Derek Balling

The sound of Loctite coming loose - combined with the amount of force it takes to make that happen - is positively scary. I was 100% convinced I’d broken something until the screw just started happily unwinding. 😀

www.axios.com/2026/06/01/t...

Finally got to listen to the 1975 Pink Floyd "Live From the LA Sports Arena" bootleg today and just ... wow. I know that this bootleg got a major remastering makeover, but still... Mike the Mic's source material was amazing. Blown away!

I honestly can't remember the last time my DoorDash or Instacart delivery person actually matched the photo/name on the app. I can't tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing, to be honest.

Claude gets it.... What the fuck is wrong with Amazon? Why is the finale of "The Boys" delayed?

Oh, Instacart... you truly do believe that, don't you? You sweet summer child...

Fun fact: if you’re searching for a job right now and have a long unemployment gap on your resume, there’s nobody at Spirit Airlines who can say that you didn’t work there during that period. What role did you have? That’s up to you.

Too many people are claiming that the reaction to Artemis vs SpaceX launches is about some noble “humanity working together” thing or “NASA vs private”. No. It’s about boring, routine low earth orbit vs the goddamned moon. If SpaceX ran Artemis you’d see the exact same response from people.

After the White House complained about an unflattering photo of Karoline Leavitt, it was removed from AFP and Getty’s systems. This is the photo in question. Please do not repost it. 👇

Please stop calling them “immigration holding centers” or “immigration prisons”. The proper term is “concentration camps”.

When Chuck Norris goes to Heaven, Saint Peter asks HIM where he wants to go.

Checking in for my doctor's appointment, they asked me what language I spoke. Tempted to make them send over an expert in reading Chaucer.

@housedemocrats.bsky.social Just an FYI: I have donated to one or two specific candidates, in races near and dear to me. If anyone other than those people I've donated to spams my phone (as y'all have been -- tirelessly) I will delete, and - worse - "mark as spam". Consent matters.

Irony: Pretti dying as an ICE observer has underscored the _importance_ of ICE observers. Without the dozens of camera angles we now have on that tragedy, the official [bullshit] narrative might've been able to hold up. But thanks to other observers, the truth was obvious.

Spotted in the Liberal Gun Owners subreddit…

Just saying…. In the 18th Century, a bunch of under-equipped civilians went to war with the greatest military power on earth for a whole lot less than what the Federal Government is doing to its subjects now.

I’ve been working on this ChatGPT model for the past several months, asking it to calculate the odds of being 1930s Germany, or an “illiberal middle ground”, or “constitutional guard rails hold up and course-correct”. Current likelihood: 34%, 66%, 0%

The proper response to “show me your proof of citizenship” is “fuck all the way off”. That level of defiance against tyrannical orders should be proof enough of your being a natural born citizen.

Really need to watch Inglourious Basterds again.

Saw that Emo Phillips is back out on tour. Look, Emo was never really _my_ thing, but I'm so ridiculously happy that there's enough people out there that he IS their thing that he's still able to book tours. Great to see a quirky oddball comic playing the long game like that.

Orphaned Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Mayor Jacob Frey: “To ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”

An irony long lamented by the singer: Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman says POTUS doesn't realize he's "the person who I’m screaming about in the song on all three counts" consequence.net/2025/08/john...

Colombia requested an emergency session of the UN Security Council, which will inevitably show how useless the UN structural design is, when the US vetoes any action against the US for the US's international criming.

If Denmark doesn't look at Venezuela as a warning sign and immediately fully deploy defense forces on Greenland, then they are naive fools.

Well, sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit. :-( RIP.

@theonion.com how were y'all managing to create AI Slop in 2009? Where're this girl's legs at, my dudes?

Whoever programmed Apple Music is a Bad Bad Person. “Play Christmas Music” has Whamageddon in heavy rotation (heard it three times in an hour) That’s not AI…. That’s an intentional hateful act.

Fun fact: Any National Guard soldier who obeys an order to deploy in a US city is - prima facie - obeying an illegal order. SCOTUS has ruled, and there is no higher authority on the matter of that illegality.

“What’s that?” “An atom bomb.” IYKYK

All of these bootlegged copies of the 60 Minutes segment flooding my feed (saying, ‘Watch it quick! Before it disappears!’) makes me feel like I’m in the Soviet Union and just got some black market foreign newspaper I need to hide under a floorboard in my house. This is where America is now

My town is enacting a ban on gas-fuel leafblowers in favor of electric. OK, fine. Today my gutter cleaning people came by and they used their blowers to melt the frozen-ice-leaves in the gutter. That won't be possible next winter because the electric ones don't actively heat the air.

I want to start a charitable organization whose purpose is (1) obtain cases of books that are "banned" from public libraries, and then (2) sit in front of those libraries in vans giving the books away for free to whoever wants them. Anything the powers that be DON'T want you to read, you should.

I don’t know which will be more of a nutpunch - losing Rob Reiner or having to hear Herr Orange shit-talk him after he finds out he’s passed.

Watching the trailer for "Knight of the Seven Kingdoms", all I can think is "didn't Heath Ledger do this role already in 'A Knight's Tale'?" Why are we rebooting perfection.

Fuck yeah! Glad to see this finally found a home!

I love-hate that @wsj.com has updated their graphics library to reflect the current state of the White House.

My wife did a thang!

LOL, inside the White House today. Dude REALLY got red pilled this time!

Just the president of the United States rationalizing that a Washington Post reporter was basically asking to be murdered and cut to pieces with a bone saw because of his reporting. As he sits next to the thug who ordered it.

If I have the option to place bets on whether or not Clay Higgins (or one of his friends) is in the Epstein Files, I'd take that bet.