Notices by M.S. Bellows, Jr. (msbellows@c.im), page 5

This morning #IHopeJohnRoberts completely blanked on how many grams of coffee he's supposed to put in the coffee maker per cup, so he guesstimated and made it so strong that all day he has the jitters and it certainly isn't helping his anxiety.

Today I wish John Roberts goes to church and enters the confessional and confesses a couple of venial little sins including gluttony from when he took a second donut from the pink cardboard box someone left in the Supreme Court break room but the priest peers at him through the screen and asks, "really, my son? That's all? You don't think murdering democracy is a larger sin than that?" and instructs him to say 100,000 Our Fathers before he's allowed to take communion again. #IHopeJohnRoberts

Today #IHopeJohnRoberts gets a surprise visit from two of his adult children but they haven't come over to talk but rather to pick up some things his wife would like sent to her, and they won't tell him where she is or what she's doing because she's asked them not to, and when he asks tearfully what he has done to drive his family away one of his kids looks him right in the eye and says, "Dad, have you read your own decisions lately? Don't you realize what you are doing to people?" and then with a small box of his wife's things they drive away, leaving him in the giant house alone.

Last night #IHopeJohnRoberts unexpectedly developed diarrhea in the middle of the night and although he made it to the toilet in time, he couldn't figure out how to open those goddamn childproof Imodium caplets packages and so couldn't take any medicine and basically sat on the can for the next five hours until dehydration finally slowed things down, and now he's having the sort of day you would expect him to have after a night like that.

Today #IHopeJohnRoberts keeps saying Our Fathers (see above) as he showers and shaves and drinks coffee and is at something like 482 when he gets distracted by an incoming text and loses count and has to start over, and also that text wasn't from his runaway wife as he hoped (see a little farther above) but just spam from a nutraceuticals company.

I hope that today John Roberts thinks about the fact that the Court still has twenty more decisions to release before its term ends at the end of June, and not only the workload but also the emotional tension of walking his tightrope (making Trump king while still appearing to be a principled jurist) has him feeling simply exhausted, plus Clarence Thomas (worried about Roberts being lonely and depressed now that his wife, children, and priest all have come to hate him for what's he's doing to democracy) has invited him to join his and Ginny's planned RV trip through Scranton and Peoria all the way to Lincoln, Neb., and there are not enough fzcking spoons in the fzcking universe to do a road trip with the fzcking Thomases no matter how tricked out their RV is. #IHopeJohnRoberts

Today #IHopeJohnRoberts Is thinking a lot about how long his wife has been away incommunicado and even though it's only been, what, just a little over two weeks?, it still seems like forever, and it's making him start to reconsider, just a little, just a tiny little bit, what the word "prolonged" means from the perspective of the person who's experiencing it.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/15/supreme-court-ice-detention-case-00962228

I like to think that for years US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts periodically has fantastized that he was just an anonymous person who could wander out on the National Mall on a nice warm day without anyone recognizing him and maybe, when the park service isn't looking too closely, remove his shoes and just dangle his feet in the cool water of the reflecting pool, and today #IHopeJohnRoberts has that thought again but then realizes that even if he were a nobody he still couldn't do it because of the algae, and for a very, very brief moment that actually makes him feel a little better about things, and then he goes back to feeling bad.

I hope today finds John Roberts wandering lonely through his large home, trying to come to terms with the fact that his wife has left him, and finds himself in their shared library, and notices her shelves are fuller than his and include three diverse novels from just last year ("Wild Dark Shore" by Charlotte McConaghy, "Flesh: A Novel" by David Szalay, and TJ Alexander's "A Gentleman's Gentleman"), while the most recent book on his shelf is Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections" and he only got about a third of the way through that, and he wonders if that has something to do with why she left him, and also as he looks at the cover of Alexander's book he realizes he has no idea what the Lambda Literary Award is. #IHopeJohnRoberts

This Juneteenth #IHopeJohnRoberts is snubbed by Clarence Thomas for forgetting to offer him an act of reparation, because Clarence thinks he is entitled to at least be made the offer even though he doesn't actually believe in acts of reparation and doesn't even think enslavement was that bad and sometimes he and Ginny even play a special intimate roleplaying game on that theme.

This is REALLY good, and even if you disagree with her ultimate conclusions about Trump, Epstein, and Russia, the simple undisputed facts she marshals in its defense are by themselves fascinating and damning. Unquestionably, US governmental and financial power has been sold out to Russia.

"Karyna Shuliak was a Russian spy.
And she was sent to take over Epstein’s operation — which is to say, Karyna Shuliak out-Epsteined Epstein, and by doing so led him to his death, and took possession of the world’s largest collection of blackmail material on nearly all the powerful people on earth, material that was initially gathered on behalf of Israeli intelligence and the CIA, but which, because Vladimir Putin is better at this shit than just about anyone, is now almost certainly 100 percent in Russia’s hands."
https://alisav.substack.com/p/the-handler-karyna-shuliak-jeffrey?utm_campaign=post&triedRedirect=true
^ @GottaLaff

Bad news: according to the Social Security actuarial table, the life expectancy of an 80 year old American man is 8.5 more years.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

@ai6yr Meanwhile, it's predicted to be 104° where I am right outside Portland, Oregon.

I don't know which Earth this is but it's definitely not the one I grew up in.

@DeliaChristina Seriously? You don't see that the Dems' farthest-right members are still left of the leftest Republican?

You know things are suboptimal when you are binge reading Elmore Leonard novels because they portray a kinder, simpler world than the one you actually live in.

Where's Waldo?

@YakyuNightOwl @steter @ai6yr @cvvhrn https://www.ebay.com/itm/188481124743

@steter @sarae @ai6yr Update: yes, it's a suspension seat post. And it still seems to have some spring/resistance. I just cleaned both the inside of the frame and the outside of the post with alcohol and after they dry a little we'll see if just cranking down the clamp does the trick. (My friend is not mechanically inclined at ALL so maybe she just hasn't been doing it right, but she also took it to a bike shop and it still failed a couple days later so I'll be pleasantly surprised if it's actually this easy).

@ai6yr @steter @sarae More data: I was wrong; the black is metal, the white is plastic. The metal has a stop line printed on it, so it's the actual post. So I'm thinking maybe I just need to clean the grease out of there (??!) and crank down the clamp.

Q: what's the yellow allen wrench thing in the end of the post do?

@sarae @ai6yr @steter Yes threaded. And no, I wasn't going to cheat on my fiancee, but I don't see why that's any business of the seat post.