Your Move

Hey Friends,

Good morning to everyone, including these two guys. They wear Coke bottle-horn-rimmed glasses and don't use haircare products, but don't discount these passion models. These baby blue shirts will do better with the ladies than you might think.

The two presumed chess club members at Columbia University were among several students protesting a protest at Hamilton Hall.

"This is a peaceful protest against your peaceful protest," one of them said after not busting out any windows. A social warrior and honorary Hamas member argued kindly against him, saying something along the lines of, "Don't you like civilians and agree that Israel should not exist?"

The two politely explained, using chess terms, that the protest in question is like when you move your rook because you like that it can move across as many squares as you want. Then you start squashing pawns to feel mighty, even though it doesn't help you achieve your goal and might even counteract other goals in the process.

More on that in a minute...

Let's get to The News.

Hot Takes

Week 18 of 2024

Occupy Study Hall

Protests and, in some cases, encampments, starting with Columbia University, have taken place on at least 37 university campuses, and locations are popping up faster than vape shops. The trend reminds us that kids are not good at negotiating, but they do perfectly fine at reminding you of all the problems.

Many are missing school right when they need it most. But it's fine because they have TikTok for at least the next year to round out what they've missed, provided China approves the content.

This reminds me that TikTok is on the way to being banned, thanks to a bill passed last week to sequester the platform. It will otherwise be sold to an American company with access to billions of dollars and a desire to squish American brains and extract every bit of value out of them. According to studies, in 2007, when liking and retweeting were invented, it irreversibly altered the human psyche, and in 2010, when the front-facing camera was introduced into the iPhone, the internet went from a flood of static pages built by mouthbreathers with dandruff to a place where children push their anxiety metrics through the roof. The results are spikes in suicide, depression, and, in this case, anxiety so high they have to take it to the doors of their University to demand they stop wars they have no role in. You see, it's all connected. (more)

Breaking: Baby Thrown Out With Bath Water.

Sometimes, it takes 160 years to realize you made a mistake, and Arizona can attest to it this week. The state legislature repealed an abortion law put in place in 1864 when Joe Biden was only a child, and Donald Trump's biological matter was still in a Petri dish. Since the law was revived with the overturning of Rowe V Wade, Kari Lake has changed her mind on the issue more times than she has had Botox injections. The bill was repealed on a 16 to 14 vote, with two Republicans joining Democrats to remove the law. (more)

Hamas Ask You a Question

The few, the proud are standing up for what they believe is right, which is that under no circumstances will they do anything to protect the civilians under their care if it means they have to protect a Jew as well. After negotiations stalled, a spokesperson for Hamas said this week that a ceasefire proposal that would require 33 Israeli hostages to be freed in exchange for a way more Palestinians is a non-starter. What we hear from our reporting is that pin cushions no longer have a monopoly on welcoming projectiles to be plunged into them with abandon because the Hamas regime is trying to outdo the category at home in Gaza. Negotiations continue in the meantime, but both sides remain as far apart as the river and the sea itself. (more)

Greene New Deale

Marjorie Taylor is ready to improve the environment – in her own party, by forcing a vote to remove her party's speaker next week. The vote is expected to fail, not just because it is a little league move, but because even Democrats have suggested they would block the removal of Republican Mike Johnson. The Georgia congresswoman is known for her aggression, from her days flipping tires in a CrossFit gym to being elected to Congress, where she attempted to do the same in order to avoid cognitive initiatives. (more)

Losing Interest

The biggest news of the week is obviously that interest rates stayed the same, and the Fed "signaled" that they were not going to do anything else. Funny, I usually don't need to signal that I'm not going to do something, as I find sitting on my a## is signal enough. But while rates may not change now, they could come back around to the idea later this year if inflation continues to cool.

The increased rates impact most Americans in the purchase of a home, where 30-year fixed mortgage rates sit at around 7%, with median housing prices across the nation at $412,000. This means in today's English that we're still living in a paper doll world because 'living ain't easy but lovin's twice as tough, so come back baby when you grow up' or in layman's terms, 'these rates are making me thirsty,' but to finally translate into actual clear English, buying a home is expensive for regular people, and that, as painful as it is, is why to rates need to be high. (more)

That's it for this week.

Remember: "Snap into a The Lorem Ipsum!" Don't be too macho to share a snap or two with a friend.

Have a great weekend!