Michael Clark

@smintheus

Ancient historian, now a temple attendant for two dainty-pawed gods who sometimes make their epiphanies. Looking for more honesty and less malice in politics, but getting this thing instead.

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Michael Clark@smintheus· Jul 17

Photo inside the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 of three MAGA rioters, the 1st with a weird batman haircut, the 2nd resembling Charles Manson, the 3rd a half naked 'shaman' wearing buffalo horns as he howls, and the 4th is a doofus with the strangest looking beard who holds a "Trump is my president" flag and bizarrely wears a lanyard ID around his neck.

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jul 16

And my watch party was really shaping up too.

An orange cloth homunculus with a small bright yellow cloth top that sports a few thin wisps of yellow string, strangely unkempt. A large stick pin is fixed in the center of the shapeless orange mass; another sits at the ready nearby, sitting on a foot rest.

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jul 16

Taylor Farms came out against the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 over regulations to test food products for contamination and to allow the FDA to quarantine areas where unsafe food originated. Despite their big talk, a couple of years later the company had a series of recalls of tainted food.

LA Times report from July 2009, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-jul-17-na-food-safety17-story.html

"Drew McDonald, vice president of national quality systems at Taylor Farms in Salinas, Calif., said final-product testing doesn’t improve food safety and, in some cases, punishes good facilities for their surveillance when a problem is found.

Taylor Farms is the world’s largest salad and fresh-cut vegetable processor, with 10 plants operating in six states and Mexico.

McDonald stressed the value of collaboration between industry and government, citing the California Leafy Green Products Handler Marketing Agreement, which was formed in 2007 after deadly outbreaks of E. coli was linked to spinach. The agreement sets science-based safety measures to reduce possible sources of contamination among state-grown leafy greens and is audited by USDA-trained employees of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, McDonald said.

He also criticized language in the bill that would let the FDA quarantine geographic areas where unsafe food originated or is located. He said the entire domestic tomato industry could have been under quarantine last summer if the provision had existed then."

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jul 15

The imperial gesture. "Bessent on Wednesday unveiled the first images of a $1 gold coin featuring President Donald Trump’s face, weeks after he revealed a new $250 bill with the president’s face, despite U.S. law prohibiting living people from appearing on currency." www.forbes.com/sites/siladi...

"In December, a group of Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., introduced a bill called the “Change Corruption Act” that explicitly prohibits the likeness of a living or sitting president from appearing on any U.S. currency. The “Thayer Amendment” is a 1886 law that prevents images of any living person from appearing on U.S. bonds, securities, notes, or currency. In 2005, Congress passed the “Presidential $1 Coin Act,” which allowed the issuance of circulating $1 coins featuring presidents of the United States. However, this law also restricted such coin series to deceased presidents."

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jul 15

If only when they held power the Democrats had shown the courage to pass a law prohibiting presidents from putting their own images on US currency then we wouldn't even be in this mess, said a leftist squawk box prob. "But they didn't even try!!"

A July 15, 2026 tweet of Treasury Sec Scott Bessent with an image of a fake gold One Dollar coin featuring Donald Trump's mug shot with the abbreviation JFM ("Just a Frickin' Monster"?).
The tweet reads: "As America commemorates 250 years of independence, the @usmint will begin striking this new $1 gold coin to honor the enduring legacy of liberty and a lasting symbol of patriotism. Featuring President Trump, it celebrates the strength of American values, and the promis of a [Show more]"

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jul 9

Urban Dictionary ftw

"burke

1. to be as drunk or high as you possibly can while operating a car over 101 mph

2. to set a land speed record above 130 mph on every country road in your community

3. to be a legend at your school for losing your license for 6 months for one speeding offense, getting stoned every night while you do your homework, or do a keg stand at breakfast, lunch, dinner and when you have the munchies

4. speeding as fast as possible to get places on time

1. Dude I burked it last night with 4 bitches in the car and didn't get pulled over!!!
2. I was burking it last night and hit 135 on Drake Rd.
3. I pulled a burke and got screwed for speeding, but who cares cuz now I have all the more reason to sit at home, get stoned and get as shitdaced as possible!!!
4. OMFG, I overslept and didn't want to be late today so I Burked it to school!!!

burke by MIKE BURRRRRRKE! November 21, 2006"

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jul 9

Trump supporter Tom Dundon imitating the cult leader in making a sport trophy all about himself. Inscribed the names of his entire family on the Stanley Cup including little kids. Excluded a Hurricanes' player (Joel Nystrom) & some team support staff. When you're a billionaire they let you do it.

Photo of the Stanley Cup trophy with the names of the 2025-2026 season winners, the Carolina Hurricanes. The first 7 names inscribed are of the club owner Tom Dundon, his wife and 5 children.

In 1984 the NHL forced another club owner to cross out the name of his father after he had it inscribed on the Cup.

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jul 2

What a sick son of a bitch Yglesias is. Beating kids up for being heard speaking a language other than English is "going too far".

"The case for assimilation
Is it true that “Muslims” — or anyone else — “shouldn’t have to assimilate to belong”?
Matthew Yglesias
Jul 02, 2026"
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-case-for-assimilation

"My ancestors immigrated well before Jerusalem’s and did so at a time when the borders were generally more open but there was also more comfort with heavy-handed assimilation measures. Some of these went too far — I remember my grandfather telling me about kids in his heavily Hispanic community being beaten at school for speaking Spanish to each other — but I think there was something to the combination of legal openness and forceful promotion of American identity."

Yglesias never explains who "Jerusalem" is but evidently it doesn't matter much to him.

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jul 1

For all the mockery of Trump's slap dash, cheap & poorly attended "states fair" I hope that people realize they're watching a real Zero Mostel production unfolding. Like his inaugural festivities & other Trump causes, the expenses are minimal, the accounting byzantine, and the profiteering sublime.

Scene from The Producers in which Zero Mostel persuades Gene Wilder that there's a fortune to be had by raising money to produce an atrocious play that will fail so quickly nobody will inquire where all the money went.

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jun 30

Shorter Kavanaugh: Foreigners just didn't travel to America before the Civil War.

An edition of Alexis de Tocqueville's 2 volume study of Democracy in America based on his travels around the United States [checks notes] decades before the Civil War. The cover of this edition depicts the Boston Tea Party featuring sailing ships that arrived on these shores from the other side of the Atlantic.

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jun 28

This is to badly misunderstand a decisive social element that governs Homer's epic poems - the ideology and culture of ancient slave-owning. Where modern readers find it hard to make sense of Homeric characters' behaviors & attitudes, this often is the reason why. Bc slavery is monstrous, bizzare 🧵

From David Denby's essay on film adaptations of Homer's Odyssey:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/29/why-the-odyssey-keeps-defeating-filmmakers

"In Ithaca, the suitors have been eating up Odysseus’ livestock and harassing his wife for years. Undisguised at last, and with help from Athena, Telemachus, and a few loyal servants, Odysseus kills them all, a hundred and eight men. In Greek terms, they have persistently violated the laws of hospitality, and they deserve to die. Odysseus also gives the order to kill twelve young house slaves who have been sleeping with the suitors. Although Homer does not say so, enslaved women in a royal house would scarcely have had the power to refuse male visitors, even so surly a bunch as the suitors. Yet Telemachus, a young man of perhaps twenty, and hardly an authority on sexual matters, hangs the women with a ship’s cable. Which leaves Christopher Nolan with two enormous difficulties: How do you stage the slaughter and execution as movie spectacle without producing revulsion, and, even more centrally, how do you portray Odysseus? We cannot, to be sure, simply impose our notions of good and evil on an ancient aristocratic warrior culture. But a slaughter of all the men, without distinction among them? Easy moralizing would be wrong, but moral indifference might be impossible. In the Greek world, honor isn’t tethered to morality. Order is restored not by the triumph of values but by a man, neither good nor evil, doing terrible things."

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jun 26

This is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jun 23

Here's a screenshot from the Nazi site. Hard not to read this as a call for violence.

A twitter post by the execrable Jesse Singal with a screenshots a popehat bsky post from June 9 that states "The richest man in the world" is trying hard to get non-whites in the UK killed "and the best chance of that stopping is someone killing him. If only." To be clear, this is not a statement that I endorse or treat as acceptable. It does however seem to explain the shut down of popehat's bsky account.

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jun 19

Yeah mass examination rules! Can always count on it to separate the sheep from the goats.

The mass examination of corporate job applicants in IL POSTO (1961) as most of them struggle to answer just a single mathematical question correctly.

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jun 10

The bread and circuses phase is of course just another grift for Trump.

Roman denarius from 42 BCE. Obverse side shows the head of praetor L. Livineius Regulus, reverse side depicts gladiators fighting a lion, a tiger and a boar.

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jun 8

ha ha ha ha ha ha phew I moseyed on over there hoping to learn who is and who is not an authentic Carolina Hurricanes fan but no such luck.

Skeet by Walker
"I said I agree with J Los subway take. Lots of discourse after.

I am now heading to the gym so folks will have to carry on without me!"

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jun 8

We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!

Scene from Treasure of the Sierra Madre as Mexican bandits try to persuade Humprey Bogart to walk into their trap by claiming that they are federal police.

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jun 5

He just reposted this garbage taek.

Blue_Riverrrr‬ ‪@blueriverrrr.bsky.social‬ · 8d
Moderate Democrats would rather we elect Republicans over Progressives.
Primary them ALL.

Michael Clark@smintheus· Jun 1

And this is such basic common sense that it's astounding it needs to be said. Who the hell doesn't know that potatoes don't thrive in summer heat?

"Nor is there any published evidence that solar farms have a negative impact on potato farming, according to experts consulted for this story. On the contrary, there is agrivoltaics research showing that potatoes — and many other crops — can benefit from growing alongside shade-making solar panels.

Nevertheless, this false claim about solar is gaining some traction. Like other forms of misinformation about renewables, it helps fuel local pushback to proposed energy installations."

Michael Clark@smintheus· May 20

Myth made real

Francisco Goya's painting of Saturn devouring one of his sons.

Michael Clark@smintheus· May 19

Here are the first two results the new'n'improved Google Search coughed up hairball style.

"Facebook · Everything Dirt Community
20+ comments · 1 year ago

Couple of the last posts I've read is obviously from ...

If you don't want to help shut the fuck up you don't need to put your 2 cents in . ... But you fucking get it And with that fuck you, suck my dick ...
Missing: transform ‎shittiest

Beaufort County Community College
https://www2.beaufortccc.edu › tours

21 Day Walking Plan That Will Help You Lose Weight

8 days ago — ... you fall into the groove Chicago, Chicago - Fuck you! BIBLE THUMPERS GO TO HELL Wait around until you die That's why you're here and I won't ask ..."

Michael Clark@smintheus· May 19

"What the ever loving fuck is wrong with Google? Which of you sick bastards decided to transform it into the shittiest possible search engine? Asking for some friends."

A Google Search box with this text: "What the ever loving fuck is wrong with Google? Which of you sick bastards decided to transform it into the shittiest possible search engine? Asking for some friends."

Michael Clark@smintheus· May 19

Ah, yes, the Roman predilection for flat roofs.

The most famous Roman building, the Pantheon with its domed spherical roof and gabled porch.

Michael Clark@smintheus· May 19

That is very striking. I'm really taken w/ how the 2 static profiles 'front' & 'side' seem almost incompatible. The piece uses the circulation of the viewer around it to reveal new insights that couldn't be foreseen from another angle. A technique Bernini used to such effect in his greatest works.

Bernini's Rape of Persephone figural group showing Hades kidnapping a struggling Persephone as he drags her past the hounds guarding the entrance to the underworld.

Michael Clark@smintheus· May 17

omg a throwback to my youth in small town New England! No soccer leagues, no fields, no nets, nobody to kick a ball around with. Just an overgrown meadow and an old barn wall to practice bending a ball. For years on end. I r hope this kid's local pro team didn't go bankrupt just as he turned 18.

Craigslist ad: "Plywood & 4x4s. Soccer Wall (Brattleboro)" Picture show's an old wooden frame the size of a soccer net, braced to withstand shots from some frustrated young star.

Michael Clark@smintheus· May 17

US Media: "Neo-Confederates?! What dadgum neo-Confederates?"

Nate Cohn & Eve Washington in NYT today: "Why Neutral Maps Could Empower Black Voters as Much as the Voting Rights Act

Our simulations show that the act isn’t needed for minority representation in the South, if partisan gerrymandering were checked."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/upshot/redistricting-race-court-gerrymanders-elections.html

Washington Post Editorial Board today: "Bill Cassidy and America’s increasingly broken primary system

The country's democracy suffers as both parties close off elections."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/05/17/bill-cassidy-defeat-highlights-decline-open-primary-elections/

Michael Clark@smintheus· May 16

Ah the decline of the West, again. Been a few years but it always sparks a lively discussion.

Michael Clark@smintheus· May 16

The design of the upper course makes no apparent sense, esp the arches flanking the water channel.

Michael Clark@smintheus· May 12

Further to the point.

"It should be noted that acquisition of an MD or DO degree does not automatically confer a license to practice medicine in the United States. The medical practice act in most jurisdictions restricts individuals holding a physician credential from publicly representing themselves as physicians unless they hold a medical license in that jurisdiction."

Michael Clark@smintheus· May 12

It's rather like the person who portrays himself as a lawyer bc he graduated from law school but never passed the bar, never practiced law, never had a legal client. The guy did a medical degree but then walked away from the profession. Oz by contrast was licensed & did practice, fraud tho he is.