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The thing is is that...

No! The thing is not is that! What the thing is is that the thing is that!

Sorry. It really gets my goat. It's used by those who should know better.

The other idiom I can't stand is:

Have you got a pen?

No I don't.

Right, you don't have got a pen!

I don't expect everyone to have perfect grammar but I do expect those who work in the media, politics and other high profile roles with an emphasis on formal communication to at least use logical forms of accepted modern English.

Let the flaming commence!

Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, was one of the executives who helped arrange $420,000 in payments to longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen to help reimburse him for hush money he paid an adult-film star.

Weisslberg was granted immunity by federal investigators in New York in exchange for his truthful testimony about his role in the payments, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Weisselberg is the person identified in court filings as “Executive-1,” who prosecutors said helped authorize $420,000 in payments to Cohen, one person said. He testified before a grand jury investigating Cohen last month

Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg, who allegedly helped arrange hush-money reimbursement to Cohen, granted immunity

Federal prosecutors reached an immunity deal with the tabloid executive David J. Pecker, a key witness in their monthslong investigation into payments during the 2016 campaign to two women who said they had affairs with Donald J. Trump, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

Mr. Pecker is the chairman of American Media Inc., the nation’s biggest tabloid news publisher, which was involved in the payments, which prosecutors have identified as illegal contributions made in violation of campaign finance law.

David Pecker, Chief of National Enquirer’s Publisher, Is Said to Get Immunity in Trump Inquiry

The Guardian and the BBC report that last year the Conservative Party in the UK received twice as much money in donations from dead people than from living members. The Labour Party received almost £10M more in donations, mostly from living members. The Conservative Party had a membership of 124 000 (living) and Labour 564 443.

A jury has found former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty after a three-week trial on tax and bank fraud charges — a major if not complete victory for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as he continues to investigate the president’s associates.

The jury convicted Manafort on eight of the 18 counts against him. The jury said it was deadlocked on the other 10. U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis declared a mistrial on those other charges.

Manafort was convicted on five counts of filing false tax returns, one count of not filing a required IRS form, and two bank fraud counts.

Manafort convicted of 8 counts, judge will declare mistrial in 10 others

President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen has surrendered to the FBI in New York as he prepares to plead guilty Tuesday afternoon in an investigation into his activities and business dealings, according to people familiar with the matter.

Cohen is expected to plead guilty to charges related to bank fraud, tax fraud and a campaign finance violation, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. Cohen agreed to the deal after prosecutors claimed he risked more than a dozen years in prison, one person said.

A hearing in the case is scheduled for 4 p.m. Tuesday at a federal courthouse in Manhattan. Afterward, Deputy U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami, who has been overseeing the probe, is scheduled to make public remarks.

The plea discussions follow a months-long grand-jury investigation into Cohen’s activities, including his taxi business, as well as a hush-money payment that Cohen arranged to an adult-film actress, Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had a tryst with Trump years ago.

Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen has surrendered to FBI as he prepares to plead guilty in federal investigation

Mrs Turgid and I went for a holiday in the USA this year. I've never been before, but she has, since she has an aunt who lives in Portland, Oregon.

Since we were going to the USA, I decided that we really must visit the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the way, so we flew from London to Orlando via Dublin. The most stressful part of the trip was Dublin airport. You have to collect your boarding pass for the second leg of the flight in the airport and they're pretty laid back at the desk in spite of schedules and deadlines. Then you have to go through US immigration. That wouldn't be so bad if you hadn't waited an age to get your boarding pass.

I was lucky and got selected for extra security. Oh boy, did I get security. Luckily the fellow doing it was very jolly and Mrs Turgid remarked that he was now on more intimate terms with me than she was.

The immigration officer was very efficient and being an idiot and tired and flustered I forgot what day I was leaving the USA which did not impress him very much. When going to the USA the immigration officers are mostly interested in how and when you will be leaving the USA. Remember that to make your immigration experience as painless and quick as possible.

On the flight, as we landed I got an interesting earworm, "Living With a Hernia" by Weird Al. The first song on the radio in the taxi on the way from the airport to the hotel in Orlando was "Living In America!" Spooky?

The Kennedy Space Center was the coolest thing I have ever seen and I saw two alligators. We had lunch with an astronaut! That was a very pleasant surprise that Mrs Turgid had arranged. We saw space shuttle Atlantis and we did weep. We also had a long bus tour of the site, including many launch pads. We saw the VAB and pads 39A and 39B. I also noticed a building which said on the side "Home of the X37-B." The tour guide didn't mention that.

After the tours we wandered round until we saw the Saturn V. Now I can die a happy man.

After three nights in Orlando (which was very hot and humid, but with plentiful and cheap food) we went via Atlanta to Portland, Oregon to stay with auntie and her husband. Oregon, and the Pacific Northwest, is beautiful. On the plane we saw Mount Hood, Mt Ranier and Mt St Helens.

Portland is a lovely place, and Oregon is full of Pentiums such as Willamette, Yamhill, Deschutes, you name it. They also make lots of very excellent wine and beer. There are lagers, wheat beers, amber ales, stouts, porters... and they all taste of something good. The food's great too. I made the mistake of ordering side orders in the pub. There was enough to feed a family of four.

We went to the beach at Lincoln City for a few nights. I put my feet in the Pacific Ocean and it was cold (Scotland cold).

On the way back from Lincoln City we stopped at the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum where I saw the Spruce Goose, an SR-71B, X-15, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo 16, V1, V2, Goddard's rocket, all kinds of weird helicopters...

We drove along the Columbia river, went to Timberline Lodge on Mt Hood, went to Multnomah Falls, went into Washington State etc.

Mrs Turgid and I also went to Seattle by train for a couple of nights. I know people like to berate American trains, but by modern British standards they are sheer luxury.

Seattle is pretty cool. We stayed in a hotel near the Space Needle and very close by was a pub called the Teku Tavern which had hundreds of kinds of excellent beers and ciders. We went on a tour about the old town called Beneath the Streets. We also found a really cool shop called Utilikilts which is a gentlemen's outfitters specialising in kilts for the physically active and strident working man. Unfortunately I did not have enough money left to buy a Utilikilt, having just bought a laptop. They don't seem to have invented the Buiness Kilt yet. I think I might send them an email.

We didn't go up the Space Needle, but we went up the Smith Tower, which made me seasick and I had to take a pint of ale to steady my nerves.

There was also a long-haired dude wearing a bandana driving a Pontiac Firebird with the roof off, with tiger skin seat covers and loud music.

Conclusion: American beer is good, American food is not too bad if you choose wisely, the weather's hot, sometimes hot and humid, and no one tried to shoot me. And they went to the Moon, in peace, for all mankind.

As they say in Portland, Oregon, "In our America love wins."

This has been...a busy week. I've been transferred to the Madison branch of that bakery I started working for, and have spent the last couple of days preparing; I'm now staying in the absolute cheapest hotel I could find whose reviews contained zero instances of the word "bedbug."

A good friend I've mentioned before, Matt, lives in Madison and has been helping me find a place on short notice here. I haven't seen much of the city but I really, really like it compared to Milwaukee. The public transit is even better if you can believe that, people seem much more laid back, and there's lots of early 20th-century buildings near the Capitol that just exude history. It feels almost nostalgic, like a much smaller, nicer NYC in some ways. It's kind of appropriate we'd end up in the same city again considering we went to college together and, i found out then, grew up within a mile of one another.

Not for the first time I find myself thinking "if I were straight, or even the least little bit bisexual, we'd be married." Alas.

Anyway...what got me here? Bagels.

Now, as a born New Yorker, it makes sense I'd have a sort of innate affinity for bagel dough. The stuff just seems to like me, insofar as something that (I truly hope...) isn't sentient or alive in any way save for a bit of yeast can. First attempt at the dough came out feeling just perfect, and my particular method of putting holes in them--take dowel, punch hole in center of 5 oz. dough round, and more or less goatse it apart to around 2 inches, sorry for the mental image--works better than the "roll out a dough snake and pinch the ends" method.

In particular, the Capitol Square holds a farmer's market every Saturday, and people come from miles around and wait hours for specific products. I am told that my bagels have the potential to be one of them, along with a few of the other products the bakery makes. Despite there being at least 3 or 4 hipster-infested coffee shops within 2 blocks of the Capitol building, one of which has the word "bagels" in the name, apparently no one's thought of selling them at the Farmer's Market, which deserves both those capital letters.

Madison seems waaaaay more health-conscious than Milwaukee, so I'm going to try to get permission to make a whole-wheat version (with a pinch of vital gluten) and maybe some vegan bran muffins. Ground flaxseed and water in 1:3 ratio can replace eggs, 4 Tbsp. mix per egg, if you put a tiny bit more baking powder in. Autumn is coming too, which if this place is as hipsterish as I suspect it is, means we can do pumpkin-spice everything and make a killing.

As much fun as all this is, I'd really rather be doing pharmacology, and will see if I can get floated a loan to go through the UW Madison training program (I, along with 4 of every 5 other contenders, did not get in last time through the employment application process). But for a little while this may be fun, in a hardworking, busy, up at 5:30 AM every day kind of way.

This email was submitted into evidence in the Manafort trial yesterday.

Paul Manafort emailed Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner on November 30, 2016 recommending Stephen Calk for the Secretary of the Army. At the same time, Manafort had received the first part of what would be $16 million in loans from Calk's bank, the Federal Savings Bank.

Read the email from Manafort to Trump adviser Jared Kushner submitted into evidence

I bought a laptop with an AMD Ryzen 7 2700U CPU incorporating a Vega 10 GPU, an Acer Swift 3. It has 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Unfortunately the RAM is not upgradable but when the SSD breaks I will be able to remove it and replace it with spinning rust.

I've got Slackware-current running on it with kernel 4.17.14. It came with Windows 10 but that has been removed. In fact I managed to set it up without ever booting into Windows. When you power it up, you must press F2 to get into the BIOS. Obviously, you can avoid ever starting Windows if you press F2 quickly enough on first power up.

I made a USB boot stick for installing Slackware-current, It's actually not that hard. I began by using Alien Bob's local Slackware mirror script on my main PC to get the latest Slackware-current and to create the installation DVD .iso image. It downloaded many gigabytes of data, so took quite a while even on my reasonable (80Mbit) Internet connection.

I found some useful instructions and some boot files for making a Slackware UEFI USB boot stick. Short story: use gdisk to partition the stick with two partitions, the first being 100M in size, the second being the rest of the stick. The first has to has a type of 0xEF00 and the second 0x8300. Then you put a vfat filesystem on the first. It tells you to put an ext4 FS on the second but I'm not sure that's necessary. You need to create a directory in the first partition called EFI and under it a subdirectory called something like Slackware. Copy the files as directed at the above link into the EFI/Slackware subdir and sync the disks. You can also have a subdir called Boot which the firmware recognises specially as a default, and there is a naming convention for the files that go in there. Google is your friend.

When making a USB boot stick for a pre-UEFI system you need to run isohybrid on the .iso installation image. I did that here too. (Is this necessary for UEFI? It didn't do any harm.) dd the slackware-current .iso into the second partition of the USB stick.

Plug the stick into the laptop and power cycle, pressing F2 quickly to avoid booting any existing OS.

The firmware (BIOS) is UEFI and has Secure Boot. Before you can tell it to boot something other than Windows, you have to set a master password in the firmware. When you have done that you can change the priority of the boot devices and add the new boot loaders to the menu, after deleting the existing Windows ones.

Make sure that the USB stick is the first preference of boot device in the UEFI menus and remove the hard disk if possible so you can't accidentally boot Windows.

Reboot the machine, and hit F12 for a boot menu. Hopefully, the USB stick should be there. Select it and the familiar Slackware installation should start.

At this point you can make a backup of your Windows image in case you ever need to take the machine back for a warranty repair or sell it on to someone who needs Windows. I backed up my pristine uninstalled Windows image using dd from the command line and dumping the data onto an external USB hard disk. Piped through gzip the 256GB disk image compressed down to about 12GB. (There was a stuck pixel on the screen and I was glad I did this since I had to take it back to the store for a replacement).

Installing Slackware-current was very simple. I partitioned the SSD with gdisk to have three partitions, a 100MB UEFI boot partition (vfat), a Linux swap partition (8GB) and a Linux partition (the rest of the disk ext4). The installer said "Slackware 14.1" but that's because of the root disk image on the boot disk. I installed the complete distribution and rebooted. It worked, with eight penguins at the top of the screen.

When I say "it worked" it did, keyboard, touchpad and built-in WiFi. The kernel (4.14.56) that came with Slackware-current wasn't new enough to see the Vega GPU, so X would not run.

I downloaded the latest (at the time) stable kernel (4.17.8) and did a "make oldconfig" using the kernel configuration file from the slackware-current that I had installed. There were hundreds of new options and most of them were mysterious or irrelevant, so I just selected things as modules where I was unsure. I selected the support for the new AMD GPUs. Through poking around in /sys I noted that the touchpad was an Elan something and the WiFi chip was an Atheros 10k (driver ath10k_pci). I rebuilt the kernel and modules, but the new bzImage in /boot/EFI/Slackware and put a new entry in /boot/EFI/Slackware/elilo.conf for it and did a make modules_install. On rebooting the machine, I hit TAB to get the elilo menu and selected my new kernel. I was then able to get X up and running with a UK keyboard and the touchpad.

It turns out that to do a middle button click on the touchpad you have to put the tips of three fingers down and then push down to click. It takes a bit of practise...

By the way, I've been using it for three weeks and it's never swapped yet. It also has a fingerprint reader. I believe they are useless and will not even try to get it working.

There are a couple of problems, though. It intermittently hangs on boot when the kernel tries to switch from UEFI VGA to the AMD GPU driver (the open source one) and the machine locked up hard when watching a video in Palemoon. It wasn't on the network so I couldn't try to ssh. I had to power cycle it.

Next we shall see how SETI@Home runs on it.

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Hmm....that sounds awful familiar....

Freedom of the press may be guaranteed in the Constitution. But a plurality of Republicans want to give President Trump the authority to close down certain news outlets, according to a new public opinion survey conducted by Ipsos and provided exclusively to The Daily Beast.

New Poll: 43% of Republicans Want to Give Trump the Power to Shut Down Media