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Fly My Pretties, FLY!

These are the members of McConnell’s staff the criminal conspiracy who are keeping his status a secret from the American people.  Let’s fill up their email boxes and let them know how we feel about this.

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Perks Of Being 60 (Or More) Years Old

1. Kidnappers are not very interested in you.
2. In a hostage situation, you’re likely to be released first.
3. No one expects you to run—anywhere.
4. People call at 8 pm and ask, “Did I wake you?”
5. People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.
6. There’s nothing left to learn the hard way.
7. Things you buy now probably won’t wear out.
8. You can eat supper at 4:30 pm—and no one will question it.
9. You can live without sex, but not without your glasses.
10. Your supply of brain cells is finally down to a manageable level.

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Morning Tunes

Hott City – Ain’t Love Grand (1979)

This album—although never a commercial success (and as far as I know, the group’s only release)—holds a very special place in my heart. One of the few pieces of vinyl to survive my expensively-stupid great purge in the late 80s, I still have the original white vinyl copy that Steve Golden gave me all those many, many years ago.

Needless to say, it was quite a treat to stumble across the CD in 2024.

Don’t judge me.

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Just When You Think They Can’t Go Any Lower, They Pull Out A Backhoe

never underestimate the ability of the shitweasels in the Donnyverse to take current events and clownfuck them into something evil.

remember those four young service members who lost their lives last week, while fighting in Preznit Fuckwit’s pointless and illegal don’t-you-dare-call-it-a-war on Iran — the ones who Donny dishonored at their dignified transfer, by using them as props, and putting his own disgraceful words into their lifeless mouths?

well, apparently the Pentagon doesn’t want you to remember, because they just un-personned them.

read on, and prepare to get super fucking angry.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon reported on its casualties website that a total of 18 American service members had been killed during the war in Iran.

By Thursday, the Defense Department had lowered that number, reporting that 14 American troops had been killed in the war.

what in the hallowed name of Memory-Hole Jesus is this bullshit?

when The New York Times committed a journalism and asked for an explanation, Pentagon spokespeople were basically ‘hamina hamina hamina,’vomiting out multiple, conflicting excuses.

of the three shifting alibis, this one’s my favorite:

Three military officials said that one reason behind the change was that the Trump administration decided to remove four service members killed this past weekend from the list — three in Jordan and one in northern Iraq — because their deaths occurred after President Trump declared a cease-fire in the war in April.

oh really, Pentagon? that’s what you want to go with, that ‘it’s technically not a war, so they’re technically not war dead’?

fuck you. fuck you completely. repeat that explanation to the faces of those service members’ families. I dare you.

you better believe we’re in a war — an unwinnable one that Dear Leader started — but these double-talking sons of bitches are going out of their way to call it anything but.

oh look, somebody taught Lord Shitticus a new word.

“and that’s what this— skirmish we have going on, I call it a skirmish. this is with this skirmish we have with the ISLAMIC REPUBLIC— of Iran. and I call it that. because, let me tell you, they are getting hit so hard. and they want to make a deal. but I say they’re not ready to make a deal. because every time they make a deal they want to change it, and everything. they’re not ready. they’ll be ready very soon.”

sweat-drenched loser says what?

listen to Donny try to weasel out of culpability for the death, destruction and chaos he’s wrought. oh, it’s just a wee skirmish. what’s the big deal?

that’s not what a skirmish is, you demented fuck.

A skirmish is a brief, minor fight or a small argument. It usually happens away from the main battle or is an unplanned disagreement. [1, 2, 3]

sorry pal. skirmishes don’t get the Strait of Hormuz shut down, nor do they send the price of oil into the stratosphere. wars do that shit.

who do you imagine taught Donny to say ‘skirmish’? do you think it was Nosferatu McGoebbels? nah, that doesn’t sound like him. it was probably Donny’s stalker-slash-diaper-nurse, The Human Printer. she was with Dear Leader at the dignified transfer.

why on earth did Natalie Harp need to be there?

look, we all know why the Pentagon erased these four fallen: because they didn’t want Donny to be embarrassed by the ever-rising death toll in the reckless WAR he started for no coherent reason at all.

that’s just disgraceful.

the Pentagon won’t say their names, so it’s up to us.

They died serving our country. They should be honored, not erased.
Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Hawaii
Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Texas
Sgt. Angel Rampersad, 28, of New York
Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, of North Carolina

holy shit, Uncle Jeff, did you just agree with Bill Kristol, posting on Elon’s Nazi Bar and Child Porn Emporium, of all places?

yes, I did. that’s how far through the looking glass we are.

it’s all so galling. We the People deserve so much better than this. We the People deserve truth and accountability, not a war machine that hides its dead so the colicky piss-baby in the Oval Bordello won’t throw a tantrum.

“we are closing schools and hospitals in this country, so we can bomb schools and hospitals in other countries. there is never enough money for education and healthcare, but there’s always enough money for war. this morning, we learned that one of our own, Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, was killed by an Iranian airstrike in Jordan. Isabella grew up in Carrollton, not too far from here. she was just 19 years old. she just graduated from Hebron High School. Isabella was sent to serve in a reckless war that no one asked for. we pay for it with our tax dollars. Isabella paid for it with her life.”

full disclosure: I may have teared up a bit just now, while typing out that transcription.

your reminder that the guy Talarico is running against — Ken Paxton — is a serial adulterer who let a confessed child rapist walk the streets of Texasthrough some sweetheart plea deal, just like the one Donny’s dead pedo bestie got in Florida.

that’s what the Texas Senate race is all about. honor vs dishonor.

Isabella Gonzales was nineteen years old, and sent to die in a war that some easily-manipulated fuckhead started because his despot bestie Bibi Netanyahu goaded him into it, and his piss-drunk Secretary of Death assured him it would be done and won in an afternoon.

say her name. say all their names.

Donny Convict is such a fucking imbecile.

I realize that just saying that breaks no new ground. in fact, it’s the main topic of conversation around here — but some days he just out-stupids himself.

look what he posted to his crappy app.

MAGA CANDIDATES WON EVERYTHING LAST NIGHT IN ARIZONA, A COMPLETE SWEEP!!! I WON ARIZONA 18 MONTHS AGO. THE DUMOCRATS ARE DUMBFOUNDED. AFTER DECADES, ARIZONA IS BECOMING A REPUBLICAN STATE. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL! President DONALD J. TRUMP

isn’t it stunning that the president of the United States has no idea how primaries work?

do you think maybe Donny’s diaper nurse could take him aside and explain to him that the reason Republicans won in Arizona was because only Republicans run in Republican primaries?

maybe she could also explain to him how batteries work.

“… did with the Green New Scam, where— we were scammed. the whole country was— I wasn’t scammed, I got it right from the beginning. I got it from— the first minute when I heard this crap. you know? they were saying wind was so wonderful, so wonderful. except you couldn’t— watch your television. they wanted to watch the debate. Donald Trump against Sleepy Joe Biden, nobody could watch it because the wind wasn’t blowing. remember that? ‘darling, we’d like to watch the debate tonight. I’m sorry, the wind isn’t blowing.’”

what in the actual small-batch artisanal fuck is Dear Leader gibbering about? how are the nice men with the butterfly nets not interrupting Donny in the middle of his reverie to carry him off to a padded cell? the man’s brain has gone fuckity-bye.

if Joe Biden had ever told a story about ‘they couldn’t watch TV because wind,’ the press would have had a field day. five new books would have come flying out of Jake Tapper’s ass, on the spot.

and yet, when Dear Leader does it, crickets.

let’s do a quick fact check: did this happen? was ‘nobody’ able to watch the Donny-Biden debate because ‘the wind wasn’t blowing’ — or is it a thing that never happened the most?

this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

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Almost every time I post one of Sony’s early Walkman models, someone asks why the company cannot simply bring them back. I understand why. There are stories almost every week announcing that cassettes and CDs are back, and several manufacturers now sell new players for both formats. From the outside, it can look as though Sony only needs to choose one, update a few things, and put it back into production.

Akira Tanaka, who spent years designing Walkman at Sony, says it would be much closer to starting over.

Tanaka is a former Sony mechanical engineer whose published project list spans four types of Walkman: five cassette models, eight CD models, two MiniDisc models, and ten generations of file-based players. He was project manager for the camera-equipped MZ-DH10Pand the MZ-RH1, Sony’s final Hi-MD Walkman. He later served as mechanical engineering manager for several digital Walkman generations, including the A820 and X1000 series.

He remained at Sony until taking early retirement in February 2025. Today, he owns more than 70 Walkman products and 279 catalogs, and he writes about the machines he helped create almost every day.

Tanaka is probably my favorite person to follow online. I eagerly wait for anything he has to say about Walkman history because nobody else has his combination of firsthand experience, technical knowledge, and personal archive. He has answered my questions, looked at my work, and helped me with the Obsolete Sony archive. I think of him as my Walkman senpai, and I am still slightly amazed that I get to talk with someone who helped make the products I spend so much time documenting.

In a recent post, Tanaka gave six reasons Sony would have difficulty reissuing its cassette, CD, or MiniDisc Walkman models. His explanation reveals how much of the world that produced the Walkman has disappeared.

1. The Parts No Longer Exist

The miniature motors, magnetic heads, optical pickups, and proprietary integrated circuits used by these players have gone out of production. Sony cannot pull an old bill of materials from its files and order everything again. Suppliers moved on, production equipment was retired, and some companies may no longer be in those businesses. A working WM-EX2000 can make this difficult to believe, but any drawings still held by Sony describe components that nobody manufactures today.

Replacements could be designed, but nearly everything around them would need to change. A new cassette Walkman would need a transport, motor, head, control system, power supply, tooling, and housing built around components available now. A CD Walkman would need a new optical assembly and disc mechanism. A MiniDisc player would add a magnetic recording head, signal processing, and software. Sony can do all of this, but each format would require a new development program.

2. The Manufacturing Technology Has Been Lost

Later Walkman models were extremely small, thin, and precise. Sony reached those dimensions by designing each part around the others. Motors became flatter, circuit boards wrapped around moving assemblies, clearances almost disappeared, and the exterior casing sometimes became part of the structure.

That work depended on dedicated production lines and adjustment procedures. Drawings can record dimensions and tolerances, but they do not always record how a line was tuned after the first few thousand units, which jig solved an alignment problem, or which adjustment stopped a mechanism from wearing too quickly. Much of that knowledge stayed with the engineers and factory workers who used it.

This is why a new cassette player can be larger and mechanically worse than a Walkman sold more than 30 years ago. The factories making portable cassette mechanisms today are serving a small, inexpensive market. During the Walkman’s peak, shaving another millimeter from the body could justify a new motor and new tooling. That level of spending ended with the mass market.

3. The Economics Do Not Work

Plenty of people say they want a new cassette or MiniDisc Walkman, but the total market is still small. Collectors and physical-media fans are active online, which can make demand look larger than it is.

According to Tanaka, even sales in the tens of thousands might not recover the development and tooling costs. Low production volume would also raise the price of every specialized component. By the time Sony covered manufacturing, warranty service, and support, the player would be far more expensive than the simple reissue many fans have in mind.

4. MiniDisc Media Is Disappearing

CDs are still widely available, and cassettes continue to be manufactured in smaller quantities. MiniDisc is different. In January 2025, Sony announced that it would end production of all recordable MiniDisc media the following month, along with MD Data discs, MiniDV cassettes, and recordable Blu-ray media. Sony also said there would be no successor products.

A new MD Walkman would arrive after Sony stopped making blank discs for it. Used and unopened media will remain available for years, but the supply can only decline. Relaunching the hardware would make little sense unless Sony also restarted the media.

5. Development Resources Are Limited

Sony still develops Walkman. They are Android-based Hi-Res players built for local files and streaming, and that is where Tanaka believes the company can realistically concentrate its limited engineering staff and development budget. These players may have little in common with a cassette Walkman beyond the name and the fact that both play music through headphones. Sony chose to continue Walkman as a digital audio category and retire the cassette, CD, and MiniDisc mechanisms.

6. Tanaka Is No Longer at Sony

Tanaka makes his own departure the sixth reason. His joke points to another loss: Sony still has drawings, reports, patents, and test data, but it no longer has every engineer who remembers why a part was changed, which prototype failed, or how a production problem was fixed.

Some of that knowledge was passed to younger engineers, as Sony’s interview with Tanaka about the NW-X1000 shows. Once Sony stopped making mechanical Walkman models, however, there was no reason to keep passing along every detail of how to manufacture one.

Most of Tanaka’s six reasons are easy enough to guess. I still found it special to hear them from him. Sony has always been a company in motion. It launches the next thing and rarely explains why the old one can no longer be made. The Walkman moved from cassette to CD, MiniDisc, flash memory, and eventually Android, while the people, suppliers, tools, and knowledge behind each generation scattered.

Tanaka was close enough to this history to know what disappeared along the way. Sony will probably never publish a formal explanation of why those old Walkman models cannot come back. His post may be the closest answer we will ever get.

Make sure to follow Akira Tanaka on X, where he continues to share firsthand stories from Sony’s portable audio history.

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This is also the reason I store only the bare minimum in the cloud. I don’t want my data held hostage or deleted by some nameless mega-corporation if I am ever unable to pay for access.

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