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More than 45,000 households in southcentral North Carolina are without power after two electrical substations were disabled when someone fired multiweapon bullets into it, NBC News reports.  Utility officials said power for those customers may not be restored until Thursday.

The power outage has impacted traffic and street light operations in Moore County, prompting officials to warn drivers and suggest people stay off the roads. Sewage pumping station operations have also been impacted.

“Unlike perhaps a storm where you can go in and reroute power somewhere else, that was not an option in this case,” a spokesperson for Duke Energy said Sunday. “Recognizing that, we are looking at a pretty sophisticated repair with some fairly large equipment and so we do want citizens of the town to be prepared that this will be a multi-day restoration for most customers extending potentially as long as Thursday.”

Politics sometimes make strange bedfellows, and they rarely last.  Kanye West has announced that former Marjorie Taylor Greene Congressional intern, the 38-year-old formerly gay Brit Milo Yiannopoulos is no longer affiliated with West’s cry for attention not-yet-announced 2024 presidential campaign.

The Daily Beast reports that Yiannopoulos, who claims he successfully underwent debunked anti-gay conversation therapy and now likes girls–well, presumably women, although Yiannopoulos had expressed his appreciation of relationships with underage boys when he was a gay–stated that he left the “campaign” on his own terms.

The separation comes after a horrible week for the rapper turned clothing designer turned presidential candidate.  He has lost most of his major partners and business deals since saying that Adolf Hitler did some good things and making anti-Semitic statements.

A view of the livestream of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii shows that yes, as of 6:21 AM Hawaiian Standard Time on Sunday, 11:21 EST, that fucker is still erupting tons upon tons of lava.

In a blow to the dreams of America’s religious conservatives who presumably viewed it as a scion in the repression trade, Iran has announced that it will disband the so-called “morality police” in whose custody a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman died after being detained for showing too much of her hair, the New York Times reports.

State media reported the division “was abolished by the same authorities who installed it,” according to a statement by Attorney General Mohammad Javad Montazeri.

Fat former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s niece was arrested on Thanksgiving morning at Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans after she harassed a family she thought were Latino on her flight asking if they were “smuggling cocaine,” and then bit, spit on, and kicked sheriff’s deputies who were trying to apprehend her, the New Orleans Times Picayune reports.

Looks like we will need another day or so

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 4, 2022

At this point, Elon Musk’s Twitter Files saga is more melodrama than expose, with the FBI telling Twitter that information regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop was unreliable and… that’s it.  No order from the FBI to suppress any story, as Musk and right-wing trolls claim.  Given that the first episode of Twitter Files went over like a big beany fart in church, the second episode is postponed indefinitely, perhaps because Musk needs to actually find something that proves–or even approaches–what was claimed.

It was a great week to be your president. pic.twitter.com/GAzMVj3Uf3

— President Biden (@POTUS) December 4, 2022

Isn’t it great to have a President who understands his job is working for the American people, not having the American people respond to his tantrums and outbursts?  Oh, and a president who takes his job seriously, gets shit done and is respected by foreign leaders?

The glory of being crowned champion of a Carnival cruise ship air guitar contest was cut short for Alabama man James Michael Grimes late last Wednesday night as he promptly fell overboard and into the Gulf of Mexico somewhere off the coast of Louisiana, CBS News reports.

It’s not clear but kind of obvious that the incident was alcohol-related. Especially that Grimes doesn’t remember falling overboard and was rescued naked in the gulf by the Coast Guard 15 hours later on Thanksgiving Day. “I might not get within 10-foot of the rails, but I’d definitely be open to going on another cruise, because I really didn’t get to go on this one,” Grimes told CBS.

Klansmen attending a Nazi victory parade in Roswell, NM in the alt 1961 of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Machine Games/Bethesda)

Video games carry a certain stigma to them, a stubborn perception of being juvenile bullshit for morons with limited social skills, a stigma that has been around as long as video games themselves. The stigma has been on the wane lately as those of us in the millennial generation feel like we can be more open about it, having grown up alongside the medium. It’s undeniably less embarrassing for us 30-somethings in 2022 to talk about the latest Halo or Assassin’s Creed game than it was for a 30-something Gen Xer in 1995 to forget to hide his Super Nintendo before a date came over.

And why not? It was pretty dumb for most of the 80s and 90s when you think about it. Who really looks nostalgically back on the original Mortal Kombat games? They fucking sucked. The only reason anyone ever played them was because they were more violent and gruesome than anything else on the market. One no less notoriously violent title from that era that has aged slightly better is Doom, a 1993 bloodbath of a game depicting a demonic alien invasion of a future colony on Mars.

Doom was created by the same team that a year earlier had published Wolfenstein 3D, which was widely credited as the first commercially successful first-person shooter (the camera perspective inside the player character’s head). Wolfenstein 3D itself was a sequel to 1981’s Castle Wolfenstein, a simplistic 2D simulation of an unnamed American World War II commando who sneaks out of captivity in the titular castle, killing little pixel Nazi soldiers along the way.

The lawyer for Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who disclosed tens of thousands of pages of US national security secrets who then fled to Russia for the Kremlin’s protection, says Snowden has sworn allegiance to Russia, the Washington Post reports.

Russian President Vladimir Putin granted Snowden Russian citizenship in September.  It is unclear if Snowden officially renounced his American citizenship, but Snowden was issued a Russian passport Friday; Snowden previously said he and his wife would remain US citizens, and that the Russian citizenship was a way to protect their children.

Although his lawyer claimed he swore allegiance to Russia, Snowden’s lawyer did not clarify if Snowden took the official oath, which states he would act “to protect the freedom and independence of the Russian Federation, to be loyal to Russia, to respect its culture, history and traditions,” and to promise to “perform the duties of a citizen of the Russian Federation for the good of the state and society.”  It is possible that Congress could revoke his US citizenship, a process called “denaturalization.”  One trigger for that would be if Snowden joined the Russian military or in any way attempts to assist the Kremlin.

What a shocker that the “Twitter Files” reveal to which even Nazi Sebastian Gorka said he was “deeply underwhelmed” drives the fat bastard to say he rightfully won and should be reinstated. Even better is the unintentional implication that, despite his supposed invincibility as President, he was solely brought down by a handful of lowly libtards working at Twitter and not any of the “hacking” by Italian satellites or fake ballots made out of bamboo or any of that other shit.

New research has determined that the Yellowstone supervolcano contains much more magma than previously thought and that it’s flowing much closer to the surface too, ABC News reports.

Mapping the magma chamber through seismic topography, scientists have built a new 3D model of the national park’s volcanic underworld, according to Ross Maguire, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s department of geology and author of the study. “We found that it’s likely that Yellowstone’s crustal magma reservoir holds more melt than previously was thought,” Maguire told ABC News, adding that the shallow melted portion is about 20 percent, up from prior estimates of 5 to 15 percent. Despite the findings, geologists say there’s still no imminent threat of a cataclysmic eruption that would completely fuck the United States, just that it’ll be that much worse if and when the volcano does blow its top.

• The erupting Mauna Loa requires a virgin sacrifice.  Nick Fuentes is available.
• They’re targeting LGBTQ people.  They’re promoting anti-Semitism.  They want subservient women.  They believe that society should adhere to their religious beliefs only.  Now the question:  Am I talking about the Taliban or the GOP?
• The Fox prime-time lineup in three years:  Carlson, Lake and Gabbard.
• Jim Jordan should not be allowed to have an interview without being interrogated about the “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” tweet.  He’s the ranking Republican member of the Judiciary caucus; he’s responsible for its messaging.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume XCVIII”

It must suck to be such a brainwashed brown-noser as Buck Sexton, a man with his head so far up Donald Trump’s backside he can smell fresh ketchup.  After the overblown Twitter Files fiasco–during which Elon Musk promised a bombshell report on government censorship at Twitter but his hand-picked “reporter” Matt Taibbi admitted at the end of the thread there was no evidence of the FBI demanding anyone or thing be censored–good ol’ Buckaroo tweeted this, calling for the impeachment of the President for demanding censorship.

The problem for Buck:  the entire episode took place in 2020, during the run-up to the election, according to Taibbi’s account.  And who was the President of the United States in 2020 when this happened who Sexton wants to impeach?  Oh…. right….

A 62-year-old American woman was killed and four others were injured when a rogue wave, estimated to have been about 30 feet high, smashed into the side of her cruise ship heading to the Antarctic Tuesday night, CBS News reports.

The Viking Polaris was sailing south, off the Argentinian coast, when the wave hit.  Photos of the ship after it pulled into a port show damage to a series of windows on the starboard side close to the stern of the ship.  The woman who died was in one of those rooms and was killed by flying glass.

The Viking Polaris is a 665-foot, 30,000-ton cruise ship that went into service in earlier this year.  It’s part of Viking Cruise Lines’ new “Expedition” package of cruises focusing on routes in the Arctic and Antarctic.

In closing arguments in the Trump Organization’s criminal trial on tax avoidance charges, New York State prosecutors told jurors that Donald Trump himself knew about the scheme to provide perks to executives to circumvent taxes obligations, the Washington Post reports.

“This whole narrative that Donald Trump was blissfully ignorant was just not real,” Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass argued, telling the jury that Trump’s knowledge of this was more than just corporate CFO Allen Weisselberg going rogue.  In a plea deal, Weisselberg testified in the trial for a reduced sentence of five months at Rikers Island.

Prosecutors allege the company created a policy of compensating executives in the company by having either the company or Trump himself pay high-dollar routine expenses–like rent for a Manhattan apartment or tuition for a grandchild–to avoid having the income reported by the recipient and also having the company have to pay its share of taxes.

Apparently hired by Elon Musk for the job, world renowned self-cocksucker Matt Taibbi is telling a long story about how Twitter suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020, even giving his thread a name “The Twitter Files,” like it were the Pentagon Papers.

Tweet threads are the worst.

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 2, 2022

Even some of the fanboys in the intended audience are already sick of it, only seven tweets in. We guess we’ll update this article or write another if something actually funny happens.

The three mile-long wall along the border between Texas and Mexico that was built with the money left over from the infamous “We Build the Wall” crowdfund drive after Steve Bannon and his buddies stole from the backers is in danger of collapse due to poor construction, ProPublica reports.

BREAKING: Zelensky is banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

His government has also been raiding Ukrainian Orthodox churches and arresting priests. (Prob why he’s a Dem superstar)

He’s all about freedom guys. Let’s send him another $100,000,000,000.00 with no accountability.

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) December 2, 2022

Thank you Don Jr for taking the time to tweet this fucking garbage claim that you got from some right wing asshole you follow and making us waste our time explaining nailing down precisely why it’s fucking garbage. But this time the truth will get its pants on before the key bump that traveled all the way from Bolivia via your hookup in Miami Beach can make it up your nose.

Explaining it requires an understanding of the layout of Ukrainian Christendom that you do not now and never will possess, but we’ll lay it out for our audience: What you call the “Ukrainian Orthodox Church” is not one single entity but actually several different rites. The largest is the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, is based in Kyiv and claims approximately 76% of the Orthodox Christian population of Ukraine (about 52% of Ukrainians overall). Next is the much smaller Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, claiming 6% of Orthodox adherents (4% overall).

It’s the latter of the two whose leaders in May voted to split from Moscow and merge with the Kyiv Orthodox Church. However, Ukrainian intel services smelled some rats still in the “former” Moscow-linked church and raided their properties. Surprise surprise, as the Kyiv Independent reported Friday, they found Russian propaganda and passports held by clerics. Zelensky on Thursday then proposed Ukrainian parliament ban all Russian-affiliated religious groups. Proposed a ban on, not actually banned, the Russian Orthodox Church of Ukraine, not the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. So thanks again Don Jr for wasting 40+ minutes of our time explaining in detail why you’re full of shit.