Hope your week was all you’d dreamed it could be. And I hope these links are to your satisfaction…
I don’t know what else to give you. That should be enough to get things rolling. If not, there’s always this wonderful song.
Friday Morning Links
Hope your week was all you’d dreamed it could be. And I hope these links are to your satisfaction…
I don’t know what else to give you. That should be enough to get things rolling. If not, there’s always this wonderful song.
Comments
426 responses to “Friday Morning Links”
4) My son has taken Tae Kwon Do for several years and is nearly a black belt. After his black belt prep class on Saturdays there is a class for developmentally disabled kids. He stayed after class for a few minutes last week to speak to an instructor, and I was observing the adults sitting in the chairs.
“Why do all these developmental kids get a ride here with their grandparents?” I wondered, and then it hit me—these adults weren’t their grandparents. They were the parents. Out of perhaps a dozen or so kids, all but one or two had parents who were in their fifties.
I’ve heard that older parents are more likely to have Down’s syndrome kids, but otherwise you don’t hear much about how a child of an older parent might be affected. But in this class, these are not just Down’s syndrome kids—a couple are, but most are not visibly disabled (though it doesn’t take long watching them to realize their speaking or behavior demonstrates clearly why they are there.) Waiting until 38-42+ to have kids might make financial or logistical sense for all kinds of reasons, but this really brings home just how much of a risk older parents are taking.
Only older women are at greater risk. Male reproductive material is unaffected.
That’s why men can trade in for newer models and have three kids in quick succession while in their 40s.
Bingo. It’s all about women believing the feminist lie that they can “have it all”, and safely and successfully put off motherhood until later in life while they climb the career ladder.
That’s why men can trade in for newer models and have three kids in quick succession while in their 40s.
As long as the newer model doesn’t find where you dumped the older one, right?
I’m just spitballing here, but a human cash for clunkers program might really be what this country needs.
It would certainly keep old rich white women from spending the social security money of young black men who will be dead before they ever see a dime from that program.
It would do wonders for transplant patients if we actually had a parts market.
Joke.
Do you know how to tell when your girlfriend is getting fat?
When she fits into your wife’s clothing.
I larfed
May not be true, actually. There’s some evidence that older fathers result in higher rates of autism.
Wait, do you mean autism or “autism”?
Because one is real and one is a catchall for kids that are just weird as fuck and their parents would rather say they’re “on the spectrum” than admit they did a shitty job of socializing them.
Autism autism. The non-verbal kind.
Gotcha. I was just checking since it seems all the rage today to put people “on the spectrum” that have nothing wrong with them.
Do you have a link to the study?
Here. It actually shows increased risks for both maternal and paternal age.
Thanks. I’ll check it out in case Banjos needs replacing at a later date.
(Just kidding. I could never replace this one.)
That says ASD. That’s the “spectrum” bullshit lumped together with real autism.
I had never heard of this “spectrum” thing until a few years ago. I was getting some food with some people and the kid helping us was acting a bit weird. When we left, the mother in the group said that young man is definitely on the spectrum. I said I have no idea what that is, but the only thing wrong with that kid is he was baked out of his gord.
My mother-in-law had a child in her early 40s and I guess he is within the autism spectrum. He’s 5 years old and does not speak quite right. Could be just a speech impediment or the fact that he rarely interacts with people who aren’t his mother.
The Japanese may have found the answer.
Seppuku is the honorable way.
“Taro Aso, the finance minister, said on Monday that the elderly should be allowed to “hurry up and die” to relieve pressure on the state to pay for their medical care.”
Hold on a second. A quick skim of the Wikipedia page “health care system in Japan” reveals that this island nation has an individual insurance mandate, total government control of medical procedure pricing, and a ban on for-profit hospitals. With all this well-intentioned government control, how can it be that healthcare costs are still a problem?? The wise progressives told me that if only we’d pass the right laws, we could have an infinite wellspring of free healthcare for every single citizen!
What went wrong?
I’ve noticed a correlation between voting for Democrats and autism. I’m still investigating the link.
lol…sloop u so funny.
My mom was 40 when I was born. What are you trying to say about me, JATNAS?
Are you still working on your gold belt? Keep trying, you’ll earn it one of these days…
You’s retarded, boy.
My wife was 48 when she gave birth to the most well-adjusted of our kids.
It’s obviously not mine.
Does your child have an intense interest in delivering packages?
She keeps asking about the optimal gravity drainage slope on septic lines.
I didn’t replace the water heater myself. The job took too many tools I didn’t own.
Look on the upside, plumber and civil engineer are two jobs that can’t be replaced by robots.
between 1/8 and 1/4 over 10′
I think you are on to something there. I have had that thought as well. It would be interesting to see how an actual study that could back that up would be received.
HAHAHAHAHA
Even after weeding out the fake autistic kids, there is little doubt that there is a strong correlation between the rise in autism and the delay in people having kids. That is what changed over the last 40 years, not increased use of vaccines (which had been used for decades before the autism rates began to rise). But that contradicts the preferred life choices of certain groups, so we dare not discuss it.
Vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy
Hiding your links in pics is a dirty pull.
::grins sheepishly::
Wow, graphic links. Well done!
I have to admit that after seeing the first one, I won’t be able to have an erection for at least the next month.
You shot that much?
That’s a BINGO!
They have pills for men of your age OMWC.
After that, nothing is going to work short of duct tape and popsicle sticks.
Master Lou can help.
mine fell off
“also the guy banging his dead brother’s wife,”
He’s just following the biblical injunction! Deuteronomy 25:5: “If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her.”
Are you sure you’re not sermonizing?
It’s all that Bible memorization I had to do as a kid coming back to haunt me…
Some of those OT lesson were fun. I liked the one where Judah knocked up his daughter-in-law.
The one where Elisha calls forth two she-bears to maul some kids who were making fun of his baldness is one that’s sadly overlooked in most Sunday schools.
That just seems – disproportionate.
‘They weren’t young kids. Basically the bear mauled some chavs. And we know they deserve it.
Mauling for mocking is disproportionate, regardless.
It wasn’t just “mocking”; the mocking was in prelude to a violent attack.
OT God was a vengeful God.
Yeah, OT God was kind of a dick.
Off topic God?
Yeah, OT God was kind of a dick.
I suppose it would have been better to allow a street gang to rough up and perhaps kill His prophet.
I recall an apocryphal conversation between the Inklings Charles Williams and C.S. Lewis where Williams thinks Lewis should write a story (along the lines of Narnia) featuring the bears talking after the event thanking God for providing them their “daily bread.”
Does it mention the brother doing a bunch of coke and leaving his first wife? Because I missed that part in bible study.
It’s called reading between the lines. Gosh imagine what the world would be like if you followed the Bible to the letter…. (OK maybe not to different if you follow the old testament part)
It’s all about how you interpret the good book. We have a “living bible.” This means that I can take the language of the bible, *torture any meaning I want out of the words, and call it biblical.
*This can also be done with other founding documents.
This actually seems to be a trend among the left these days. I seem to be seeing derpbook memes and articles about how no true Christian could ever support Trump, or oppose whatever lefty agenda they happen to be pimping.
“Render onto Caesar”, political dodge complete.
It’s the biblical equivalent of the commerce clause.
For 20 years, I have been talking about writing an essay entitled “On Being Caesar”, I started outlining early this week, I am going to submit it here if I get it finished.
Sid or Julius?
Salad… duh
Yeah, a while back I had a friend post a link to a story about how “taking away Obamacare would really hurt the poor,” and she added in there “that which you do to the least, you do to me.” Guess I keep overlooking the part where Jesus advocated using government force to steal from the rich, funnel the money through bureaucracies, and then send it to a government program for the poor. I always thought he was saying you personally should do things to help those in need. Guess I just miss those hidden meanings, just like with the Constitution.
Depends on the translation you are using. Perhaps you need to get a copy of the New Prog Revision.
Of course the actual poor were already eligible for Medicaid without Obamacare anyway, so that’s a phony issue.
The ACA is beggaring a whole new class of poor into existence.
Well, they were supposed to be used to justify imposing single payer. But then the damn Republicans had to go and ruin everything!
Well, supporters of dying institutions like the church and the nation-state need to stick together.
You think the church is a dying institution? I’d have to disagree.
I was being snarky.
“Thou shall do some mad lines yo, and abandonth the first of your wives, and take the wife of your brother to bed. Thou didn’t chooseth the Thug Life, the Thug Life chooseth you.”
*opera applause*
*Sprays coffee through nose
Painful but worth it. Thanks for the laugh.
The house of Biden must not perish!
just going to leave this here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/5vwy6v/screenshot_my_daughterwife_has_completely_ruined/
probably SF’d the link but… don’t care?
Yeah, don’t care.
god I love that game.
Playing as Poland for reasons of ancestral pride.
Swallowed Lithuania, Turov, Denmark and southern Finland by military/claims.
Took Bohemia via personal union, invested early in universities. Currently tech leaders in the world with most powerful european military, letting Mongols batter themselves as they approach.
And then I’ll export the game to EU4.
Wow… I try to keep my games only PG-13
You’re playing Crusader Kings 2 wrong if you’re rated anything but M.
Listen if you don’t weaponize your daughters before sending them off, you’re doing it wrong.
22 intrigue, Cruel, possessed, ambitious.
Why?
Just a joke, and part of my play style with the game. I like to play up the more role-playing aspect of CK2, and so I’m much more likely to murder my family then marry them. I find that the slot of time the weirder situations in the game are caused by trying to min-max the game, and that’s not the way I play CK2
I tend to not do too much of the insanely depraved shit. Partially because a lot of those depraved strategies are risky, and if I’m playing as a king I tend to play a more conservative long game.
Lesser noble I take more gambles, less to lose more to gain.
Lesser noble I take more gambles, less to lose more to gain.
Can always solve that with a good ol’ REALM PURRRRRRRRRGE.
Oh, I’ve done plenty of in-realm purges. I strongly suggest it if you have elective. Once every duke and 2/3s of the counts are cousins your dynasty is safe.
When I swallowed Denmark they had elective succession so I just removed that crown, no use for it right guys?
If you want a fun, quick game (that you may have to start over numerous times), start as a minor duke or count and use the ruler designer and give yourself inbred. Goal is to try to not be inbred. Lots of dead children, and Reaper’s Due makes it a game of Russian Roulette now.
John, what was the youtube channel you linked where the guy puts up hours long videos of playing those strategy games?
I think that was Pan, but he was posting videos of Arumba, Master of CK2/EU4, and he has a couple tutorial videos for both (some are obsolete because of patches and updates).
thanks
Crusader Kings 2 is a phenomenal game. How do you guys like all the recent expansions? I was thinking of snagging them on Steam at some point.
I don’t like Conclave, I don’t play with it, Reaper’s Due is useful. Old Gods and Legacy of Rome are required, Horse Lords and the Republic pretty fun because both nomads/republics have great mechanics.
Except for the whole part where the deceased brother actually had a son. Then again, maybe he doesn’t “identify” as such.
Was God unfair to Onan? One Skeptic regards it as “almost too ridiculous too discuss” that God would kill Onan for refusing to impregnate his sister-in-law.
Indeed it would be, for a modern with an air-conditioned house, and living in comfort and in no need of corporate survival benefits. In fact, Onan committed no less than four despicable sins, any one of which was worthy of God’s judgment [Hamilton’s Genesis commentary, 435]:
Onan refused to carry out his responsibility as the brother of the deceased.
For Onan’s sister-in-law, whose original husband had died, to have a child was the only way to ensure an inheritance in the family and survive. In this sort of social situation, ancient protocol demanded that the nearest male kin to the dead man provide his services (so to speak) to produce an heir.
This concept was later institutionalized in the Deuteronomic law as levirate marriage (Dt. 25). Ruth and Boaz were an example of this type of arrangement, and Joseph and Mary may have been as well.
Onan not only refused, but repeatedly refused.
This is a point Jonathan Kirsch misses in his book The Harlot by the Side of the Road. The verse as rendered above carries the connotation and syntax fairly well: whenever Onan lay with Tamar — not just once, but every time. Onan was a “repeat offender” and had plenty of chances to fulfill his obligation. God was merciful and gave him plenty of leeway before doing away with him.
Onan not only repeatedly refused, but pretended that he wasn’t refusing.
If Onan was not willing to take part, all he had to do was say so. It would have been an insult, and he would have had to suffer disgrace (cf. Num. 27:8-11 — though these practices were widespread in the ANE) for not helping out a helpless widow, but it was still his option. Instead, he decided to go for having his cake and eating it too, by having the pleasure of conjugal relations with Tamar, while avoiding the obligation — how selfish can you get?
Even more selfish — that leads to sin #4:
Onan was therefore setting it up so that he would get the inheritance and leave Tamar penniless and helpless.
If Tamar had no heir born to her, guess who got the family’s inheritance?
Bottom line: Don’t feel sorry for Onan.
I forgot to put the above into a block quote or italics, so for the record, the previous post is entirely from the linked website.
“Mr. Biden has created financial concerns for the family by spending extravagantly on his own interests (including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs and gifts for women with whom he has sexual relations), while leaving the family with no funds to pay legitimate bills,” the filing reads.
Nothing left to cut?
But Daddy told this is how everyone budgets
It depends on what your definition of legitimate is.
Everybody’s a Russian puppet now!
Chuck Schumer!
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/03/flashback-chuck-schumer-meets-vlad-putin-new-york-city/
Dianne Feinstein!
http://www.weaselzippers.us/327666-brit-hume-calls-out-senator-diane-feinstein-for-being-a-russian-agent/
Just a reminder, at THIS site, your comment gets sent for moderation in Warty’s basement if you put in more than one link per comment.
And I thought it was just because I hadn’t figure out which damn button embeds a link.
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES.
LINKING IS ONE AT A TIME, LEST YOU DRAW THE EYE OF ZARDOZ UPON YOU.
After losing several times when she was supposed to be ascendent, don’t you think Hillary would be tired of it all?
Well, except for the fact that she’s a sociopath.
She’s a bitter clinger.
You saying she looks like a corporal in drag drinking coffee?
That would be a Bitter Klinger.
As opposed to the beer, a Klinger Bitter.
I don’t know – the job of Mayor seems like a lot more work with a lot less perks than she’s used to. Probably requires a great deal of interaction with the kind of disgusting scum she avoids – taxpayers, cops, firefighters, accountants, etc…
From what I’ve seen on TV, being Mayor of New York seems pretty sweet. Plus Heather Locklear.
I hope so, she deserves it. Plus it would keep her away from most of us (sorry, Rhywun.)
What would be even funnier is if she somehow lost the election. Especially if it went on a borough by borough basis.
Well there is no way she would win Staten Island.
Ever watch Miami Vice while high on acid?
True confession: I’ve only done acid once in my life and that was just before going into a theater to see Love Story.
Love means never having to say Oh My God did you see those purple leprechauns just walk in the theater!
I tried it a half dozen or so times when I was in Europe. Amsterdam probably was better for it than Scranton.
Isn’t that the movie about Al and Tipper Gore?
True confession: I’ve never done acid.
Wasted it, then.
No kidding. If my first acid experience had included Love Story, it would have been my last, as well.
I saw ‘Blue Velvet’ in the theater dosed without knowing anything about David Lynch or his movies. It was…interesting.
Imagine if it had been Eraserhead.
Best nights of my life were camping in Lake George trippin my balls off.
While in college a group of us went to see “Fantasia” at the university theater. One of us took acid and he did okay until the “night on witch mountain” scene and lost it. We had to pry him out from under the chairs.
McDonald’s has a crazy plan to win back patrons – better burgers
They really had a stranglehold on the US market for a few decades there. There are now probably 4-5 inexpensive burger joints within a couple miles of my house with far superior burgers. We ate at Elevation Burger the other day, it was quite tasty.
They tried the “better burger” thing a couple of years back with their premium sirloin burgers. They were tasty. Particularly the mushroom swiss. But apparently it didn’t work, because they dropped it after a couple of years.
Tasty burgers with McDonald’s fries is a dangerous combination – particularly when coupled with drive-thru capability and a busy lunch schedule.
It’s exotic meat month at a burger joint near me.
http://www.bullcityburgerandbrewery.com/
I had the llama last year.
I place in Louisville called “Game” is exotic meat every day. They are a burger place with about a dozen choices of animal at any time. They had just run out of camel the last time I was there. Elk was pretty good, Kangaroo not so much.
I had a lionburger a while back at a local place, but due to death threats by eco-terrorists, they’re unfortunately not looking to do it or similar stuff again.
Please tell me they serve horse.
Neigh. They do not.
* SLAP *
That sounds like just the kind of place I’d like to try
http://wildgameburgers.com/
SCORE!
I’m going to be spending a couple of days in the Louisville area in early June, I definately have to check it out.
I actually prefer Hammerheads to it, I havent tried their 3rd restaurant, it opened after I left town.
Hammerheads doesn’t have weird meats, but their duck tacos are awesome.
Would that be this hammerheads? http://louisvillehammerheads.com/ (which looks like it’s run out of a house.)
Would that be this hammerheads?
Yes, its a basement under a house, with stairs down from street level.
It was a bar for years and years prior to Hammerheads.
Duck tacos with Grippo fries is my meal of choice there.
I’m told that Zebra meat is the most delicious of meats from which to cut a rare steak or make a burger, although I’ve never had it myself.
In my old age, my stomach can’t handle shitty fast food burgers anymore. It’s fine if I take them out of the buns and just eat the meat. And I can handle bread just fine, so I’m not a glutard. Do they put some kind of weird additive in the buns or something?
I can eat greasy meat all day long – the fattier the better. But once I add bread to the mix, my stomach churns. Same reason I can’t stomach pizza anymore.
But I can have a milkshake and not get the same effect.
Same, except that homemade pizza doesn’t affect me like commercial. Pretty much the only bread I eat any more is of the liquid variety, anyway.
Bunch of hags. Yeah me too. Burgers are burp city and only pizza made with fresh ingredients or else…. burp city.
This thread needs some cheeseburger deep dish.
Some chicken fried cheeseburger deep dish.
How about just giant grilled cheese sandwiches?
These euphemisms.
Kuma!!
metal-themed burger joint
Never been to that or here, but I’d love to go sometime:
http://www.murderburger.co.nz/
I threw up in mouth with a lot of those pictures. Take it easy on us, it’s early in the morning.
I heard a rumor that the penis is good and guns are evil. Did anyone else hear anything like that?
This is my rifle, this is my gun.
This is my rifle!
This is my gun!
This one’s for fighting!
This one’s for fun!
Damn it OMWC!
It was fact-checked and found to be at best half-true.
You just want an excuse to wear Sean Connery’s outfit.
“The Penis Mightier, you’re sitting on a goldmine Trebek!”
That’s not what Zardoz told me!
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES.
THE SCIENTIFIC ONE IS CORRECT. THE PENIS IS EVIL! THE GUN IS GOOD!
Almighty Zardoz, the scientific one has claimed the opposite of your teachings!
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES.
YOU ARE SCIENTIFIC, MAD ONE. WHILE THE WARTY ONE IS MIGHTY, THE RUMOR HE HEARD IS WRONG.
There are so many things wrong with this new scare story in the local rag.
We hear over and over again how the GOP has no plan for what happens after they repeal the ACA. In the next breath, they tell us that there is a plan but it is terrible. Which is it?
More than a million people are getting subsidies? Our population is only 5 million. 20% of our state is on the dole? We are fscked
I’m really tired of people trying to downplay the cost of insurance “because there will be subsidies to offset the rise in insurance costs.” Where do those fucking subsidies come from? The Subsidy Fairy?
The reason Minnesoda is going to take it in the shorts is because the Feds are going to transition to block grants instead of matching funds. So it is bad that the Feds figured out that states that pay way too much like Minnesoda are screwing them?
Oh, and why is unfair that with block grants Minnesoda will receive less because:
Argh! I can’t believe how many people are ready to complain for hours and days because they are being asked to pay for the choices they made.
Since I AM THE LAW, here’s a chick and her ass and legs. NSFW
Would you mind marking NSFW links? Some of us connect from work and could get in trouble over that.
Dude, it’s Warty.
I don’t care, still would. Oh… you mean commenter.
And?
If this is a return to some previous behaviour I’ve not witnessed before, well, I’ve not witnessed it before.
this … luckily I was working from home yesterday when I clicked on a Warty link
Would you be in trouble because of the nsfw nature of the pic? Or because your boss was mad that you had spent the last 3 hours in a drooling trance as you tried to memorize every pixel on your screen?
Jacking it in front of clients. Some offices don’t allow that.
Weird, huh?
Any client or coworker who complains is just jealous.
Do they even think about how that carafe of cream down at the coffee station gets filled each day?
The nature of the image violates computer use policy and is in the category of “Things that can actually get a state worker in trouble”
I thought you were a government employee.
At the state level, sleeping on the job, drinking on the job or looking at porn on the job can get an employee in trouble.
I know it’s different for the feds, where that is one of their main passtimes.
While not pornographic per se, the linked image is easily mistaken for it.
No wonder you’re grumpy
That’s a pretty pornographic persey.
I’ll admit I myself was expecting some sort of poultry joke, but humm… yeah there kinda was a description of the link so…
Agreed. Thanks UCS.
The rest of you can have the thicc ones; this is more my speed.
This. So much this.
^^THIS^^
Maybe there’s a compromise (possibly NSFW, not nude)
So nice to come here and not see nonstop Trump articles. The media and the Democrats are on a batshit crazy witch hunt. They are determined to create a scandal out of everything.
Just as long as you don’t get confused and forget that Trump is embarrassing scum.
Don’t worry I still hate both sides equally.
Make it more equal, dammit.
Metal
Nokturnal Mortum from Ukraine.
Trust me.
Why would I trust anyone who can turn into a snake?
I’d trust them about Metal, mostly because turning into a snake is pretty fucking metal.
I like synthesizers. At one point I owned fifteen of them.
And I like metal.
But they don’t go together.
Hunter Biden’s wife accuses him of infidelity, drug use and wasting money on prostitutes in divorce filings
I don’t really see it as “wasting” money imo
He used our income on drugs, mistresses, and prostitutes, and the rest he just squandered!
+1 Georgie Best
Best the footballer, right?
No, the one I’m referring to played soccer.
I WAS TRYING TO CLASS THE JOINT UP BY SAYING FOOTBALLER!
Yeh, him. The Northern Irishman. Great iconoclastic dribbler.
Here are three more agencies we could easily lose.
Where are the Bobs? Time to start cutting!
If it is Caterpillar, one of those Illinois cities that they are in is probably Peoria. That would be punishment enough for anyone. I had a project once in Peoria and I hated having to go there to meet the customer. What a hell hole.
-1 red Swingline.
Unrelated to links. For some reason my profile pic rotated after I uploaded it. Any idea how to fix it?
Lean your head way over to the left and you should be good to go.
Put the image in Paint, rotate it, save it, then upload it again.
Turn computer on side.
Done!
MaximumWant to know how good you are in bed? Smart condom will rate sexual performance including speed of thrusts and duration velocity reached!
Why? Talk about ruining something with a bunch of stupid details.
Does it work with Google home and Amazon echo? Alexa am I going to need a shot of penicillin after this one?
But taking actual measurements will keep men from… Expounding on their expertise. Seems like a trap made by women.
Sounds like if that is the criteria, you could just go by blood volume on the sheets.
Notify me when they develop a phone camera app that can detect VD.
I wonder if this will also be blabbing the details to the manufacturer in realtime.
I’m more worried that the ring has some secret Constriction Mode that can be activated remotely
“At minimum you can determine whether or not the device is in use even if it’s not interconnected,”
This guy is getting his rocks off just *knowing* that someone, somewhere is use a sex toy?
Important question, Does it let you share your scores on Facebook?
Does it automatically tweet your stats ever time you bone?
It seems like this would be better addressed by some sort of online rating system by satisfied (or not) customers.
What the fuck is a “condom”?
something that sailors wear when they are in port.
Planet McPlanetface: NASA asks Internet to name new planets with predictable results
“Another planet ‘The’?”
“Die, Planet, Die”?
Anyone who knows German . . .
Another girl, another planet
https://youtu.be/n-Wn12g7uT4
AHHAHAHAHA
This is never getting old. Ever.
Just wait until it’s fucking 2041 and you have eighty year old women in old folks homes, half-senile, droning on about how Clinton really won in 2016.
The living would envy the dead.
When hell is full, the dead will walk the Earth.
“Grahhhh….I’m with her….braaaaaains!”
When the guff is empty of souls, the world comes to an end. Unless Demi Moore dies giving birth. Then we are all good.
Gotta say I like the idea of naming the planets after astronauts who died in the line of duty. Name them after the Challenger crew.
There will be a lot of planets named after dead cosmonauts
That’s fine; there are billions of planets out there. Let the russkies have a few.
Don’t forget Laika. Godspeed, sobachka.
Grissom, White, and Chaffee should get the first three.
I second that motion.
Dude, its trappist…CMON
wow…really…NO ONE SUGGESTED IT!
I may have to dust of my theTwitter machine box and fire off the CORRECT LIST:
Achel
Chimay
Orval
Le Trappe
Rochefort
Westvleteren
Westmalle
Eh, just give the job to that Rocky Mosele guy. He’s got the star naming scam locked up.
I’d say the “Blank McBlankyface” format has become a bit tired.
via former Florida LP Chair and former Florida LP gubernatorial candidate Adrian Wylie. I’m not sure if he’s kidding or not, but I suspect he isn’t.
I’m going to be really not surprised if the new ACA is just as shitty as the old one.
Lachowsky care-
Repeal the ACA and deregulate the medical industry. It’s pretty simple Rebublicans. You can do it.
No government hand in the till? Blasphemy!
While this wouldn’t surprise me, I’m not sure I’d believe that this guy is really plugged in enough to get the details.
*LH drives through campus and spots a gaggle of girls in yoga pants*
Car: I sense you are feeling aroused. Do you want to pull over?
LH: something pull something out
It’s Blissss: Hyundai is Eagerly Looking at Ways to Control Your Emotions
Well, their designs are usually enough to keep my emotions in check.
Odd. The last Hyundai I has the misfortune of driving irritated me to no end.
It had the lovely design of putting the speedometer at the back of a pipe that blocked the view of the critial 40-80mph range, and crap visibility.
So…you hated it?
That’s what I meant. They leave me cold.
As opposed to, say, this.
The Elantra felt like it was built for short people. And it performed like a dead dog until I figured out that “EcoMode” could be disabled. Combined with the HUGE blind spots, I was convinced to not even look at Hyundais when shopping for a replacement car.
I didn’t even realize that a car could suck that badly or that I would even care until I had to put up with that piece of trash for a week.
The Genesis, otoh, is a really nice car. Great driver and nicely understated. Our pal DEG has one.
If it detects that I’m severely depressed (so normal for me) will it offer to help me find the nearest bridge to drive off of?
So it sprays tranquilizers in your face if you have road rage?
Will it make coffee for my commute to work and pour bourbon and coke for my commute home?
Only if you’re Ted Kennedy
Hyundai envisions? I envision myself ripping all of that shit out of the car and selling it for the copper. After I got my Jeep I disabled/removed the seat belt warning dinger and installed a cigarette lighter.
A little libertarian comic for you guys today (I forgot where I got it so I could credit the guy).
That sums up my feelings.
Probably the Hoppean Snake Memes Facebook page? Last I knew that got purged for wrongthink but it seems to be back up when I looked just now.
Now even the squirrels have migrated over here. Reason really is in trouble.
What happened? Serious question. SP will want to know.
Yeah, think. Was it the same
black catsquirrel?Tried to post, got this message (418 Unused error). Took a few minutes to be able to post.
I didn’t get anything like that – just a brief lag when commenting
The error log showed “they all want cake.”
Better not lock eyes with me, OMWC.
/prepares elbow guards
I tried to comment on an earlier thread this AM and it never appeared so I clicked post comment again and was told that i had already posted that exact comment. Then, Hey Presto! the original comment was there. That duplicate warning was fantastic. Many thanks to SP (and everyone else involved in this endeavor) for being a top-notch squirrel slayer.
Over at the Other Site, there’s an immigration article where a bunch of people are bitching about how horrible the Glibertarians are, and claim we’re trolling with fake accounts. The tribalism has set in deep.
I thought about doing something like that but it isn’t worth my time.
I’m surprised that dude Rich isn’t here.
We need Rich, and ifh over here.
Ifh has been here. I think she has an actual life, though, so probably can’t post as much as some of us.
Probably also time difference: 7am Central is midnight in Sydney when they’re on Daylight Savings time.
I don’t recall having seen Jerryskids here.
I always enjoy his posts.
I saw and declined to engage. It’s been a shitshow there all week. Between the 2 Shikhas and that horribly argued article, it’s not a surprise the server here is stressed.
Yeah, I don’t think there is any going back.
It’s amazing how quickly I’ve turned into ‘the Other’ over there. I didn’t make a big long speech about leaving, but I have recommended pieces from here (as I have recommended pieces from the Other Site on here as well) and complained about some of the more generally terrible articles. But some people are going full flip-out and screaming at me to go away and how I’m a big, non-libertarian crybaby. The amount of asshole trolls has increased dramatically.
Credit where credit’s due, chemjeff may be a naive weirdo who goes full on amygdala hijack way too much, but he’s the only one who at least seems to ‘get’ why people left, outside of the more sane remaining commentariat.
Pretty sure I’ve seen chemjeff here recently.
Why the circumlocution? It’s Reason. Yeah, Dalmia and Chapman are horrible, but there’s hits among the misses. I’d have no issues linking to anything they run that I think is worthwhile. Or saying their name. REASON.
The hit to miss ratio has changed dramatically over the last year. The misses used to be fun because the of comments.
I think it’s just a fun cultural habit we’ve picked up from the Diaspora (I still think that should be the name dammit). I just find it funny how quickly I’ve turned into a “Reason-hating yokel sumbitch” to some people.
its mary.
“its mary.” – yup. Obvious from the spittle flecked invective.
SPLITTERS!!
Yeah, I still check out the other site, and it’s become a shitshow of trolls and unhinged bullshit.
I was intending to make some speech both there and here on Where Reason Went Wrong, but the will to do it properly hasn’t been there as of late so they haven’t been forthcoming.
It’s kind of funny: due to my initial distaste regarding l’affaire Weigel and all the fucking millennial articles, before TDS ravaged the minds of various people, I decided to spend some time elsewhere, including the various Reddit libertarian communities. I’m sorry to say that r/libertarian has also been horribly afflicted by various flavors of “big-state libertarianism” and “progressive-tax geolibertarian socialists” as Johnson/Weld seemed to have brought in disaffected Bernouts clamoring for their rights to free shit and weed.
I mean, good lord, I was surprised when my bitching about state-run alcohol monopolies was poorly received, including “the law is the law” responses. Other people have noticed this and retreated to subreddits like r/shitstatistssay, r/anarcho_capitalism and r/goldandblack–despite not being ancaps. I can read Suderman-esque “you can’t just like, repeal Obamacare, man” drek anywhere; I don’t want to be seeing it in supposedly “libertarian” communities.
r/libertarian was always a goddamn mess, the internet equivalent of a dive club, but the big shifts in the two major parties seems to have driven some of their members into libertarian circles. So now you’ve got people like the Bernie Bros and cop fetishist Republicans cropping up in some circles. The latter aren’t actually that much of a problem, because they either eventually just leave or shift their perspective if they’re open to different ideas. The former, however, is being catered to by some groups, and their numbers are large enough that they can remain enclaves within the larger community.
What I noticed, was a lot of radio silence on many of the liberty loving blogs, tumblrs, twitter accounts, etc. after Trump became President. Everyone knew that BHO was a dyed-in-the-wool progressive. But who knows what Trump’s actual position is? He’s never held any office before. And often contradicts himself. So I think many people who aren’t Team Blue reflexively anti-Republican were at a loss for words.
The ancap subreddit is a giant shitshow. The libertarian subreddit is sometimes okay but it can be awful at times.
This. In retrospect, there was probably a steady decline in Reason’s output quality that I didn’t really notice for a long time, mostly because I still enjoyed the H&R commenters. But the TDS was just too overbearing, particularly post-election.
Holy Jeebus! That immigration thread on that other site was depressing and offensive; bless you for trying John Titor. I’ve noticed the same thing on all of the DerpBook libertarian groups and most of the an-cap groups as well. Love of entitlement spending coupled with a visceral hatred of Ron Paul (he is, according to a fellow who self identifies as some sort of Poobah of the Nevada LP Party on DerpBook, a racist and a crazy old coot who hates immigrants and poor people). In the an-cap groups it’s all antifa wannabes talking about how much they want to beat up ‘Nazis‘ and those who don’t hate the POTUS as much as they do. I miss Liberty Magazine.
I’ve literally never seen anything worth reading on a Facebook group. Even ones where I should be interested in the topic.
I had to stop following the libertarian feminist page, they have lost it on several issues.
It’s also not a very good article because it ignores all the other reasons why a libertarian might be against completely open borders in practice.
Seriously, don’t worry about it. We’re having fun, what else can you want?
I’m not worried about it at all, the opinions of most of the ‘new’ commentariat don’t mean anything to me, I jump between the two and notice things. I’m just interested in the fact that this site has been demonized so quickly, it’s a fascinating little example of internet tribalism. Group dynamics are fun.
I think the writers there are generally guilty of putting the cart before the horse. Free movement of people is a good thing, but commitment to the undergirding principles of liberties is better. You cannot achieve liberty by adding more people to a non-free environment. So at best, immigration is a second-tier consideration if you’re trying to achieve a freer country that is committed to natural law and negative rights.
You don’t fix a broken business by expanding its geographical reach. You find out why it is failing first and address that. We are not an unfree country because we don’t have more immigration.
Who’s that DanO character? Mary?
Konimo or whatever their name was I think, here to save libertarianism from the sin of not sufficiently freaking out about Trump. Before I started post more on here than over there they’d always go after me for some reason.
The Trump business is frustrating. You can hate him as President and still be tired of terribly written and reasoned (DRINK!) articles.
I hate Trump. He has virtually no redeeming qualities. Definitely see him as more of a threat to liberty than some here and don’t even mind the amount of Trump articles on the other site. I just want them to be informative and focused on important issues. Basically, I’ll take 50 articles about why Jeff Sessions is a piece of shit. I don’t want 50 articles about why Trump’s latest tweet is bad.
Some of the staff and most of the comment section have definitely taken the “any pushback against Trump criticism means you’re a secret Trump supporter” approach, though.
The trolls are interacting with one another bashing us. It’s quite surreal. Poor Sevo is taking them all on.
It’s kind of amusing – this DanO fucked is white-knighting the shit out of HnR despite the fact that I’ve never seen that screen name before today.
He’s either Bo Cara or that Cyto-something from Canada that went into hiding after being embarrass by his election predictions
It wouldn’t surprise me if it were Botard, although he was never so aggressively hostile. Just long-winded, tedious, and irritatingly full of himself for his commitment to libertarian purity.
Its mary/amsoc
they’ve gotten all hyperactive in the last few weeks. you’d think they’d be thrilled they have H&R all to themselves. I presume she thinks she thinks she personally has provoked some divide & conquer coup, and is now trying to provoke fights between those that stayed there and those that left.
Doesn’t seem to be either, unless they’ve gotten better at covering up their tells. Cytotoxic is too arrogant to switch handles and doesn’t argue so much as say “I’m right, you’re wrong” and Bo’s whole schtick was long winded rhetoric and ignoring anything that contradicted his walls of text.
DanO reads this site. He now has to puck one. Come on, danny. What’ll it be?
Getting sick of all this hockey talk.
Go Bruins.
Yeah, we’re all secretly Trumpnazis pushed to the brink by criticism of the Trumpenführer. That must be it.
One more car link:
Old-school Autopilot Users are Still Crashing for the Same Reasons
Being “an alert driver poised to take over at any moment” seems like more work and stress than just driving the car.
Less stressful, sure, but with far fewer opportunities to preen and socially signal.
It is why I favor fully autonomous vehicles over adding on safety features. Extra safety features just make (most of) us drive more danerously.
In aviation one of the most universally contributors to fatalities is “autopilot dumps control to a pilot who has no idea how the plane is handling and fucks up and crashes the plane”.
Generally the problem begins with an instrumentation error, the failure of a gyroscope in that plane that lawndarted in Norway or a frozen pitot tube in the Air France crash in the middle of the Atlantic. If the pilots had been handflying, they would recognize that the plane hadn’t changed how it was handling and be ready to maintain control in the degraded instrument environment. They’d have a really good chance of figuring out what wasn’t working.
But, because they were unfamiliar with how the plane had been handling, hadn’t been scanning instruments so that they get a good sense of what suddenly changed (and hence can be ignored), they trust the failed instrument and crash the plane. In Air France, in an attempt to prevent a non-existent overspeed event, they put the plane in a deep stall (and kept it there until in pancaked into the ocean). In the CRJ crash, the pilot in command believed the instrument affected by the failing gyroscope, and thought his plane was pitching uncontrollably upward while in fact it was flying in level, stable flight, and trying to get a malfunctioning instrument to indicate wings and nose level, got the plane to go nose down at nearly supersonic speeds into a glacier.
I like some automation, like cruise control and lane maintenance that make it easier to drive. But I don’t like anything that actually drives the car while expecting me to take over instantly when it shits the bed, since I’ll be utterly unprepared if I wasn’t already paying attention.
What thread do we go to for slapping?
How can she slap?
*SLAP!*
Ouch
Now it feels like Friday
Will the International Nightmare of FATCA Finally Be Repealed?
I like Dan Mitchell, but just like the Republicans have backed off of Obamacare, I do not see them repealing FATCA either.
God, do me a solid here and make this come true.
The moderate wing of the GOP is the opposition party at this point. Once the Democrats finish their assisted suicide, the Republicans will split between into two parties – the few conservatives like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz – and the 90’s Democrats like Paul Ryan, McCain, Graham, etc…
You can’t fool me, that first picture of the Keymaster from the Ghostbuster reboot, isn’t it?
So my stepfather has really started losing the plot as he’s gotten older. I partly blame one of my brothers for this, as he went to U of A for undergrad apolitical and came back an obnoxiously hypocritical leftist, and then got my stepfather and mother into the habit of watching MSNBC daily, and “comedy” news programs with Stewart, Oliver, and Colbert, when he came back off-semester.
Those seem to have gotten him to slowly morph into somebody who started off a Chicago Democrat, into somebody who thinks that women are physically equal to men. You’d think that a lifetime of experience would counter this, but he’s come to seriously believe that women’s sports teams, in sports such as soccer, should compete against professional/Olympic-level men’s teams… and that this wouldn’t result in a hilarious massacre.
I had lunch with them the other day and there was some clip of Rousey on the TV at the bar. He joked about how she could kick my ass, but he truly believed it. Now, while my exercise is pretty much just running around instead of lifting weights, and the last fistfight I got into was in elementary school–which I lost–I think that the fact that I have 11 inches and 75 pounds on her, if nothing else, would tilt the scales just slightly in my favor.
And that’s not even getting into the fucking ancient aliens shit. I’ve actually tried providing him with plenty of worthwhile real documentaries and other movies/shows to watch, but, noooo, ancient aliens built the pyramids and Nazca lines. And he thinks I’m kooky for not believing in the Church of Gaia and the ever-imminent climate Rapture.
3 months before winning the gold medal at the 2012 Olympics the US Women’s National Team played against the US Men’s National U17 team (so 16 and 17 year old teenagers). The women lost 8-2.
The Australian Women’s National Team, which reached the quarterfinals of the 2015 Women’s World Cup, lost 7-0 to a U15 side. Not a national U15 side, a club U15 side.
Once puberty hits is pretty much over for girls vs. boys.
Once puberty hits it’s pretty much over for girls vs. boys.
See, I thought that once puberty hit, it was game on for girls v. boys.
Yes, a lot of people seem to be unaware that the top women’s teams practice against men’s high school teams, and regularly get clobbered. One of the US womens world cup team members even admitted, “once they hit 15 years old, we can’t really keep up with them.” Thanks to a steady stream of propaganda over the years, people seriously underestimate just how extreme the difference is in speed and power between men and women.
I was on one of those teams. We had just got clobbered 3-0 in a tournament game and a bunch of 18-19 year old girls representing Team Quebec took to teasing us for some reason and challenged us. Only seven of us agreed to a game against their 11 and we still played the game. One thing is for sure; never ever tease 14 year old boys after their egos were bruised. We were merciless. Up 9-0 their coach pulled the game.
Yeah, I’ve mentioned this shit, but then the reprogramming occurs the next time he watches MSNBC/Oliver and everything is forgotten the next time I see him.
Maybe it’s a hardware problem? Some people just “want cake”.
I have a long running argument with a friend that says that Oak Hill Academy (or any other top basketball HS) would destroy UConn’s women’s team.
The biggest question towards even figuring this out is determining which ball to use.
Bishop Montgomery vs Mater Dei tomorrow at Honda Center. If you’re a basketball nerd, watch it. Then in 3 years, you can be all like, “I saw them play against each other in high school in an amazing game. And now they’re doing it in the pros!”
My sophomore year in HS, my school only lost 2 games.
The first was in the finals of a Christmas tourney to Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble.
The second was in the regional finals against Felton Spencer. We had beat his team a few weeks earlier by about 40. We were completely robbed by the refs.
We were ranked 1-3 in the nation all year long and didnt even make state.
KY high school basketball tournament must be nuts. Of course, I grew up with Hoosier Hysteria. And watched basketball here: https://youtu.be/s4UN9CqyqMk
I went to some games back in the late 80s and early 90s.
The first round is fun, especially with small schools vs big schools.
My cousin’s HS was a class A size school and they beat that Felton Spencer team in the first round by getting him in foul trouble then making a ton of free throws in the 4th quarter to hold on. They didnt have a guy who could dunk, but they had some big farm boys who took it at Spencer and drew fouls and bloodied his nose. He had 3 fouls in the first quarter and was a non-factor for the rest of the game.
Oak Hill would whip UConn’s ass with any ball. Billy Preston is 6’10” 230 pounds, headed to Lawrence to play for KU. Which of UConn’s 6’5″ and under post players would slow him down in the least?
I’ve seen several 15-U AAU teams that would probably beat the UConn women’s team. It’s not only size, but there’s a huge difference in the speed of a men/boy’s game and a women/girl’s game.
Women would get all of their jump shots blocked.
“A lot of times we have practice games against male students, good players. One game, they were kicking our butts. Geno sat in the stands and refused to blow the whistle. We were down 32 points. He said, ‘Practice won’t end till you win this game.’ We played for hours but couldn’t make up any ground. Our players were crawling on their knees. We would have still have been playing if the fire alarm hadn’t gone off for a gas leak.”
That’s from Geno Auriemma. Basically, random rec league dudes were killing a dominant women’s team. Oak Hill would demolish UConn.
Don’t tell ESPN.
“We got next” my fucking ass, amirite?
Mix it up. Start a discussion about ancient illegal aliens and the Jesus-Climate-Rapture. At least you can get some entertainment from it.
ancient illegal aliens
They snuck in from Siberia.
Point him to the video of the U15 boys soccer team kicking the shit out of the Australian womens’ olympic team.
Damn. I need to reload the page more often.
That, and you’re stealing P Brooks’ shtick.
I threaded!
You did. Why’d I think you didn’t?
Well, I’ll hang my head in shame now.
/starts Beer Summit with JB.
If New Yorkers vote for Broom Hilda it’s definitely the water.
After burning $1.2 billion in vain nationally, perhaps they’ll try foisting Chelsea upon them at the same time to save a few ducats with combined campaign advertising.
Well, this is just SHOCKING.
RE: Colin Kaepernick
a) Good fucking riddance
b) If your kneeling bullshit was such a principled stand, why so quick to abandon it while looking for a new employer?
c) Eat shit
-Lifelong 49ers fan
A prof I know compared him to Ali because he put it all on the line.
Meant ‘prog’. Stupid auto spell.
I could go along with the notion that Ali put it all on the line. But adopting Islam, changing your name and refusing the draft are a little different than growing a ‘fro and kneeling for ~2 minutes while being paid millions of dollars. He did it for his new girlfriend is why he did it.
The prog is strong in your prof acquaintance.
Kind of like all those Hollywood stars who speak out on politics at award ceremonies and are lauded for their “courage.”
How on earth are you a Phillies/49ers fan?
He’s in ND. Wild card state.
Old Joke:
Q) You know why ND doesn’t have a pro (insert sport here) team?
A) Because then MN would want one too!
But damn, the Wild sure are looking good. Might be the year?
You know, Mike, it would be fun to think so, but I watched the Hawks/Pens game the other night. Wild are gonna have to find another gear to get past them.
We have a better goalie, but that’s it. But, it’s hockey. Anything can happen.
Anything can happen in the playoffs, that’s for sure. Boudreau is an excellent coach, and Dubnyk is legit. I’d be worried about their scoring drying up in a series against a good team – I think they’ve gotten a lot of puck luck this season in that regard – but having home ice will be nice.
TOEWS IS COMING FOR YOU…
a) Was born in SF. From an early age Dad pushed me to be a SF sports fan. The 49ers parts stuck. 5 Superbowl wins helped that.
b) Not a Philies fan. Mike Schmidt actually happens to be my name. I’m a Twins fan.
I’m a Twins fan.
::points at Mike::
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!
Twins and 49ers.
*hangs head in double-shame*
Loved the Niners. Loved ’em. Every Sunday was an all-day party with my best buddy, involving massive consumption of food, wine, and weed.
But once the ownership changed, they did everything they could to drive me off, and they succeeded. Fuck Jed York with rusty barbed wire.
Yep. It all comes down to Jed fucking York. Complete ass-hat.
They haven’t driven me off yet, but they are close. If it wasn’t for my personal connection to SF, I think I would have been gone by now.
I went to a 49ers game once when the new stadium opened. Watched them get their assess handed to them by Seattle. Ticketmaster must have sold the 49ers my info because I’m getting constant calls & emails from their office begging me to go to a game again, asking what can they do to get me to support them, etc etc. I told them to shove it.
Their desperation is palatable.
I see your Jed York, and raise you . . . Jerry Jones.
Tom Benson says those guys are mere pikers.
Always hated them, myself, and always took pride in the fact that the Giants gave the dynasty Niners more trouble in the playoffs than anyone else. The 1990 NFC title game is still my favorite football game of all time.
I’ve long hated the Giants because of that game. That game broke my heart.
Here’s a nice snapshot of our playoff rivalry.
I love the Giants. One of my earliest memories was the ’58 championship. I didn’t really know what was going on, but Mommy, Daddy, and their friends seemed super happy. Kind of like I was after the January 2001 Super Bowl.
So, ABC is covering a Mexican legislator’s protest of “the wall” – he made a show of climbing the existing wall.
Question: how do the politics play out in Mexico? I get that it is insulting to say “we want to build a wall to keep ‘you people’ out”. But isn’t it also insulting to have to acknowledge that nobody wants to stay in your country?
Also, why do Mexican citizens need to crawl over a wall or pay a mule? Can’t they just legally hop in a car and come here for tourism the same way we can just pop down to Cozumel for a pile of drinks? Then they just stay and work illegally. What’s with the crawling under the fence thing? I get it if you are from somewhere that it is hard to get in because you need visa approval – but do Mexicans need a visa to come here for fun?
In general, Trump is a gift to Mexico politicians. They have someone that has nothing to do with their own incompetence and corruption that they can point at.
But they don’t represent Mexicans, do they? Because that would be racist. Or Alt-right. Or Hitler-like. Or something..
So surely they represent the citizens of the world, right?
No, hut they do need a passport. And a lot of them cannot afford one, I would assume.
Google says that a Mexican passport runs $74. So that’s gotta be cheaper than paying a mule, right? A bus ticket from Tijuana to San Diego is $20 or less. As little as $7.
So clearly I am missing something. For less than a hundred bucks you can get to a major US city on your Mexican passport – with luggage and no questions asked. So…. what’s up with the wall again? This is confusing. I can see it being needed for Salvadorans who can’t get in without a visa. But Mexicans? Why is the debate all about Mexicans.
$75? That’s cheap. But what’s the process entail?
Step 1 Be a Mexican.
Ok. I didn’t get any farther than that step. It proved too difficult for me. But if you happen to be from Mexico, that part is probably easier.
Apparently, getting your passport after you are in the US is a big thing. You go to the consulate with some documents and apply, just like the US.
What this tells me is that it is simply a lack of information back in Mexico that is leading people to come here without a Mexican passport.
USA today is helpful.. You can do it online.
The process involves a lot more than just paying a fee:
http://www.immihelp.com/us-visa/application-procedure.html
And there’s a reason you visit the consulate. They evaluate whether you are a risk to stay or not. My wife was not able to get a tourist visa to come here before we married simply because of her age and other factors(no children tying her to home, a job that wasn’t something a person would stay for, etc.)
According to the Daily Mail and my google-fu, they get $4k to $10k to smuggle an illegal into the country.
And they are called Coyotes when they are smuggling people. Not mules. Just goes to show that I’m not in the market for illegal immigrants, or I’d know the cost of goods.
Also according to the mail, prices are going up because fewer Mexicans are paying customers these days, what with the whole “US economy isn’t that much better than Mexico” thing.
So live and learn.
Still no word on exactly why you’d pay $4,000 when you could get a passport and a bus ticket for less than 10% of that number.
What is the amount you have to pay in bribes to get a passport?
Who would want to come to America? Land of the rape campus, the white empowered KKK, blatant racism, and where the 1%ers leave the rest of us in poverty! /s
as Tuco Ramirez and i were talking about the other day –
When we talk about having an “immigration” problem, we really mostly mean we have a “Mexico” problem;
i know a lot of migrants are from El Salvador or other central american shitholes, but still – the fact that we’ve been swamped with mexican illegals for 30 years and still we just politely refer to it as a border problem suggests to me that the way we think about this issue has been carefully massaged by the media + pols for decades to avoid talking about Mexico in particular.
I personally think its because, simply put, Mexico is a “failed state” right next door. there is no good reason why an industrious country living next door to the richest nation on earth should be so goddamn poor that people live in garbage shacks and are murdered in the streets because half their police are footsoldiers for cartels. they’re a disgrace
I think they carefully avoid talking about it because they know its an unfixable problem, and it will force people to take a hard look at US / Mexico policy for decades and realize how complicit both countries have been in creating this godawful mess. and that sort of thinking just goes lots of other bad places (from the pov of a politician)
Well, yeah – the Canucks aren’t overrunning the northern border.
I think Americans political leaders are afraid of a full blown revolution in Mexico – and of having to prop up the shitty narco-state (even more than we already do) in the event of one. But seriously i think just propping them up indefinitely and pretending there’s no problem isn’t helping anyone.
We need to get Old Mexican over to make clear there’s nothing actually wrong with Mexico, it’s just that millions of its citizens are exercising their God-given rights to cross borders and pursue their own economic self-interest in the US.
in the sense that “it is what it is”, and Mexico has achieved a kind of depressing-form of homeostasis that isn’t especially worse than, oh, Haiti or Afghanistan or North Korea… sure.
From the perspective of, “one of the top 3 trading-partners with the US“, and both resource-rich and full of cheap labor…. something is very wrong
Oh I agree. Resources, access to two oceans, in a trading pact with two first world nations…something got fucked up pretty hard.
I’m not intimate enough w/ Mexico politics … but one of the businesses i covered was very-active down there, and there was a local guy who lived in MC and would give us the skinny on things from time to time…
….and the way he put it was basically that Mexico has a highly-stratified class system; and the political class is super-corrupt as fuck, and basically serves the Elite/Corporate-class plus the Criminal Cartel-Class. Everyone else is completely fucked over. Which naturally results in a lot of peasant-communist/college-student-social type opposition, which they brutally repress.
I mean, just look at that story about students who were murdered en masse
Its like someone intentionally cooked up a recipe for socialist revolution, because they seem to have decided to use the worst fever-dreams of anti-capitalist college-commies as a template = “lets make a country where plutocrats and corporations conspire with organized crime to rob wealth from “The People”.” Its literally what they’re fucking doing as far as i can tell. They’re a parody of the idea.
I’m probably overstating the case – and that the scenario i describe is only true on one level, while on another there’s actually a degree of semi-normalcy functioning in large parts of the country. But even so… i recall when my brother was serving as a sales-rep for an industrial-goods company in Mexico back in the 1990s? And he was “Kidnapped” by taxi drivers on multiple occasions. He described having to bribe everyone to get the simplest things done. Even at the corporate level – no one paid invoices unless they were threatened by their immediate superior, and getting the boss to do that required bribing your own clients. Just a fucking mess.
Tourist visa must be approved prior to entry along with the visa fee. Part of the interview is proof of financial support for your visit to the US and proof of return to Mexico (employment pay slips or the like). Plus CBP will want to know where you’re staying when you cross the border, and may ask further questions about the itinerary. Not impossible but not as easy as using a coyote.
It’s not impossible, but the chances are pretty slim if you are actually trying to get a visa to stay in the US for economic reasons.
In the 1990’s whenever I was “between gigs” (unemployed), my friends and I would often go to Mexico. We’d buy alot of drugs, camp on the beach, meet girls, do drugs, do girls. Then we were robbed at gunpoint by the Ensenada PD. That sucked.
There are lower standards if you pinkie-swear not to leave the near-border area in AZ, and I think in CA and TX, too.
I’d never thought about it, but why people pay thousands for dangerous coyote crossings when its really pretty easy to cross into the US legally is a good question.
And I did’t know that the visa situation with Mexico was so unbalanced. Prior to 9/11 you didn’t even need a passport as a US citizen to visit Mexico. Just an ID and a birth certificate would suffice.
I figured it had to be different to come north. People aren’t stupid, and if they have to shell out $4k to $10k to get to the US illegally, that would by necessity mean that you can’t do it very reliably at the $100 price point that a passport and bus ticket would suggest.
Ever since I found out last Friday that I’d be getting a root canal today, I’ve had this song stuck in my head. Thought I’d share. Gotta love Warren Zevon. RIP
Now I, too, shall have that song stuck in my head.
Good luck. I’ve heard some people are barely bothered by root canals, and for others it’s pure hell.
Glad I could oblige.
Yeah, the wife said when she had hers it was no biggie. Sure hope that’s the case
NRA spot attacking NYT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpDcP2yJ_Wk
That’s very hurtful…why are you so mean RB?
it’s genetic
former Chicago mayor advocates for stop and frisk to address Chiraq’s problem of poor black men shooting each other in gang violence.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-daley-chicago-gun-violence-murders-perspec-0302-20170301-story.html
my bad, wrong Daley. this one^ was Obama’s former chief of staff.
Signs this site is taking off: I got an email yesterday from Twitter suggesting I follow other Glibertarians commenters there.
Mary could use the follow.
JFC I hope I wasn’t on that list. I was furious when I saw suggestions from FB. I want as big a firewall between Twitter and everything else in my life as possible.
No, only commenters who are already on Twitter. It recommended OMWC, Playa, and someone I didn’t recognize.
I don’t tweet very much. I sincerely believe that Twitter has done more to lower the average IQ than the lead in drinking water. SP and I did live tweet during the debates, mostly because we had a drinking game and got totally shitfaced.
Yeah, same here. There are a few genuinely interesting follows there – Nassim Taleb and Naval Ravikant come to mind – and I used to really like the platform. But it was descending into a hopeless babble of prog derp for a while before the election, and now it’s almost impossible to sift through that derp to find anything good.
Can’t agree more here. It’s really saddening to see it become so popular and platform-agnostic, superior tools like RSS fade. Thankfully it’s still bleeding money and their recent attempts at narrative control will only hasten its demise.
I’m not sure which is creepier- that crazy-bag-lady pic of Hillary, or the carefully groomed video Hillary urging America to join the Resistance making the rounds lately.
I have yet to see that, thankfully.
We need to keep an eye out for any missing commenters:
A lonely Japanese man who amassed more than six tons of porn died when a huge pile of magazines fell on top of him.
You’re welcome
WHYYYYY
Gee, party came before country. Shocking.
OT: I was looking for a new job and reading employee reviews of employers in this area. Here’s one that someone wrote about a local credit card processing company:
“pay was okay but they kill you in taxes they take out well over $150 or better from your checks.”
He doesn’t seem to understand… How… Taxes… Work…