jwz

How long after a sovereign ruler of a repressive state murders one of your columnists should you make a deal with him? The answer, it turns out, is a little over six years.

In October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a writer for the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, was killed and dismembered with the approval of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (better known as MBS) after Khashoggi entered a Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get paperwork for his upcoming marriage. His body has never been found. On May 13th, Bezos' Amazon announced it would work with Humain, MBS' AI company, to build an "AI Zone" in Saudi Arabia -- and the two companies will spend more than $5 billion in the process. [...]

Look, I don't expect ethics out of Altman or any of his ilk. But for basic reasons of maintaining employee morale, I would hesitate to invest in a state that literally murdered one of my contractors. And didn't merely murder him -- but dismembered and then disappeared him. [...]

It's all so spineless. I mean, we already know that MBS may have hacked Bezos' phone, but I guess that's water under the bridge. Or maybe not. Maybe MBS got something real good in that hack. Impossible to say whether this is motivated by kompromat or greed, I suppose. But whatever the motive, we know one thing: it takes five years for Bezos to go from posting his photo op with the headstone of a murdered reporter to making billion-dollar deals with his killer.

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CBP Seizes Shipment of T-Shirts Featuring Swarm of Bees Attacking a Cop:

Customs and Border Protection seized a shipment of t-shirts from a streetwear brand that sells an "Eliminate ICE" t-shirt and multiple shirts critical of police and capitalism. Among the shirts seized was a design that features a swarm of bees attacking a police officer. Emails seen by 404 Media indicate that the shirts are going to be shipped back to China or will be "destroyed."

Last we checked in with Cola Corporation, they were getting threatened with bogus copyright threats from the Los Angeles Police Department over their "FUCK THE LAPD" shirts. The Streisand Effect being what it is, the attention from that naturally led the store to sell out much of its stock. The cops, broadly speaking, appear to be messing with Cola again. [...]

Cola said that he is making more t-shirts with the same design and is now selling for preorder as "the confiscated collection."

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I am very disappointed to report that there does not appear to be a torrent of House of Wax (1953) in the original anaglyph 3D format (red-blue glasses), the presentation that its one-eyed director intended.

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"Now it can be told: THE MADMAN OF MARS!"

Fun fact, Psychiatric Dr. Fredric Wertham, in his book Seduction of the Innocent, reported that Space Western was a favorite comic book of a juvenile delinquent arsonist that was treated at his clinic.

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SACRAMENTO, CA:

Promising his podcast listeners an engaging and enlightening conversation, California Gov. Gavin Newsom reportedly sat down Tuesday with a serial killer who targets the homeless population. "So what do you think Democrats can learn from somebody who, like you, targets the most vulnerable among us?" said Newsom, who acknowledged that while he and the murderer might not see eye to eye on the best way to eliminate the homeless, he was grateful for the opportunity to exchange ideas and perspectives. "You hate the homeless, I hate the homeless. People have been very hard on you, but I think at the end of the day, we all really just want the same thing. So, do you wear their skin?" At press time, podcast listeners were praising the killer for his civility.

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Hey, you know those giant glass stairs in the Apple Store? So sleek, so Apple...

So cracked. Every one of them.

They should have put a screen protector on these. I don't think AppleCare is gonna cover this.

Broke-Ass Stuart made a nice little video about Death Guild. Which is, incidentally, tonight and every Monday since 1993. Come on down! Your sulking corner awaits.

(You might not ever have known about this video, since it existed only on Instagram and isn't even linked to from his own web site, because that's how social media works now. I weep for the future.)

Time for a repost of this, I suppose.

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SFPD violated the rules on overtime, repeatedly -- but they still got their money:

The San Francisco Police Department decided on its own to violate the rules limiting public employee overtime, the Board of Supes learned Tuesday. [...]

At that hearing, some of the supes questioned why SFPD was allowing officers to work as private rent-a-cops, on OT pay, for a lot more than the 500 annual hours that the city currents sets as the limit on extra work.

SFPD also defied a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Human Resources that barred cops who had called in sick more than twice in six months to work in the private market, under the so-called 10B program. [...]

Walton said that he's been on the board for seven budget cycles, and every year, the cops have been unable to property estimate their overtime and budget for it. I might be less charitable; one could argue that SFPD doesn't put all its projected OT in the budget because the department brass assume that the supes will just approve supplemental appropriations later. As they have, for seven years.

"We'll never have change if we keep giving them a blank check," Walton said. "We hold everyone accountable except this department. [...]

Then support it they did, 9-2, with only Walton and Fielder in opposition.

SFPD says its officers working as security guards are 'out in the community.' But mostly, they're downtown:

Businesses on Market Street, like Salesforce and Twitter, for instance, were frequent customers, as were Union Square stores like Macy's and Victoria's Secret. Officers were also spread out to a handful of retail spots elsewhere in the city, chiefly Walgreens, Target and Safeway.

Walgreens, in fact, was by far the largest user of private security hours from police officers between 2018 and 2023, and many of the blips that appear away from the downtown core are Walgreens stores. (The large bubble in Golden Gate Park? The Outside Lands music festival.) [...]

Officers working private security are considered on-duty and can make arrests. They must wear police uniforms and their badge, and carry department-issued firearms. And they make time-and-a-half: At an officer's starting salary, that's $83.49 an hour. By the time an officer is a sergeant, it's $123.54 an hour, and for a lieutenant, it's $141.06. [...]

Officers might prefer to work private security to shifts in their district stations. The fact that they can easily call out sick and, that very same day, work a private security gig, a practice that was documented extensively in a city audit last year, is a major problem, he said. [...] The program, Walton added, "is a big win for corporations, for private businesses, for overtime abuses, and not for the entire city."

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Debian 12.9:

# date Tue 6 May 19:05:57 PDT 2025 # sudo systemctl stop systemd-timesyncd.service # sudo date -s '2232-04-18 16:47:16' date: cannot set date: Invalid argument Wed 18 Apr 16:47:16 PDT 2232 Exit 1 # date Tue 6 May 19:06:14 PDT 2025 # sudo date -s '2232-04-18 16:47:15' Wed 18 Apr 16:47:15 PDT 2232 # sleep 30 ; date Wed 18 Apr 16:47:45 PDT 2232

The cutoff is 0x1ED5D7403.

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