Madurai: Eighteen hours, eight bean varieties and 86 hard working persons. That is all what went into the making of a jumbo 1,121.6 kg bean salad.

I was occasionally certain that this guy was doing a bit. I guess not? Unless . . .

President Trump has nominated a fiery right-wing influencer known for his machismo and professed love for steaks and Hooters to be the ambassador to Malaysia.

...

Online, Mr. Adams has gleefully indulged in crass jokes and other forms of internet trolling. He tweets frequently about stereotypical symbols of masculinity, like eating steak and frequenting Hooters — the chain restaurant famous for its half-naked waitresses. In February, he wrote that Hooters’ planned bankruptcy was caused by “Bidenflation, combined with the woke un-Americanism of the Democrats.”

He continued, “I personally volunteer myself to lead a Presidential Taskforce For The Preservation of Hooters.”

A collection of /c/the_dunk_tank posts about this weirdo, featuring his thoughts on

The Buzz Lightyear movie

Oat milk

Non-sexy M&Ms

The Village People

In which most of us were convinced that this was a bit account.

The short-lived provision, which will officially be repealed on August 28, required Missouri employers to provide workers with an hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours of work. Businesses with 15 or more employees were required to provide up to 56 hours of earned paid sick time per year, and businesses with fewer than 15 employees were required to provide at least 40 hours of paid sick time.

...

Throughout the process of pushing H.B. 567 through the Legislature, Missouri Republicans openly voiced contempt for voters who supported the paid sick leave and minimum wage initiative. One GOP lawmaker, state Rep. Mitch Boggs, said, “Of course the people voted for it.”

“It’d be like asking your teenager if he wanted a checkbook,” said Boggs.

Edit: Fixed link.

“I feel like last night’s NYC election result is like a spiritual Kristallnacht. It proved Jew hatred is now OK,” posted Jill Kargman, a Jewish writer and actress.

...

“The Jewish community has seen time and again how violent rhetoric has transformed into actual violence, so for us it’s just deeply unsettling to have a mayoral candidate who condones and uses that language,” said Rabbi Diana Fersko, senior rabbi at the Village Temple, a Reform congregation in Manhattan, and the author of a book on antisemitism. “My hope is that if Mamdani is elected, he will become more sensitive and more aware of the needs of a significant part of the population that he is going to be leading.”

Is there anyone who's written a book on antisemitism who knows what antisemitism is?

I expect Mamdani is significantly more likely than his critics to have condemned the largest mass arrest of Jews since the Holocaust, something that actually made New York Jews unsafe. But his critics also have to bootlick the NYPD:

“It’s not that they expect to be run out, or they expect that the N.Y.P.D. won’t be there to protect them,” said Deborah E. Lipstadt, who was the Biden administration’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. “It’s just another hit in the jaw, that these very deep-seated concerns could have been so easily brushed off by so many people.”

Sounds like a subtle way to say "the pigs should threaten the mayor's family again he doesn't comply with Porky's wishes" to me.

https://theonion.com/shroom-for-improvement/

A sprawling 2,560-bed facility in the high desert town of California City (Kern County) is poised to become the largest migrant detention center in California under a new agreement between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and private prison contractor CoreCivic.

...

“Never in our 42-year company history have we had so much activity and demand for our services as we are seeing right now,” CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger said during an earnings call with shareholders last month, citing the company’s general business.

This guy's address is googleable.

California City Mayor Marquette Hawkins acknowledged potential economic benefits, including an estimated 550 new jobs.

“However, we understand that 40% of our residents are Latino,” Hawkins told the Californian. “We want to make sure there is fairness there. We talked about oversight and my office having the ability to do that.”

Incredible.

This is the latest in a series of acts of vandalism targeting Sunset Dunes since the 2-mile, 50-acre park opened in April, months after San Franciscans created it by voting to close a section of the Great Highway to cars. The measure has been highly controversial, and the supervisor who championed it, Joel Engardio, will face a recall election in September driven by groups opposed to the Upper Great Highway’s closure.

I guess it doesn't matter anyway

Under a review of a book that helpfully informs us that revolutions are authoritarian.

“Authoritarianism,” he writes, “is one of the most striking features” of revolutions. Napoleon was an archetype, followed by a grim parade of successors: “Stalin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot … Khomeini.”

...

“The principle of popular sovereignty could be disregarded in the name of the people,” Mr. Edelstein writes. “It was in the name of a future, improved democratic government by people Y that the present, inferior democratic government by people X must be suspended.” Ancient despots had promised order. Modern despots were empowered by the allure of so-called historical progress, to be achieved with terror and coercion. The hiss and thud of the guillotine, the gutters running with blood, the show trials and purges, the inevitable dictatorships of “virtue” or the “proletariat”: These were not failures, Mr. Edelstein suggests, but the necessary if exorbitant price of progress.

...

“The inevitable compromises of democratic governance,” he writes of our present moment, “do not sit easily with either progressives or traditionalists. Liberal democracy gets worn down by historical expectations or regrets.” This general ennui produces perilous effects: a taste for centralized power, distain [sic] for procedural justice, aggressive ideological purity, contempt for moderation. Whatever his intentions, Mr. Edelstein may find that his study of revolutions induces in readers an appreciation for the age-old, Polybian balance of the U.S. Constitution, even as history threatens to overtake it. We should certainly hope so.

https://theonion.com/gingham-style/

https://theonion.com/the-needled-and-the-damaged-son/

From yesterday, but if it was posted already I can't find it beneath all of the E~L~O~N gossip.

https://theonion.com/guise-and-dolls/