Much as cosmologists have debated whether the universe will expand forever or reach steady state at some maximum size, derpetologists have debated the existence of Peak Derp. That is, is there a limit to stupidity? Einstein said the only two infinite things are the universe and stupidity, and he wasn’t sure about the universe.
I believe Peak Derp is best understood via an analogy to Planck Temperature. Planck Temperature is basically the opposite of Absolute Zero, the lowest possible temperature. At extremely high temperatures (1.4 x 10^32 K) the velocity of the particles approaches light speed and further acceleration becomes impossible. The increase in mass of the particles would also create gravitational forces on the subatomic scale as strong as the other fundamental forces, a situation which cannot be described by the current laws of physics.
So, Peak Derp does exist. There is a level of stupidity so intense that it mocks the very laws of nature. However, much like Planck Temperature, that level is so absurdly high that for practical purposes, there is no limit. No matter how stupid something is, it is certain that something even dumber exists. This is the first law of derpodynamics.
Comments
190 responses to “Understanding Peak Derp”
First! *Passes out drunk from 3 2 many Bloody Marys*
Is that why there are no morning links yet? It’s already 8 AM! WHERE ARE MY LNIKS!?
AND WHERE’S MY EDIT BUTTON DAMNIT!?
I’m so very tempted to create an Edit button in Monocle that links to cat butts.
Or one that edits the users post for them alone. Everyone else sees the typos.
Haha, I like that!
Do it! Hitting the edit button automatically replaces your post with a catass.
Edit buttons are for the weak, I say!
I think that may end up being the April fools day update for Monocle
This never would have happened when [blank] was in charge.
Don’t you worry about blank. Let me worry about blank.
*Fumbles for peek derp. She knew*
She persisted.
Some wag said that Chelsea’s new book “She Persisted” made a nice bookend for her father’ book: “She Resisted”.
Brutal. Savage. Rekt.
Oh barf!
That reset [sic] sure worked.
Without digging too deep, this is my candidate for PD from that shitshow:
The most qualified candidate EVER knew and the majority listened.
If you seriously believe something like that, you’re never going to get over the loss.
It’s going to be a long 3 years and 10 months.
Until i see some change in the trend, i’ve been assuming its going to be “7 years, 10 months”
Yeah. I think the progs are in for a real surprise come Nov ’18. And that they’ll double down again. Unless the GOP does something really stupid like try to pass an Obamacare replacement that is just obamacare with the serial numbers filed off and then refuses to pass a budget that has actual substantial cuts they’ve claimed they want for decades. But they wouldn’t be do that right? T hey aren’t the Stupid Part….oh.
*sound of snowflakes melting*
Sadly, that’s exactly what the GOP will do. Just the other day my mother was listening to Dennis Prager and he was going on about how the GOP absolutely MUST pass this Obamacare replacement, no matter how flawed it may be. He then went on to say he doesn’t understand how people like Ron and Rand Paul got elected. Yup, Rand Paul, the guy who put forth an ACTUAL replacement for Obamacare. Yeah, I don’t get how guys with actual principles got elected. Those Pauls need to be proper tribalists like the rest of us!
also we have-
“That is part of the reason also the fact is the electors failed to do their duty & protect the republic.”
Ah if only the electors had been unfaithful and installed her highness. Things would be so much better. We could be in a real no shit civil war right now.
Most qualified candidate? You mean the woman whose whole career exists because of the guy she married?
And whose experience consists of a litany of corruption and incompetence?
well, when you compare her to the Messiah, she is more qualified. So automagically, she’s the most qualified EVAR at that point. Remember, leftists have all the memory of a meth-addled squirrel so nothing happened before Obama (except, vaguely, the Dark Times).
Bogus!
Parody?
From now on, I just assume parody lest I be made a fool.
They make 3.2 Bloody Marys?
2 parts vodka, 23 parts bloody mary mix for 80 proof vodka
I thought he meant 32. That’s how you do St. Paddy proud…32 green tomato cocktails.
I figured he meant to use a strike tag.
I am currently in a certain training class so I won’t have much input but I’m sure some much smarter glibbers will be by in a moment with some relevant links demonstrating attempts to reacheck peak derp.
Reach. My phone hates me.
Everyone hates you. That’s what being a libertarian is about.
Which training class? Sexual harassment, sensitivity, aggression, or drunk driving?
I definitely wrote CERT and my fucking phone changed it.
What drives me nuts is that my phone will change correctly spelled words to non-words. But my car is going to drive itself.
Does yours want to change “with” to “28th”?
I had to turn that crap off because I sometimes text in a foreign language. But yeah, it will sometimes even correct correctly spelled words in English.
Well the social sciences are working full time to satisfy the need of derpetologysts to analyze the ever highrr peaks of derp even though they shall be surpassed, maybe one day …
Universities everywhere have created the Derp equivalent of particle accelerators to test high energy Derp.
Is this derp? I haven’t researched the underlying issue enough to tell for sure, but I have my suspicions.
That is some derp, yes.
Did you know that every time you reload that page, it has a different pithy serving of derp on top? Complete with your appropriate response. “1.4 million people will lose their healthcare under Trump.” (Orange button: “How horrible!”) “Trump wants to eliminate Meals on Wheels!” (Orange button: “How evil!”) “Trump is Literally Hitler!” (“I knew it!”)
The environment that it is in either encourages derp or causes it to wither away. Daily Kos is an incubator environment.
(And as an aside, credit where credit’s due, Mother Jones can produce some good anti-derp pieces)
From time to time Mother Jones reminds me they’re not completely out of it.
Some good investigative pieces.
But progressivism is a virus sooooo….
Daily Kos? I didn’t even know that still existed. I guess I didn’t really try to know, though.
I have heard that peak derp does not exist. There will always be a higher derp later.
ION:
A back yard homeless for all!
I look forward to seeing Madonna, George Clooney, and the Obamas moving to this county by tomorrow, just to support this program with their own backyards.
Removing regulations would also make housing cheaper.
This would mean less government oversight and more of people doing what they want. Which would lead to less homeless for the government to save. You cruel person!
Fire the bureaucrats and make *them* homless. Two problems solved!
There’s an idea I can get behind.
Didn’t an individual set up tiny houses like that for the homeless in Los Angeles? If I remember correctly, he was shut down by the city (or state) government.
Yep. The other site did a 10 minute vid on it. It was a combination of city regs, govt. has a better plan, and NIMBY.
It’s different when government ignores their own building codes and land use regulations.
I’ll see your derp and raise you 1 derp unit:
In a statement that voiced support for the Fair Fares Campaign, Cohen called for a discounted ticket program for New Yorkers who cannot afford MTA rates.
Isn’t the whole point of public transit is to make it available to everyone regardless of cost? Now we find ourselves in a situation where you want to subsidize public services?
Gee, I wonder why…something, something laws of economics.
In Dallas ( a relatively young light rail market) an all day ticket costs ~$5.
In DC (a relatively old market) the same all day ticket costs ~$15.
They can’t escape the market forces, no matter how much they try to subsidize it.
Please do not invite more Californians to Multnomah County, Portland is already dragging the entire state down.
(Not like Multnomah County isn’t doing a good job of attracting them on their own. But still.)
Multnomah County … Super-cool to the homeless …
What about quantum derp? Derp that exists as both lie and a mistake simultaneously? That is entangled and propagates simultaneously across vast distances? Will the next installment address that?
Is that like being a penalty and a tax at the same time?
Exactly.
Schrödinger’s health care plan?
I guess “we have to pass it to know what’s in it” is actually exactly right, then.
spoiler: the cat dies in the end waiting for rationed vet care
Sounds like technobabble to me.
Quantum Derp was the name of a idea I had for a TV show inspired by events at the other site:
*wakes up disoriented, next to case of kosher coke*
relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYmn3Gwn3oI
What you’ve described exists, and is called Twitter.
CNN’s Don Lemon has to be in running. Internet is slow today and videos are impossible – so I can’t grab the cites – but there’s at least one occasion where he’s askey whether global warming contributed to an earthquake and also whether something supernatural was to blame for a plane crash.
Apparently not fake news.
Huh, you weren’t kidding about the supernatural part.
He also suggests a black hole.
In other fake news…
I didn’t hear the supernatural but he did ask an expert if a black hole could explain the Malaysian airliner disappearance.
Ok, now you’re just making stuff up.
It is no great leap of faith for leftists to start believing in the supernatural.
Global Warming = Potential Cause of Asteroids?
Wrong linky…
It doesn’t play, “CNN Anchor Asks If Incoming Asteroid Caused By ‘Global Warming’.” for you?
No. The black lady who was arrested and put in jail…then killed herself. Sandra (?) something.
That’s weird. It works now, but the first time it didn’t. I am on my tablet so it’s possible my thumb/finger hit one of the other stories once I got to youtube.
Whoa.
i just clicked on it myself and its exactly what i thought it was supposed to be. INTERNET MAGIC?! Is the NSA making all my links go to Black Lives Matter propaganda? Maybe its a sign i need to get woke.
Canada, the new promised land for immigrants.
Borderless Canada
To me, this sort of reads like Canada made a token gesture of tolerance and open borderness and when they got the ‘totally unexpected’ surge of people fleeing north, they did an about face and decided that maybe it wasn’t that great of an idea and that maybe it’s not worth it just to show everyone how great they are compared to that mean ol poopy head Trump.
Nope, that was likely the plan all along. Libs get their early propaganda victory in the media, Canadian deep state continues on business as usual.
You guys have a deep state too? Quit copying us.
The Turks have first claim.
Anti-democratic elites and bureaucrats controlling things has basically been the Canadian status quo for decades.
No choice. It’s too cold up there to think. So they sent 2 guys out in search of what to do. One went north, he was eaten as a human popsicle by a polar bear. The guy who went the grueling 3 ft journey from the Canadian town farthest north, down to the USA, finally came back and said ‘they don’t live in igloos down there! They go outside sometimes when it’s not August, and they have a deep state!’. And so came modern Canada.
Hey now. No self-respecting Canadian hides inside during the winter months.
Before he moved to the US, one of my grandfathers used to smuggle cigarettes into Canada. Apparently, he and my grandmother were friends with someone in the RMCP, who warned her that there was a sting set up. She went out in the freezing cold on a horse wagon (he had the vehicle), met up with him, and they buried the smokes in a snowdrift for later recovery. They split up, and when the Mounties caught up to him, they were quite disappointed.
DEEP STATE FAIL. Also, the Mounties don’t always get their man.
Everyone here knows that peak derp is a myth.
I mean this thing exist in complete defiance of any scientific laws you could come up with in regards to peak derp.
http://m.huffpost.com
HuffPo? Ok, now I’ll click the link.
It’s more a theoretical limit.
The soft rock version of Rage Against the Machine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOE9fE72QLg
youtube comment gold: mildly upset about the machine
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me.
Pardon me, I won’t do what you tell me?
My fav: Canadian Rage
What’s funny is that the only thing that really changed at all was that the power-chords (I-V) were all replaced with Maj 7ths
basically the poor-man’s “jazz chord” – throw it in there, and everything gets a ‘girl from ipanema’ vibe. Major chords are ‘happy’, but maj 7ths are la la la la la (skips through field of daisys) just a little saccharine
I like to think of peak derp as less of a peak and more of a plateau. A wide, wide, wide very expansive plateau. One so wide that once you have climbed upon it it stretches beyond the horizon. When you have found the dumbest thing possible rest assured there are many, many more up there with it. This gives the illusion of infinity.
I dunno, the left are climbing furiously towards that summit.
Peak derp is not so much a tangible amount of stupidity, but a relative quantity of stupidity. There will come a time when the stupidity reaches a level that will never be reached again. Not a level that can’t be reached again, but only one that won’t. One would have to wait until after after the extinction of the human species and then review all the derp to determine where exactly peak derp was reached. It may have already happened, it may be happening right now, and it may not happen for many years, but the moment of peak derp will come to pass.
Goofy sings Brings Me Back To Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czLYl4fM8yk
Goofy reads 50 Shades of Grey has a very SugarFree feel to it.
Cannibal Corpse- Disneyfied version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-eYIeUPD0s
For me https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview is still the gold standard derp source
Man, 32, reportedly dies while charging iPhone in the bath
The problem with trying to make things idiot-proof is that they keep making better idiots.
“They should attach warnings. I intend to write a report later to the makers of the phone.”
Fuck off slaver!
Hey, how many people’s laps were saved because those cups said “WARNING: CONTENTS ARE HOT” on them? Huh!? I BET YOU DIDN’T EVEN THINK OF THAT!
Soaked Shorts Saturday – the next in G.com’s series on readers’ perversions!
“Keep away from water” is almost certainly listed in that safety pamphlet that nobody reads.
I don’t see that as an accident. Your phone battery charges at 3.7 volts. That’s kinda like dropping two AA batteries in the bathtub with you, wouldn’t do anything. He would have had to have had the 110v side of the charger in the tub with him. That would mean pulling the end of the extension cord into the tub with him along with the charging cord and phone. Maybe he just is that dumb, but I would guess intentional suicide made to look like an accident.
I had an interesting Thursday evening in attempting to reduce the level of derp locally. I suspect that since derp is infinite that even if one does so, more derp or derpier derp simply appears elsewhere, but I tried.
I live in the PNW in a city and Thurs. night I met at a taphouse with a few friends to investigate its potential as a meetup location for a social group we’re all part of. I’ve hit the age that is the answer to life, the universe and everything, but these friends are all late 20s very early 30s. The derp they post on Facebook as you might imagine from that. They got to bashing trump and Ryan care and I was just quietly sipping my second 11.3% Imperial stout with some nice flavors of chocolate and just the faintest hints of cherry and staying out of it because it wouldn’t really be fair for me to demolish one of them and they’ll learn. They are all on the path to making enough money that they’ll learn, and I see the beginnings of it; the idea that maybe authority isn’t automagically good germinating somewhere in their little heads.
The most perspicacious of the lot looks at me and tilts his head and says, “Wait, didn’t you win money on Trump winning?”. And I allowed as I did. And he was like, “Did you vote for him?” And I responded that I did not. And then he says, “You’re like a libertarian, right?” Again, I allowed that this was so, preparing to have to be the gazelle that deals with five coyotes at once. Instead I was suddenly leading a socratic-ish group discussion of why voting is an act of violence, both obama and ryan care are awful and Rand Paul care would be way better, why regardless of whether global warming is happening or man made market solutions are better at dealing with it, ending the drug war, civil asset forfeiture, and de-militarizing the police as well as reducing the welfare state would help with resolving issues that confront people of color (despite the group all being whiter to me [except for the one guy that is Feather Indian and goes by, I shit you not, Cherokee], this is one of those big virtue signals with that age group in our cloudy city and is therefore important to them).
I don’t think I changed any of their minds 100% on any one issue, but they were clearly thinking and interacting and I was able to give them at least some basis to believe that libertarians aren’t all either guys with tinfoil hats or monocle miners that abuse orphans. I think discussing those sort of issues is much better conducted in small groups over a beer. It’s much harder to call someone a fascist who wants to murder the elderly and children and put blacks back in chains to their face if you know them and are having a nice beer with them and discussing other topics of mutual interest like…well, anyway.
I maintain hope for the younger generation.
I was able to give them at least some basis to believe that libertarians aren’t all either guys with tinfoil hats
/hides tin foil hat
Yeah, what he said.
It was never the younger generation, per se as much as the pheromone-like attraction autistic misanthropes have towards certain aspects of libertarianism.
True. And I was able to use that…stereotype/perception/reality to good effect by saying, “Do you want the libertarian answer I’d give, or do you want the stereotype answer, here’s both.” And get a laugh while also getting them to think. It also helped that I was willing to say, “I don’t know” when I didn’t know cause I could then say, “Well, do any of you /know/ and of course they didn’t which let me make the point that if we didn’t know, probably no one else does either and wouldn’t it be better to let people figure it out for themselves?
It is important to admit that one doesn’t know something. That’s the whole point of spontaneous order and social systems (e.g., the market). To assume the level of knowledge necessary to not only intervene in an extremely complex dynamic multivariate system, but to attempt to engineer a desire effect from it is absolute hubris.
Libertarianism is, in essence, epistemological humility.
Exactly. It’s one of the things that drew me too libertarianism lo these many years ago.
Something something atmospheric science.
I had a similar conversation that I’ve recounted a couple of times in comments with some San Francisco residents. They were all plenty old enough and making plenty of money and should know better, but SF has some kind of enhanced derp field. I could tell they had never actually conversed with an “out” libertarian. Our convo was more:
I know a libertarian government will never happen, and even incremental change toward less government is practically impossible given where we are as a society, but consider:
What if government was half the size it is today? You know, about where it was in freaking 2001 (yup, federal spending has doubled since 2001). And imagine the tax burden was about 1/3 less and we weren’t piling up debt; for people making good money, taxes would probably go down even more than that, since they pay a disproportionate amount of taxes now. All the trillions of dollars not taxed would have gone into capital formation and been reinvested. How much wealthier would we be as a society? How much more would you and all of us have to donate to charities or causes that we want? Would that really be a worse world to live in?
They weren’t converted, but I hope they were maybe a little less reflexive “MOAR GUBMENT GUD”.
What if government was half the size it is today? You know, about where it was in freaking 2001 (yup, federal spending has doubled since 2001).
This is depressing.
Yeah, we talked about that too. One guy is particularly concerned about science and research. And I pointed out that, the gov’t is just a middleman sucking up money because instead of him being able to give directly to what’s important to him, it gets taken and run through a bureaucracy that siphons of 30-60% of it and then gives it only to scientists whose research lines up with their policy goals.
I have a “poet, scholar, and activist” relative who quit his adjunct teaching job of 15 years at a 2 year community college to pursue a higher calling as a paid professional protester. He’s an atheist that works for his agnostic feminazi girlfriend, who is a chaplain at an Episcopal Church. He does some “community organizing” and helps with some of the charitable work, but his main duties appear to be organizing and leading protests for all the usual causes. His street cred has went through the roof since December when a black, transgendered, handicapped person moved in with him after that person was kicked out of their place because of Trump and hatred. So now his “family” is him, his 7 year old daughter (“his best friend”), his transgendered roomate, and his feminazi chaplain girlfriend. I’ll give him credit on the girlfriend front. She’s about 15 years younger and looks kinda cute with the sides of her head shaved. Hating himself and the white, cis-gendered, male patriarchy seems to be a stand he will take in order to win her affection. As you can imagine, this leads to endless amounts of high-end derp on a weekly basis on his Facebook and Twitter accounts. It’s so hard to look away!
One of my favorite posts of his was after he got back from a week of direct action at Standing Rock. Me and a few friends were anxiously awaiting some of his posts upon his return because we knew they would be epic. Him and his girlfriend raised some money, loaded up a van of people and a truck full of wood, and headed to North Dakota from a southern state. They used the extra money they raised to hire a solar panel company to bring up individual units and install them so they could “harvest light”. I seen all those solar units in a junk pile during the cleanup last month. Anyways, here’s one of his first posts upon his return:
Did he break his arm from patting himself on the back?
That poor little girl… she had no chance.
My cousin is the same way. She’s high school age, and she’s well off the social justice deepend. Of course, her dad is a 40-something communist poet who has never had to support his family (*glares at enabling grandparents*).
She probably turns into a 1950s style housewife married to a Mormon. How else could she rebel against parents like that?
Yep. Had a friend in high school like that, his parents were drug-addled old hippies from the States. He decided that being a stable, functional adult was probably a better course. He makes more money than I do.
I feel bad for his daughter. She helps him make protest signs during the week and goes protesting with him on the weekends. She’s even got a pink pussy hat. At a NODAPL protest a couple weeks ago, she wanted to speak at the end. She went up and said “I love black people”. After a little applause, she then said “and I love everyone”. He posted the video on Facebook. Last weekend she went to a birthday party where they make protest signs, passed around a ball of yarn where they complimented each other, then went out and led a protest with bullhorn and all. The theme was “We are small, but we are powerful.”
Disclaimer: I’m not a parent.
But, I’ve always felt uncomfortable with people sucking the childhood out of their kids. I don’t have a problem with educating them on things you think are important but, sheesh, have a birthday party that’s a birthday party. I have/had the same irritation with my religious friends who can’t just go to the beach or whatever without preaching and praying.
It pisses me off when people get children involved in politics. For fuck’s sake, let them play with Legos, ride bikes, climb trees, and enjoy what will probably be the happiest and most carefree years of their lives. Don’t inject the poison of politics into their innocent minds.
agnostic feminazi girlfriend, who is a chaplain at an Episcopal Church
You left out “amoral and unethical”; you really can’t be both an agnostic and a chaplain. Agnostics lack faith, its pretty much a job requirement for a chaplain.
I love that they junked the solar panels after their little “save the urf” protest. Those things have toxic heavy metals in them, swampy. Way to take a dump right in Gaia’s mouth.
Yeah, that was the first thing that immediately came to mind. Agnostic chaplain? How does that work?
She’s “spiritual”.
It’s Episcopalianism.
(Unitarian would have been a valid alternative answer.)
Yeah, but those metals are being mined in China, so the toxic waste and effluvia is far, far, away from the psuedo-environmental NIMBY buttercups who demand solar panels and windmills in the Western world. And when those panels crack and leech toxins into the ground, they’ll just blame the evil corporations anyway.
I had the same reaction when I seen her mention that in a Facebook post. Her “sermons” basically boil down to this: promote left wing social justice causes and save the environment because that’s the Christian thing to do in order to better create heaven on Earth.
I know nothing about Episcopalians, but they seem very fond of angry-lesbian clergy.
The had a lesbian chaplain speak at their church about LGBTQ and BLM rights just last week!
Take an Anglican church, get rid of all the tradition, and replace all leadership with SJWs. Episcopalians are the slightly less heretical cousins of the UU “church”
that person’s quote reads like an extended rationalization for constant “patting one’s self on the back”
A cop sees a guy driving a truck with a bunch of penguins in the back. He pulls the guy over and says “take these penguins to the zoo right now.” A few days later, the cop sees the same guy driving and all the penguins in the back are wearing sun glasses. He pulls him over again and says “I thought I told you to take these penguins to the zoo.” The guys “I did. And now I’m taking them to the beach.”
Somebody tell Hildegarde Withers.
Were they all baked?
No. Me and Stony snuck off behind the seal enclosure to spark a bowl, and he got so high he decided to go swimming. Bad move.
A penguin is driving down the highway when his car starts making weird noises. He pulls in to a service station and the mechanic tells him it’ll be an hour before he can look at it. The penguin, noticing a diner across the street, waddles on over to kill the time and get some lunch. The waitress talks him in to a piece of apple pie à la mode for dessert. As the penguin enters the garage to check on his car, the mechanic walks up and says “Looks like you blew a seal.” The penguin wipes his mouth and says “Nope, just ate some ice cream.”
That’s a lot of work just to get a narrowed gaze from swiss
And that’s the short version, it’s my dad’s favorite joke and he can take up to five minutes to get to the punch line.
The humor is in the method. I’m a fan of that; i think its a very mild form of sadism.
You’ll Never Guess Which Politicians Denounced Illegal Immigration!
https://youtu.be/VGo9mnsiZy4?t=1m25s
He’s sooooooooo racist
One of the more gratifying results of shamelessly indoctrinating your children, is that at sometimes, they’ll back you up and fight your battles for you, when to do it yourself looks mean and uncharitable.
Dramatis Personae – two nieces, both 23/24 – one daughter, 15. Brother in law’s twins, 23. Family gathering, One niece at Ivy League J-school, another flunking out of really easy medical-related subject, twins studying ecology and political theory, attend demonstrations, keffiyahs, the whole 9 yards.
Scenario. After lunch, sitting out on the deck, me swilling reasonable domestic beer, ‘kids’ are spitballing. Suddenly turns hostile. I’m accused of being a Republican. Deep sigh, polite conversation version of “So? Cash me ousside, howbow dah?”. I get piled on about how tax cuts are evil, etc. The straw man was about the size of the burning man effigy, and the peasants had flamethrowers. I reluctantly pick up my beer and start to go over everything they accused me of, point by point, and then Miss 15, Minarchist, my wonderful daughter steps in and says “So what you’re claiming is … and lists the 5 salient points, and then goes over them ‘balloon debate’ style.
Where she really got stuck in was the claim that taxation is simply government-directed charity. Her defense of letting people fuck their own lives up in whatever way they saw fit was pretty awesome too. She finishes up – stunned silence.
Except for me golf clapping. Some of the stuff she’d brought up hadn’t even come from me, so it looks like she’s been reading unauthorized propaganda.
Since then (about 3 years ago) politics never break out at family gatherings when Now-Miss 19, Minarchist is there. It’s so much more civilized with a pint-sized protagonist as a bodyguard.
Ugh. SF’ed the threading.
That brought me to tears. How wonderful.
I can’t wait to see you and your daughter on The View! Joy will love it!
I’ll just send the daughter. She can handle it on her own.
priceless
Pics or none of this ever happened.
Don’t think she’s your type, HM, but she’d probably qualify as thicc.
Think Kennedy, but *less* tanned and 25 years younger.
I’m thinking.
that would technically be “translucent”
Very New England, we are, with northern European antecedents on both sides.
We’re so white, we should be Unitarians.
“You’re so white, you think mashed potatoes are ‘ethnic food’
But I suspect she’s going to stay in TX.
Her new family nickname is “Anchor Baby”.
You’re so white, ghosts are frightened of you
You’re so white, the only social-gatherings you feel comfortable at are Renaissance Fairs.
Maybe I’ll send her the link for glibz. I think she can stand her ground with us deplorables.
I have to be a little bit careful, because she’s an occasional lurker at the other place and might see this, so I can’t provide too much detail, but the only problem for me is that she’s doing a faith-based course at a very good (i.e. REAL) liberal arts college that will inevitably require some kind of reconciliation of her religious faith and her political ideology.
I’ve recommended she takes a look at the School of Salamanca, and its quite libertarian role in the evolution of the Catholic church, but we’ll have to see how it all pans out.
But once she graduates, she’s her own woman. I expect she’ll do fine.
but the only problem for me is that she’s doing a faith-based course at a very good (i.e. REAL) liberal arts college that will inevitably require some kind of reconciliation of her religious faith and her political ideology.
I know quite a few Catholic libertarians. Today’s church is a bit statist, but history contains quite a number of Catholic scholars who can qualify as minarchist (to the extent they address gov’t)
Wait a minute. You were not reported for child abuse? I mean you apparently taught your daughter things not approved by the appropriate authorities. Report her and yourself to the local re-education camps.
First thing she learned was when to speak, and when to throw her voice so someone else got blamed for her ideas.
She was somewhat lucky at high school. Her GovPol teacher was very receptive to her …. ummm … singular views in class discussions. She became, for a while, Coolest Class Kid when she successfully carried the debate on “This class proposes that all laws prohibiting prostitution should be abolished”.
… not that I want to pimp her out to HM, of course…..
I’m offering 4 cows and 15 goats as bride price.
The trick was that since she was 13, she thought she was rebelling against *ME*.
So, Peak Derp does exist.
The very existence of Maxine Waters throws doubt on this hypothesis.
I participated in your foolish holiday yesterday. The color theme makes it easy to blend in. Anyways I am a little slow to crawl off the hot rock today…
I stayed home. Prolly do mine tonight.
Curious: since you’rec cold-blooded (aren’t all Libertarians?), did you find yourself slowing down as you drank cold beverages?
If it’s derp you’re looking for…
Spring has been particularly hasty and irregular this year, but this is no anomaly. In the latter half of the 20th century, the spring emergence of leaves, frogs, birds and flowers advanced in the Northern Hemisphere by 2.8 days per decade. I’m nearly 50, so springtime has moved, on average, a full two weeks since I was born. And you? We now experience climate change not only through the abstractions of science, but also through lived experience.
Early spring felt good; early spring felt dreadful. Now, whiplash as we slam into a snowbank. This is the motion sickness of climate change: The world lurches, and our bodies know that all is not well. What we experienced as spring, a predictable appearance of buds and birds, is passing away. Our children will live in uncharted, unnamed seasons.
Not that it matters, but I would have sworn that weepy excrescence was the work of a womyn.
And the comments are pretty much as you would expect.
NWtraveler Seattle, WA 15 hours ago
Discussing climate change drives some people nuts. Those whose deny the obvious are so fearful of the truth that they cannot stick their heads in the sand fast enough. What to do about it? Keep publishing articles such as this one to counter the wrong information being peddled by the deniers of global warming.
If anything will convince the neanderthal thuggery, it’s a heaping helping of sappy boo-hooing about the peepers.
A little incoherent shrieking is cathartic, I suppose.
Concerned Citizen Anywheresville 15 hours ago
Of course there is global warming. What part of SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE on this planet don’t you people get?
PEOPLE CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING — too many people. We had a chance, 40-50 years ago, with Zero Population Growth. Nobody backed it. People kept reproducing like proverbial rabbits.
We are well on the way now to 9 BILLION PEOPLE.
There is no solution to global warming that doesn’t involve reducing population. You can’t “Prius” your way out of this. You can’t bring back the climate of 50 years ago by carrying a cloth grocery sack.
It also won’t help to make the US overpopulated through immigration, ILLEGAL immigration and taking in hordes of refugees. The buck has to stop somewhere. The US was overpopulated at 200 million but now we are 330 million and yet lefty libs want more and more poor folks to move here and pump out six babies each.
At least you can’t pigeonhole the guy.
The US was overpopulated at 200 million but now we are 330 million and yet lefty libs want more and more poor folks to move here and pump out six babies each.
Somebody has never been outside their metropolitan area
You know who else … oh nevermind.
We had a chance, 40-50 years ago, with Zero Population Growth
THIRD WORLD PEASANTS SHOULD STARVE AND BE CONTROLLED SO I CAN FEEL GOOD.
It’s also great because guess what, the countries where Zero Population Growth movement was actually a thing? Pretty much have it.
And now they’re obsessed with importing 3rd world breeding machines because we don’t have enough dumbed down laborers to meet our needs. People gonna complain, no matter what, nothing we can do except ignore them.
I’m looking forward to global cooling becoming a problem again, and having the exact same solutions as warming.
That takes me back.
The leftist adherence to the global warming religion is bizarre.
A “progressive” leftist and I were debating about the election, and he admitted that the Democrats suck on many issues but they’re “good on climate change” and therefore everyone should vote for them, and we can just work out the other issues later after climate change has been solved. I disputed that climate change was as “settled” as they say it is, and further contested the notion that the proposed policies would even make a difference.
Basically, the lines I kept getting were “consensus” and “anti-science”. I kept asking how it was possible to be SO certain of this dangerous warming trend when 1) the warming over the past 100 years is said to be less than one degree, and 2) up until a few decades ago, the measuring instruments had a margin of error of one degree or greater, and 3) the “proxy” methods used to guess the temperatures of centuries past are basically a crapshoot since there’s no way to verify that these methods are correct. I just kept getting the same old refrain of “consensus” and “anti-science”. I pointed out that the real anti-science view is the idea that CAGW is undisputable, eternal truth because a majority of climatologists believe it at the present moment. I mentioned that all throughout history, scientists have believed something just because it’s the best thing they could come up with, but they always had to be open to criticism. Hell, the entire medical community once shouted down the idea that diseases were caused by tiny microorganisms. Where would we be today if they had kept on shouting “consensus” and silenced any opposition?
The problem with trying to make things idiot-proof is that they keep making better idiots.
We won the War Against Running With Scissors, and this is the result.