Author Archives: cleek

John Boehner Is Out Of Fucks To Give

This excerpt from his new book is pretty great.

In the 2010 midterm election, voters from all over the place gave President Obama what he himself called “a shellacking.” And oh boy, was it ever. You could be a total moron and get elected just by having an R next to your name—and that year, by the way, we did pick up a fair number in that category.

Retaking control of the House of Representatives put me in line to be the next Speaker of the House over the largest freshman Republican class in history: 87 newly elected members of the GOP. Since I was presiding over a large group of people who’d never sat in Congress, I felt I owed them a little tutorial on governing. I had to explain how to actually get things done. A lot of that went straight through the ears of most of them, especially the ones who didn’t have brains that got in the way. Incrementalism? Compromise? That wasn’t their thing. A lot of them wanted to blow up Washington. That’s why they thought they were elected.

Some of them, well, you could tell they weren’t paying attention because they were just thinking of how to fundraise off of outrage or how they could get on Hannity that night. Ronald Reagan used to say something to the effect that if I get 80 or 90 percent of what I want, that’s a win. These guys wanted 100 percent every time. In fact, I don’t think that would satisfy them, because they didn’t really want legislative victories. They wanted wedge issues and conspiracies and crusades.

The Great Bitter Lake Association

The Last Time the Suez Canal Was Blocked a Utopian Communist Micronation Was Formed at Sea

The last time ships got stuck in the Suez Canal, they were there for eight years. From 1967 to 1975, in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, 14 ships were stranded in the Great Bitter Lake, a salt lake connected to the canal. Unable to leave, the crews, dubbed the "Yellow Fleet" because of the desert sand that eventually covered them, developed their own society at sea. This society developed its own postal service and stamps, and held a version of the Olympics in 1968.
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The world was less connected in 1967 than it is today. The ships had access to radios and were able to call home, but Egyptian authorities eventually asked them to stop. As the crisis wore on, the Canadian government negotiated the exchange of crews from the ships. Supplies came in from Egypt, some sailors went home and others stayed on, but Egypt would not allow the ships to leave the canal.

Over the next eight years, a weird system developed. The companies that owned the ships were allowed to cycle crews through the ships, maintaining skeleton crews to keep them afloat, but weren’t allowed to sail the ships out of the canal. As time passed, the ships communicated with each other and grew into a community. They formed the Great Bitter Lake Association to administer to the needs of the crew.

Flyin

A piece of the Wright brothers’ first airplane is on Mars

NASA’s experimental Martian helicopter holds a small swatch of fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer, the space agency revealed Tuesday. The helicopter, named Ingenuity, hitched a ride to the red planet with the Perseverance rover, arriving last month.

Ingenuity will attempt the first powered, controlled flight on another planet no sooner than April 8. It will mark a "Wright brothers' moment," noted Bobby Braun, director for planetary science at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The Carillon Historical Park in DaytonOhio the Wrights' hometown, donated the postage-size piece of muslin from the plane's bottom left wing, at NASA's request.

The swatch made the 300 million-mile journey to Mars with the blessing of the Wright brothers' great-grandniece and great-grandnephew, said park curator Steve Lucht.

Lamp Post

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Originally Titled "Bong 33", because the default title for a new song on the Boss BR600 is "SONG ##", where "##" is simply an increasing number - so this was "Song 33" when I initialized it - and I just changed the S to a B, because it's a pain in the ass to change each letter one at a time by spinning the little jog wheel. And so it was called "Bong 33" for the last 12 years. Now it's "Lamp Post"

Except for my mumbling about Italian fascists, all the sounds are guitar into the BR600.