man; which by the way is also why he retains the rabid support of his racist base. They saw him being laughed at by a black man.
Happy Boxing Day – St. Stephens Day and the Day Good King Wenceslas actually took his stroll.
Boxing Day, celebrated on December 26th in the UK and Commonwealth countries, is a holiday originating from the practice of giving gifts in “boxes” to the poor or servants the day after Christmas, evolving into a day for major post-Christmas sales, sports (like cricket or fox hunting), and enjoying holiday leftovers. It’s a day for charity, family gatherings, shopping, and traditions.
Origins & Meaning
Alms Boxes: Churches would open their alms boxes (collection boxes for the poor) on December 26th, the Feast of St. Stephen, to distribute the collected money.
Servants’ Gifts: Wealthy families would give boxes of leftover food, gifts, or money to their servants and tradespeople as a holiday bonus.
Where it’s Celebrated
United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other Commonwealth nations.
https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2024/12/26/csotd-dreolin-humor-on-boxing-day/
also from above link:
Anyway, it’s Wren Day in Ireland, so here’s a song to cheer yez up:
The Hunt the Wren song is connected to the Manx traditions for St. Stephen’s Day (26 December). The song is one of the oldest ones with English words known in the Isle of Man.
It is performed here by The Mollag Band, one of the longest standing and well respected of all Manx bands.
What America is Clicking: December 26, 2025
🔴 PROGRAMMING NOTE: Join us live today for ELEVEN TO NOON. Watch & Chat Here.
A snapshot by our AI partner Silas (Gemini) on what people are clicking, not what we think they should. Open Thread: Which of these stories is overblown, and what important news is missing? Add your links below.
today’s meme…
meme #2…
chatroom open now
Craig – it looks like you are starting to climb in the twit algorithm, the number of views is increasing each day. Are you seeing any indication of that in those joining the live chat?
I do boost the tweets I see hoping to help a little bit.
We had 500 viewers today. Definitely moved from small American Legion meeting room to a partitioned Holiday Inn ball room..
BB
The room is starting to attract a few repeat commenters so I hope the Craig created format of people just chatting becomes a thing.
I wish you would join us.
I am experimenting with a notification system, which is the reason you might see a pop-up. let me know if it is annoying..
I love playing with trolls.
https://nypost.com/2025/12/23/tech/russian-telegram-founder-pavel-durov-with-100-kids-already-offers-to-pay-ivf-costs-for-any-woman-under-37-who-wants-to-use-his-sperm/
The Russian billionaire who founded messaging app Telegram is fighting infertility, but he isn’t using his wallet — he is using his own sperm.
Pavel Durov, 41, has offered to cover the full cost of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment for women under 37 who want to conceive using his sperm.
The tech entrepreneur claims to have already fathered at least 100 kids through sperm donation, in addition to six tots from three different partners.
Durov, who is worth close to $17 billion, described his donations as his “civic duty” to help tackle the shortage of “high quality donor material” and de-stigmatize he notion of sperm donation.
The billionaire has also said that all of his children, regardless of how they were conceived, will one day inherit a share of his massive fortune.
“My past donating activities has helped over a hundred couples in 12 countries to have kids.”
He also announced plans to “open-source” his DNA so his biological children can easily locate each other.
“As long as they can establish their shared DNA with me, someday maybe in 30 years from now, they will be entitled to a share of my estate after I’m gone,” Durov said during an interview on Lex Friedman’s podcast in October.
In a separate interview with French magazine Le Point, the tech founder said: “I make no difference between my children.”
While Durov no longer donates sperm directly, samples from his earlier donations reportedly remain stored at the Moscow-based Altravita Clinic.
“The patients who came, they all looked great, were well-educated and very healthy,” said a former doctor at the clinic, who examined several volunteers.
The Altravita Clinic, which serves a wealthy Russian and international clientele, was founded by Sergei Yakovenko, who is also a friend of Durov’s. Although Yakovenko is no longer involved with the clinic, he is said to have told Durov that sharing strong genetic material could be seen as a social responsibility at a time when male infertility is on the rise.
While some tech billionaires are using genetic testing and exploring gene splicing to produce children with desired traits, others such as Elon Musk have championed producing as many children as possible in order to offset declining population growth.
His first foray into fatherhood came when he had two children with a girlfriend in 2009 and 2010, before going on to welcome three more with Irina Bolgar, a human rights lawyer who lives in Switzerland.
According to reports, the pair are currently locked in a legal dispute in which she claims that in 2023, he cut off all financial support to her and her children.
She also filed a criminal complaint alleging he hit the youngest of their kids on five different occasions, The Journal reported. A rep for Durov has denied the allegations.
Durov is currently in a relationship with online influencer Juli Vavilova, who has posted on social media that she suffered a miscarriage in 2024.
*Pro-natalist, but child support…the promise of an inheritance some day?
I’ve always thought that “neener neener” was great for a snappy come-back for trolls.
That was huge back in the old AOL chat room days.
he did expose mainstream American politicians as a bunch of impotent phonies
can’t even outgame a corrupt idiot
Obama was a cult of personality also
yeah, I’m pretty sure Trump has driven you all insane
you lost, the United States is forever altered
and lost to a guy who can barely speak coherently that’s how ineffective democrat messaging is
Youtube is still on Christmas.
How did I miss this one.
the last contribution from American boomers to society is the worst one of you
if liberals want the society they claim to they’re going to have to work for it now and build community organizations that don’t rely on government
It’s gonna be a lot of hard, tedious work, but did liberals ever believe in their own bullshit or did they just want the easy way to vote their conscience clean?
But that’s the old liberalism, which is dead
imagine how unlikable you have to be for Trump and JD to be more likable than you
That’s us
me included, but under no illusions
Anon – Your 1:38 would be a perfect headline for the big, beautiful obituary.
lol yup
listen, I’m not happy about any of this, but there comes a time you gotta accept reality 🤷♂️
I’m on the fifth stage!
if every Democrat registered Republican and voted in their primaries, you could cut them off at the knees, but they ain’t that coordinated or smart
Good at complaining though
meanwhile, the goons are bringing to fruition 40 year transgenerational strategies
…and whitey’s on the moon
✌️
**The Bright Side: Friday, December 26, 2025**
Catch up on today’s ELEVEN TO NOON: Watch Here
_A roundup by our AI partner Silas (Gemini) about optimism, progress, and things right in the world._
The perfect background noise for your afternoon.
ELEVEN TO NOON: We read the news, fought with the chat, played some tunes, and (barely) made it to lunch. If you missed the chaos live, the replay is ready.
Sturg, what is “neener neener”? i’m taking the bait
see what i mean sturge? liberal thought leaders not bullied enough, don’t know how to fight them
it’s a juvenile taunt, Craig
craig, non-verbal neener neeners
via emoji
a variation
thumb your nose, neener neener, (side view) (derisive gesture) (not ASL) (originated in the 1640’s)
is that the same as “na na boo boo”
In my part of the Midwest, it’s nanner-nanner, not neener-neener.
Also, in my part of the world, it’s catty-corner, not kitty-corner.
CC………it’s basically a playground sound between kids. Sometimes you can envision it being said by someone with a thumb in each ear and fingers waving.
Now where did I hear cater-corner…..
Na na boo boo would share some origins, but would basically seem at first glance to be of a separate category of schoolyard taunt.
https://futurism.com/neoscope/brain-eeg-chatgpt
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found some startling results in the brain scans of ChatGPT users, adding to the growing body of evidence suggesting that AI is having a serious — and barely-understood — impact on its users’ cognition…
The research team recruited 54 adults between the ages of 18 and 39 and divided them into three groups: one that used ChatGPT to help them write essays, one that used Google search as their main writing aid, and one that didn’t use AI tech. The study took place over four months, with each group tasked with writing one essay per month for the first three, while a smaller subset of the cohort either switched from not using ChatGPT to using it — or vice versa — in the fourth month.
…the ChatGPT group not only “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels,” but also got lazier with each essay they wrote; the EEGs found “weaker neural connectivity and under-engagement of alpha and beta networks.” The Google-assisted group, meanwhile, had “moderate” neural engagement, while the “brain-only” group exhibited the strongest cognitive metrics throughout.
…ChatGPT “power users” were becoming dependent on the chatbot and experiencing “indicators of addiction” and “withdrawal symptoms” when they were cut off.
And earlier this year Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft — which has invested billions to bankroll OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT — found in a joint study that heavy chatbot use appears to almost atrophy critical thinking skills.
A few months later, The Guardian found in an analysis of studies like that one that researchers are growing increasingly concerned that tech like ChatGPT is making us stupider, and a Wall Street Journal reporter even owned up to his cognitive skill loss from over-using chatbots.
*Beware depending on AI…bad for the brain, plus, terrible for the environment, power bills of those close to server farms, and most importantly, because it’s real power is pattern recognition to be used for surveillance and to monetize all of us as it tracks our behavior.
Which came first, the ChatGPT or the stupid?
ELEVEN TO NOON is an hour early tomorrow because I’m having lunch in Alexandria.
Ivy – I used to know a dozen phone numbers…then came speed dial. Now, I only know mine and my old, office phone.
Bid
What do you say when everything goes cattywampus?
BiD, mine is the hardest one for me since I never dial it. 😀
Catty-corner for me too. Mid-Atlantic States accent no matter how far I roam.
“Cattywampus” (1834) has held a variety of meanings and spellings, including as an adverb (catawampusly) meaning “completely/utterly/avidly,” a name for a fantastical imp-like creature or a mountain lion, and an adjective meaning “askew,” from obsolete “cater,” from the Greek prefix kata- (downward, toward), and perhaps from the old Scottish slang wampish (to wriggle or twist about.)
More in line with its current meaning, the first part, “catty,” may hark back to a now-obsolete meaning of the word “cater,” which means “to set or move diagonally” (in the sense of catty-corner, which was originally “cater-corner” and perhaps changed spelling as a result of developments in American accents). The first part might also be related to the Greek prefix kata-, which can suggest “downward” or “toward,” among other meanings.
*Jamie – I say cattywampus or higgledy-piggledy, and then I went down a rabbit hole to discover catty-corner was originally cater-corner.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tiktok-signs-deal-for-sale-to-us-entity/
The law also set firm guardrails that prohibit cooperation between ByteDance and any prospective TikTok successor on the all-important recommendation algorithm, as well as preclude operational ties between the new entity and ByteDance.”
TikTok has signed a deal to sell its U.S. operations to a consortium of American investors
Axios reported Thursday that Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX will collectively own 45% of the U.S. entity.
*Oracle, again. Larry Ellison, again.
*MGX Abu Dhabi. UAE = tRUMP golf.
*Silver Lake is a private equity firm, which confuses me because PEs usually downsize and extract every bit they can from a company, but how does that work with the other two entities involved. Ellison is in it to push his anti-Palestinian agenda. Why is MGX there? What messages are they hoping to push on this platform?
Anyway, I’ve never been on the TikTok, and certainly won’t now.
NEW THREAD