Concerns over future of southwest Missouri newspapers, employees laid off:

It could be the end of an era for newspaper readers in Taney County, Barry County, Stone County and beyond.

Journalists from the Branson Tri-Lakes News, the Stone County Republican-Crane Chronicle and the Barry County Advertiser told Ozarks First that all employees from these newspapers were laid off today.

I used to take the Branson Tri-Lakes News, but it was one of the first I let go because it was $100 a year–but it was twice a week.

The Stone County Republican was one I renewed even now because it had a number of local columnists I liked, including a garden column by Susan Lamb which I shall miss.

We got the most recent issue in the mail this week, and I said, “Uh oh” to my wife because the front page had been in color but was in black and white. I guess it uh-ohed out.

President Donald Trump on Sunday posted a falsified image of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, waving before boarding an Air Force One that had been spray-painted with graffiti.

It came months after another racist post by the president that showed the couple as primates in a jungle. That one was deleted after stiff, bipartisan backlash.

The breaking news is that there is no news today, or that journalists think posting and being OUTRAGED!!!! about Internet chatter is news.

Want to know why I don’t post about the news much any more and instead am veering into long-winded reminiscences? Because all the news is like that, and posting a hot take on the news would make me like that.

Um, Daily Mail, perhaps you should lay off the knife metaphors given the state of “knife crime” in the UK and because it’s not “MAGA” embracing political violence in the US.

KTHXBAI.

Bolsheoisie:

The children of the well-to-do who, finding themselves not as financially viable as their parents (probably because they got worthless humanity degrees) who embrace revolutionary ideologies, particularly “democratic socialism” (that is, communism) and support violence to achieve those ends even if they’re not doing the violence themselves.

Adjective: Bolsheois.

I have an English degree. I know when to use bourgeoisie and when to use bourgeois. I won’t say that I needed to use them early and often to get a passing grade–but I might be in the last couple of graduating classes that did not and who could run counter to the prevailing orthodoxy and pass.

IT WILL BE 90 DEGREES THIS WEEK! EVERYBODY PANIC!

Pipeline to the CCP: Missouri State trained executives tied to China’s military-industrial complex:

A new report from Strategy Risks found that Missouri State University (MSU) spent roughly two decades training Chinese executives, including individuals who later held positions in state-owned enterprises affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

If our universities have been giving MBAs to Chinese executives running military-connected companies and taught them financialization over all, offshoring for bigger bonuses, sacrificing quality for short term profit boosts, and failing upward before the consequences of failure are felt, doesn’t that help the United States in the long run?

(Link via Instapundit.)

Missouri bill gives women access to year-long birth control supply:

“It is very difficult to take time off work, to find childcare, to drive somewhere to get birth control, to pay for birth control,” Hile told The Independent.

Awful hard to go to a pharmacy every couple of months to pick up a prescription.

You keep on Independentin’, Missouri Independent.

Finally, the state of Missouri has moved a comma in its mandates on private health insurance.

Small US town left completely isolated and cut off from world after only airlines in town goes under:

After Spirit Airlines shuttered, some small towns were hit particularly hard — leaving at least one airport with an empty flight schedule.

The budget airline ceased operations after 34 years on May 2, 2026, and while many travelers were left scrambling to get new flights, one small airport has been left with no commercial service at all.

* * * *

At its peak, Spirit operated 15 weekly flights out of the small airport, with Fort Lauderdale and Orlando as two of the destinations.

This town, less than an hour out of Pittsburgh, had fifteen flights a week at its peak.

You know, the city of Branson used to subsidize flights to its little regional airport, but it looks like it does not have service currently. Just a place for private planes to land. Is Branson isolated? Is it desperate? Not hardly.

Eesh, how oversold for clickbait. And I clicked.

Moment Frontier Airlines plane strikes person on Denver runway seen in horrifying new video

What if he had a suicide vest on?

This plane was taking off and was full of fuel. Bigga badda boom.

I’m a little extra sensitive to the thought because I’ll be getting onto a plane this summer. Maybe.

When we went to St. Louis last month, we stayed right here: Man shot near The Dome at America’s Center, 1 in custody

3:50 in the morning, so we would not have been out of the hotel. But.

So when I got a real job (as a printer), I started thinking about getting my teeth fixed after neglecting them for much of my youth. It really wasn’t a thing in our family, and my immediate family was all in dentures by their forties. But I didn’t want that, and I ended up with a couple of appointments with Dr. Gilliam, but his treatment plan was several years in length–well, maybe not so, but a tooth at a time, it seemed. After a couple appointments with him, I got a tech job and moved to the northwestern reaches of St. Louis County–my first residence in Casinoport, actually–and I went to a sedation dentist which was the hotness at the time. They give you some valium and do a bunch of work at once. Smilin’ Jimmy scheduled me for two appointments and did the right side of my mouth at the first. He put a filling on a nerve, though, which left me in quite a bit of pain for a week or two until I got a recommendation for Dr. Dean. I scheduled an appointment with him, and although he did not have time to do a root canal that day, he sent me to an emergency dentist who did. And Dr. Dean took over the dentistry for my beautiful wife and I until we moved to Nogglestead.

I remember telling him that the plan was to keep the crooked teeth I have until we can grow new ones. “Not in our lifetime,” he said.

But I see this story on Instapundit: Humans May Be Able to Grow New Teeth Within Just 4 Years:

If all goes well, Kitano Hospital will administer the treatment to patients between the ages of 2 to 7 who are missing at least four teeth, with the end goal of having a tooth-regrowing medicine available by the year 2030. While these treatments are currently focused on patients with congenital tooth deficiency, Takahashi hopes the treatment will be available for anyone who’s lost a tooth.

Did Dr. Dean predict I would die before 2030?

Come to think of it, I would have, too. But with the help of Dr. Dean, the recently retired Dr. D., and “the big guy,” my oral surgeon, I’ve kept these teeth relatively healthy and clean for a quarter century now. I hope that counts for something.

Walmart axes self-checkouts and switches back to traditional lanes – but not because they care about customer service:

Walmart is showing self-checkout machines the door at additional supercenters as the retail giant’s automation experiment continues to unravel.

The world’s biggest retailer removed the machines from its South Philadelphia store in March, and brought back traditional cashier lanes.

It’s only the latest location to ax self-checkout. A Walmart store in Missouri removed all self-checkout machines after the kiosks led to 509 police calls in just five months.

In 2024, the retailer brought back staffed checkout lanes for Shrewsbury, Missouri, and Cleveland, Ohio storefronts, in an effort to give customers a more ‘efficient’ checkout experience.

Bosses insist the shift is about service. ‘These changes are guided by feedback from associates and customers, local shopping patterns, and the needs of the business in each community,’ the company said.

The change was aimed to ‘improve the checkout experience and enable associates to provide more personalized customer service.’

Sure, sure. Like the aisle widths, which narrowed a couple years ago to the point where it was damned difficult to navigate with a cart when other shoppers were present, widened guided by feedback and customers again, coincidentally the same time that associates wheeling giant online order carts started needing to get through it.

You know, I’ve written some marketing copy and press releases/communications from time to time, but we’ve definitely gone from putting the best face on something to tincturating down one’s lats and expressing precipitation, ainna?

Opinion: The convention center: We aren’t there – yet:

At the same time, I really believe in the people of Springfield. I’ve seen what we can do when we come together. We know how to collaborate, solve problems and do great things together.

He forgives you, Springfield. Please try do do better next time. Soon.

Opinion: Springfield didn’t reject the convention center; it rejected the process

A new process, more money slopped around, and next time it will pass!

Voters reject proposed tourism tax to fund downtown Springfield Expo and Convention Center:

“We respect the decision of our voters and appreciate the time they took to learn about the proposal and make their voices heard. Our next steps will be to take what we have heard and really focus on the priorities of the City Council as reflected by our residents,” said Springfield Mayor Jeff Schrag.

Hopefully more than the last time, one election ago.

I put the over/under on this reappearing on the ballot at 11 months.

Another day, another push to mandate insurance coverage for obscure treatments.

Ah, gentle reader, I feel for the people who need this, for the family whose child’s name is on the law, and for all the sob stories the media, activists, and politicians will dredge up to appeal to our emotions so that we won’t realize that this, and the drive to ever-more mandate ever-more outflows from the insurance companies will create ever-more increases in premiums to pay for the treatments that most people will not and, indeed, cannot use.

Oh, Brian J., you monster! What would you propose? Well, non-profits can gather funds for “increasing awareness” and “engaging with legislators.” Perhaps some of them could help with the treatment payments instead of employing people with humanities degrees, good hearts, and a taste for the finer things in life.

Ultimately, though, health care costs have spiraled for decades because the government has made it happen through legislation and enforcement and businesses have learned how to make the requirements more profitable for themselves.

Here I am, paying $2800 on health insurance (down, actually, since I was dropped from COBRA due to a software bug and went to an unsubsidized marketplace provider). Which is up $24,000 a year from when I paid my whole health insurance bill as a self-employed computer consultant. So, yeah, I am sensitive to the forces which continue to drive this increase year-over-year. Both government mandates and the big insurance company drives for ever-increasing profits and stock price heights.

In Brian J.’s pseudo-libertarian perfect world, health care costs would go down over time with increasing efficiencies and competition in the marketplace. Like you see for unsubsidized procedures like cosmetic surgery and, in the old days, LASIK surgery (they still do it, I guess, but they certainly don’t advertise for it like they used to). More freestanding health care clinics would spring up along with the diagnostic storefronts you can find if you look for them. And maybe I could go to my barber to set a broken limb or get a tooth extracted. I’m only kinda funnin’ here.

But stories like this, and the legislation they trigger, never talk about the tradeoffs. They only talk about the balm for people who are suffering difficulty or suffer a loss.