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Cake day: August 5th, 2026

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  • I am not trying To be an apologist or whatever but the fact matter is Ed spent millions of dollars On personnel, trucks, lodging, Logistics stage design stage equipment expecting to make it back because he fronts the cost for his own tour. Contracts are signed. People are hired equipment is rented trucks are booked. Much of it is prepaid. Ed is the one holding the and the contract not really in a position to just cancel legally or financially.

    He put out a really poor statement, yeah, but he’s not in the same position the others are. Cut him a little slack. The venue owner Robert Kraft is the problem here.

    Ed needs a crisis manager


  • Ed is the one who spent tens of millions pre-paying semi trucks, Staff, Equipment, consultants on stage design, Travel and lodging and logistics. He apparently fronts the money for his own tours. People are hired, contracts are signed, things are scheduled and paid for. I don’t envy Ed. He’s not in the financial or legal position to simply cancel like the others are.

    Robert Kraft is the bad guy here. Changing the rules on what musicians can play and can’t play. Art versus censorship is a tale as old as time. The industry needs to fight back, the fans need to stand up, but I don’t think we should take it all out on Ed here. I got the vibe he wants to be on the right side, but he’s too deep right now and counting on the tour dates to cover his expenses.

    Where he messed up big-time was not hiring a crisis manager before he put out that defensive statement. He said some good things, but in the wrong tone, and I think people are reacting to the tone more than anything else.


  • Ed is the one who spent tens of millions pre-paying semi trucks, Staff, Equipment, consultants on stage design, Travel and lodging and logistics. He apparently fronts the money for his own tours. People are hired, contracts are signed, things are scheduled and paid for. I don’t envy Ed. He’s not in the financial or legal position to simply cancel like the others are.

    Robert Kraft is the bad guy here. Changing the rules on what musicians can play and can’t play. Art versus censorship is a tale as old as time. The industry needs to fight back, the fans need to stand up, but I don’t think we should take it all out on Ed here. I got the vibe he wants to be on the right side, but he’s too deep right now and counting on the tour dates to cover his expenses.


  • Look, I’m all for being on the right side, but Ed is the one who spent tens of millions on prepaid semi trucks, stage gear, countless personnel to move and run a huge production to every venue on the tour, experts to design the show. He can’t just “cancel” those things. Money is spent. People are hired. Contracts were signed.

    Robert Kraft is a bad guy here; cut Ed a LITTLE slack for not being in a legal/financial position to cancel like the others are.

    When venues start controlling what artists can perform, the industry is fucked. It’s like demonetizing “controversial” YouTube videos, but IRL in a music venue.

    If I was on my tour and this happened, I wouldn’t know what the hell to do. What he needs to do is hire a crisis manager.



  • They say “contains less than 0.5%” because that’s the cutoff that makes something legally beer. It more than likely has none, much of the time. That’s just the law (US):

    > 0.5% it’s beer and subject to alcohol laws

    < 0.5% it’s not beer, technically a food

    So they label it as <0.5% simply to show that it’s in the latter category. This creates a lot of confusion for some reason. Hell, half the brands don’t have required nutritional info (beer doesn’t need it, soda does) but the real problem is that:

    The regulatory agencies are captured and don’t do shit anymore. TECHNICALLY the FDA should be stepping in and making them put full nutritional information on all the brands of NA “beer” and making sure it is labeled and sold like a food. But they don’t.

    Counter example: kombucha has naturally occurring alcohol, but you don’t see anyone getting carded for it and you have the regular nutritional label on it.


  • They say “contains less than 0.5%” because that’s the cutoff that makes something legally beer. It more than likely has none, much of the time. That’s just the law (US):

    > 0.5% it’s beer and subject to alcohol laws

    < 0.5% it’s not beer, technically a food

    So they label it as <0.5% simply to show that it’s in the latter category. This creates a lot of confusion for some reason.

    Even the grocers (and even manufacturers) get it all messed up. Hell, half the brands don’t have required nutritional info (beer doesn’t need it, soda does) but the real problem is that:

    The regulatory agencies are captured and don’t do shit anymore. TECHNICALLY the FDA should be stepping in and making them put full nutritional information on all the brands of NA “beer” and making sure it is labeled and sold like a soda.

    But the larger companies that sell it are just misclassifying it and creating problems to be as lazy and risk avoidant as possible.


  • They say “contains less than 0.5%” because that’s the cutoff that makes something legally beer. It more than likely has none, much of the time. That’s just the law (US):

    > 0.5% it’s beer and subject to alcohol laws

    < 0.5% it’s not beer, technically a soda or something

    So they label it as <0.5% simply to show that it’s in the latter category. This creates a lot of confusion for some reason. Hell, half the brands don’t have required nutritional info (beer doesn’t need it, soda does) but the real problem is that:

    The regulatory agencies are captured and don’t do shit anymore. TECHNICALLY the FDA should be stepping in and making them put full nutritional information on all the brands of NA “beer” and making sure it is labeled and sold like a food. But they don’t.

    Counter example: kombucha has naturally occurring alcohol, but you don’t see anyone getting carded for it and you have the regular nutritional label on it.


  • Play tectonics is pretty well studied, plus you got the whole part where the sun becomes a red giant and annihilates the planet. I bet Randall worked it out pretty well.

    Back of the envelope it’s about 10^17 seconds, which works out a few billion years. He drew it with some wiggle area, so anywhere from hundreds of millions to several billions which covers the range of plate tectonics and the Earth being consumed by the sun.

    So it seems pretty accurate


  • Police criminally charged Shae Sanders and Aurora Rush, who were both injured in the cruel attack.

    Daniel Villarreal

    A long-haired brunette woman in handcuffs and a white shirt covers her face while seated in a concrete cell.

    A mob of people beat a transgender couple on May 31 after one of the partners used a public restroom in Bossier Parish, Louisiana. After the attack, police arrested one of the trans women, took her to a men’s jail, and charged the couple with offenses that could result in months of prison.

    Near the end of a lakeside barbecue with friends at Cypress Black Bayou Park, Shae Sanders (a nonbinary person assigned female at birth) used the women’s restroom just as they usually do. As their partner, Aurora Rush, waited outside for them, a man approached her, used slurs against her, threatened to beat her up if she entered the women’s restroom, and tried to get her to fight, trans journalist S. Baum reported.


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    When Sanders exited the restroom, a crowd of at least 10 men and women had formed around Rush, blocking their exit, calling her a “tr**ny” and a “f**got,” allegedly threatening to murder her, saying they’d stop her from using the restroom by “any means necessary,” and proclaiming that their violence would protect children.

    The mob then beat Sanders so badly that an ambulance later transported them to the hospital, where they received four stitches above their eye — doctors are trying to determine whether a neurostim brain implant in their shoulder may have been damaged during the attack, the result of which could kill them, Baum wrote.

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    Rush had a concussion, a corneal scratch that temporarily blinded her in one eye, “massive welts” (including “one knot above her knee swelled to the size of an apple”), and pre-existing disabilities. But even though she has a female gender marker on her driver’s license, police threw her in a men’s jail under a man’s name she had never heard of. (She said the name she was booked in jail under belonged to one of her male attackers.)

    The couple claims they did not fight their attackers. Nevertheless, police have since charged Sanders with one count of disturbing the peace (punishable by up to six months in prison), and Rush with one count for “fighting” and another for “offensive language” (punishable by up to a year in prison), Baum wrote. It’s unclear if police arrested any other individuals. The couple has pledged not to agree to any plea deals.

    “I’m more angry at the response of the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office than I am at the people who beat us up,” Rush said. “They further victimized me. I cannot just go to court, sign a piece of paper, pay a couple hundred dollars in fines, and let it just go away like it never happened. It’s an egregious miscarriage of justice.”

    The couple’s attorney, Courtney Newburry, said the attack was “targeted, calculated, [and] had been simmering all day,” as a result of “dangerous and harmful rhetoric that demonizes and dehumanizes transgender people.”

    The couple were scheduled for arraignment on July 15, but it was postponed at the last minute for August. On the day of their postponed arraignment, the Bossier Parish police jury voted unanimously for Ordinance No. 22, which imposes criminal sanctions (up to a year in jail) on anyone who refuses to leave any restroom or changing facility on public parish property that doesn’t match the user’s sex they were assigned at birth.

    The ordinance punishes any police officers, janitors, or employees who fail to remove an individual whose gender or sex have been called into question, Baum noted, adding that it’s unclear whether the ordinance is currently in effect. A public comment hearing about the ordinance is reportedly scheduled for September 22.

    Baum wrote that the ordinance was personally requested by Bossier Parish Sheriff Julian Whittington after the attack upon Rush and Sanders.

    Police juror Glenn Benton told Baum, “There was nothing on the books for him to do as law enforcement [in response to the attack and arrest]. That’s why he asked us to do it.”

    Correction: An earlier version of this article misidentified the journalist who wrote the original story.

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