Taco Dave

My God.

Even more fucked that one of the top stand-up comics to perform a special on Dropout is actually a professional sock designer.

We can just reuse the same materials and tell people it’s how the rest of the world writes “October 10, 2030”.

CBS will be ending Stephen Colbert's run as host of The Late Show, days after he criticized parent company Paramount's $16 million payment to Trump. Here's why the Left has a censorship problem.

Got the car back today. It wasn’t quite as expensive as I feared. Still a kick to the kidneys/bank account though. I think I can make a print run of the new book work out unless something else catastrophic happens.

Shopify is too expensive and I’m not making enough to break even for the cost of using it, so I’m working on moving to WooCommerce but in the meantime, if anyone has a few bucks and wants some stickers, patches, or puzzle books, I’d appreciate the business!

store.davegoesthedistance.com

#SmallBiz

- Wired – “Metadata shows the DOJ’s ‘raw’ Jeffrey Epstein prison video was likely modified,” July 10, 2025
- Fox News – “Pam Bondi promised Epstein client list ‘sitting on my desk’—now says nothing exists,” July 10, 2025

(Had to quote Fox Entertainment for fun, lol)

Sources:
- The Washington Post – “Trump allies face MAGA backlash over Epstein file release,” July 11, 2025
- The Daily Beast – “Trump angrily tries to shut down Epstein questions,” July 9, 2025

MAGA is tearing itself apart over the Epstein files. They made big promises to release everything and now, suddenly, it’s all vanished. Even Wired reported that metadata from the jail has been tampered with. Total mess.

An even mucho mas more basic-er example: most search engine results are delivered on a page where the query string is just the query you searched; in this case q=bacon:

duckduckgo.com?q=bacon

Please stop spreading misinformation. A ? in a URL doesn't indicate tracking data, it indicates a *query string*.

And while query strings *can* be used for tracking - often in conjunction with "si" or "utm_source" - they're more often used to request specific information from a website.

European Citizens' Initiative Give your support !

since this is doing a bit of numbers: If you're in the EU, remember to sign the Stop Killing Games EU initiative! They've passed the goal, but need 1,400,000 signatures to be sure there's 1,000,000 after checking for frauds & duplicates.

eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/?...

Header text: "HEY YOU! YES YOU! TAKE THIS SHIT OUT OF LINKS!" This is followed by a couple example urls, with a red square highlighting the sections with source identifiers. The rest of the text is as follows: Source identifiers are used to track your activity on a site. Where you came from, what device you use, and even who you talk to. Whether it's written clearly in the url or tied to a random string of characters, it's assigned to your activity. When you send a link containing a source identifier to somebody and they click it, it signals to the website that you two are connected. And that data goes right back to the website operators, and thus their advertisers. Whenever you select "share" or "copy link" on a social app or website, it creates a link like this. If you give even the smallest shit about online privacy, it's important to remove them. Everything after the "?" symbol can be removed without issue, especially sections starting with "si=" or "utm_source="

I saw an infographic a couple years ago about how to remove source identifiers from links and why it's important, but I can't find it again and too many people I know are sending me links with them so here's an infographic straight from the oven

Trump is gutting weather science and reducing disaster response

If only the New York Times had written loud, direct stories about the looming Trump disaster before the 2024 election instead of waiting until the disaster struck and then counting the dead bodies.

Looks like you have access to better produce but worse calendar.

Also please change your profile pic to one with a different shirt color. Without my glasses on all I saw was Hank and the blurry profile pic made me think Hank Hill and I was very confused.

You lived through the fidget spinner craze. You should understand how fads work by now.

Look, let’s say for the sake of argument the haters are right and I am a mentally ill man who got HRT and girl clothes to humor his delusions. How is this being treated a bigger deal than the president being an unconstitutionally elected mad fascist putting American cities under military occupation?

I’m waiting for the epic feud with Athena now to turn into a whole spectacle of classic Hollywood cinema vs the minion overlord literally getting Minions involved and animation somehow being involved in a cinematic match.

Fun fact: this is the “more” that Britney was asking for in “Gimme More”.

Life feels less hazy but still hopeless as ever.

Due to the cost of the car repairs, I don’t think I can safely pay to do a print run of the Route 66 book in time for the 2026 season unless I crowd-fund it or leave myself no savings in my emergency fund. Trying to decide how to proceed or if I should give up. Leaning toward giving up.

I searched “black and white striped bugs” and tentatively identified this as a Banded Alder Borer just so that I could cruelly reply and say that in a few years this bug will be replaced by a soulless sign that says “DELICIOUS FLOWER”.

(Apparently the Banded Alder Borer feeds on flowers.)

Does it ever get any less exhausting explaining to people that you’re already in therapy and already taking meds and already talked to someone and still hate being alive and can’t find anything that sparks interest or joy anymore?

I’m starting to reach out to folks about transitioning maintenance and ownership of some of my web projects (lol keyboard autocorrected it to “web problems”) for when I finally end things. If there’s anything I’ve worked on that any of y’all want to take over or fork or whatever, hit me up.

By popular demand, I’ve cancelled my NPL con attendance and resigned from the NPL.

It’s just a killer sudoku using coin values.