Tuesday Afternoon Links

Both my kids have a stomach flu. So they’re basically running around depositing vomit in random locations in my house like puke-Roombas. Hope your day is going better.

The 3 year old has a giant melon
Randomly
  • In which, Kevin D. Williamson proves he’s secretly a Glibertarians reader and ripping off contributor jesse.in.mb. (Dear NRO, we are simply being glib. We agree with our lawyers that no actual intellectual appropriation happened and Mr. Williamson is probably actually ignorant of our little site. We hope your lawyers will similarly remain ignorant. Yours in poverty, the Glibertarian Team)
  • The most disproportionately popular job in each state. You’ll never guess what Florida is! (Hooray for raw clickbait. Too bad we don’t advertise)
  • This has the potential to be the Glibertarians version of the Cleveland Browns joke. (Don’t be let down)
  • Netflix users have watched half a billion hours of Adam Sandler. Hopefully 400 million or so were of this. (I wish Chris Farley had lived and David Spade had died)
  • For your own safety, if any law enforcement group outside of Berkeley offers symbolic arrests, decline. (Especially in Florida)
  • Gratuitous Kate Upton crawling around. (song may be triggering)

I think I’d like to be a regionally successful musician in Austin who can get Rodriguez to direct and produce a fun music video for me in my next life.

 

 

 

 

Comments

441 responses to “Tuesday Afternoon Links”

  1. Playa Manhattan

    Um, so you mean the opposite of a Roomba?

    1. jesse.in.mb

      Don’t sass Brett, he worked his fingers to the bone to put links on this table.

      1. Pomp

        Thanks for looking into the tonic water thing yesterday and following up.

        OooooOOooh, toxicity is a thing.

        Think imma try tonic syrup formulations with and without the lemongrass. Certainly it sounds appealing, but one might not always be in the mood for lemongrass.

        1. jesse.in.mb

          I dunno if you clicked through to the Cherry Phosphate recipe, but the cherry bark extraction can actually produce hydrogen cyanide if done improperly, because of course it does.

          It was really fucking tasty though and I love having acid phosphate in my cabinet.

          Also Whole Foods tonic water is the best off-the-shelf tonic I’ve had. I cannot encourage you try it enough.

          Lemme know how your tonic adventures go.

          1. Pomp

            The cherry phosphate thing was interesting and I never heard of that before. I love the 50d poster art, it looks like something out of Bioshock. Better living through chemical innovation! Drink a cherry phosphate served up by your kindly local soda jerk! /50s newsreel announcer.

            I’m going to have to check out the Whole Foods brand. A while ago one of you had talked about the Trader Joe’s house brand. Tastes better than Schweppes, but the cost differential was meh.

          2. jesse.in.mb

            If you need some cherry bark…

            I was unenthusiastic about TJ’s tonic water. I’ll get it in a pinch because I can walk to TJs, but I’m always happiest when I’ve got a six pack of the WF one in the back of my fridge and limes on my counter.

          3. Pomp

            It’s funny, I’m going to invest a bunch of effort into this artisal tonic syrup this year, but I absolutely prefer the flavour/punch of low shelf gins like New Amsterdam and Poland Springs over most high end gins. My wife and I sip expensive gins neat, since they tend to be delicate and wasted by mixing with tonic.

            I’m always looking for really bold/punchy gins if you have recommendations.

          4. jesse.in.mb

            I really like St. George Terroir. It tastes like going hiking in the mountains near where I grew up. I’m not sure if everyone else loves it as much as I do. I think Kibby and Serious Man are the only two I know have had it.

            Hendricks or Sapphire are my baseline gins. Sipping I’m more likely to go the whiskey/Scotch route.

          5. Pomp

            I will pick that up, $30 is reasonable for a 750. We got this Canadian gin “Ungava” that I was really excited about on account of the inclusion of Arctic moss. It isn’t bad, but I think I self-hyped it a bit due to the exotic ingredients. It’s not a bad sipping gin. Can’t pin down the name of the last Dutch gin I got at this moment, but it was phenomenal as a sipping gin with a great bouquet of something like 13 botanicals including vanilla.

          6. R C Dean

            Stay tuned, fellas. I’m going to try to do a G & T as part of this week’s Belly Up to the Bar. I’ve never even considered making my own tonic. I haven’t tried the Whole Foods tonic – of the pre-bottled stuff, I think the Feverfew is the one I like best. But the syrup and tonic water recipe I use delivers such good results I haven’t experimented with it in awhile. I’ll give the Whole Foods stuff a try.

          7. jesse.in.mb

            WF is a *touch* on the sweet side, but it’s actual cane sugar and the quinine bitterness is perfect. Also it’s their house brand so surprisingly reasonable for WF.

          8. Pomp

            Booyah

          9. dbleagle

            I am a fan of Fever Tree tonic water. As a plus it is bottled in glass in single serving size.

          10. Pomp

            Thanks kindly for the tip.

        2. Suthenboy

          I looked at the list of symptoms…I have all of those, but it aint from tonic water. I am just old.

          For no reason at all here is my best ‘old’ joke

          Three old men in the nursing home. One is 70, one 80 and another one is 90.

          70 year old complains “Damn, I can hardly piss anymore.”
          80 year old replies “That’s nothing, I can barely shit anymore.”
          90 year old laugh and says “Hell boys, thats nothing. I piss and shit every morning at precisely 7am.”
          The other two are briefly perplexed. “Ok, tell us why that is a bad thing.”
          90 year old says “I dont wake up and get out of bed until 8am.”

    2. SugarFree

      No, he means they bounce off things, have sensors that mostly keep them from falling down stairs and return to their charging station at the end of their cycle.

      1. Negroni Please

        This does not describe my Roomba. It’s the cybernetic equivalent of an alcoholic teenage runaway and essentially never makes it home. Every goddamn day we play the game of find the dead/passed out Roomba and take it to the charging station.

        1. SugarFree

          My Roomba competitor makes it to the charging station about 50%. It’s embarrassing how long it takes it to manage it, but it makes it.

        2. Diane Reynolds

          And to think, the roomba was described as a major achievement in AI.

      2. bacon-magic

        Nice one.

      3. Bobarian LMD

        They also scare the shit out of the pets.

        1. R C Dean

          I suspect a Roomba would have a life expectancy measured in seconds around the Dean Pit Beasts.

          1. Our brief experiment with the Roomba ended when I realized that my one overweight pit (Tubbins, nee Jack) would go out of his way to lay in its path and nap. I think specifically so he could gaze despondently at me while the Roomba tried to circumnavigate his ass.

      4. Brett L

        2 out of 3. They fall down and sleep wherever they are. Its like cats. If cats screamed at the top of their lungs to keep themselves awake.

    3. Marty Comanche

      You would think so, but no.

      https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/08/15/pooptastrophe-man-details-night-his-roomba-ran-over-dog-poop/88667704/

      Apparently, Roomba spreads rather than cleans bodily fluids.

  2. jesse.in.mb

    The most disproportionately popular job in each state.

    I really wanted CA to be “Actor (waiter)”

    1. Mad Scientist

      So what was it? (I refuse to turn of my ad-blocker of pay them money to read one article.)

      1. kbolino

        Farm workers

      2. Rhywun

        Ditto and especially for that trash-heap.

  3. Juvenile Bluster

    Netflix users have watched half a billion hours of Adam Sandler. Hopefully 400 million or so were of this. (I wish Chris Farley had lived and David Spade had died)

    Spade is fine. Now if Rob Schneider had died…

  4. R C Dean

    Both my kids have a stomach flu. So they’re basically running around depositing vomit in random locations in my house

    You let them in your house? Man, no wonder kids these days are so spoiled . . .

    *shakes cane, kicks orphan

  5. Drake

    Mark Steyn talks to a Canadian about freedom of speech.

  6. Rufus the Monocled

    Lol Florida.

    1. Juvenile Bluster

      My father’s wife was a special education teacher. Once I was over at their house and a big storm came through and it was hailing and she asked how they were going to get all the rocks out of the pool afterwards. She also watered a plastic plant until my wife pointed out to her that it was plastic.

      I’m not sure if that was germane. Oh well.

      ~~~magic edit fairy~~~

      1. Juvenile Bluster

        I’m not sure what I screwed up, but thanks, magic edit fairy!

        ~~~”poll” instead of “pool”~~~

        1. Bobarian LMD

          Personally, I preferred poll; someone who asks those sorts of questions sounds like they should be employed using a pole.

          1. So it’s millennials asking the questions?

      2. Trolleric the Goth

        the student has become the teacher?

      3. Playa Manhattan

        Uh… so is she hot?

        1. Juvenile Bluster

          *projectile vomits*

  7. Rick C-137

    What the hell is a symbolic arrest? Like they get a record, get to a martyr for the cause but don’t serve any time? Is this a real thing? Damn. That comment earlier with the mayor naming his dog Che was right on.

    Well except until the symbolic arrest become real ones and the revolution eats itself. We’ll see a lot of inter-cranial sudden onset lead poisonings happen.

    1. Drake

      Sounds like a bondage fetish.

      1. Brett L

        You’ve seen CHildren of the Revolution, too?

  8. SugarFree

    OH YOUR GOD! WHO STILL SENDS FAXES?!?

    1. Juvenile Bluster

      Lawyers. And doctors. And prospective college football players on signing day.

      1. R C Dean

        We can’t get the medical community to stop using the fucking fax machine. I’d like to get rid of every single one, and tell people to scan and email any documents, but when I floated that idea the reaction was shocked horrification.

        I did strip out faxing as an allowed method of giving notice under our contracts, so I’ve got that going for me at least.

        1. jesse.in.mb

          I know it was still in HIPAA at one point that certain kinds of sensitive data had to be faxed. I got into a bit of a fight with a compliance guy about how dumb it was. I assume changes were made in the ACA.

          1. Greg F

            A fax is point to point so it is inherently more secure. Email, unless it’s encrypted (which is rare), is … well it isn’t anywhere near secure. I do contract work for 4 hospitals. They don’t don’t use a fax machine to send prescriptions to the pharmacy’s, their medical software does that faxing. The software sends the fax over a phone line which is a lot harder to intercept and decode than an email would be.

          2. R C Dean

            A fax is point to point so it is inherently more secure.

            In transmission, yes, probably, if you aren’t using encrypted email (which you should be for anything involving PHI) and which is not rare in competently run healthcare organizations. We’ve run into problems with encrypted emails because we use one system, the docs use another, and the two systems don’t get along.

            In use, though, I have seen more individual data breaches from faxes than anything else, because it just flops out on a tray and anyone can pick it up. Which they do. Faxes seem unusually prone to being misdirected, bundled up with something else, or otherwise in the wrong hands.

          3. Greg F

            The faxes of prescriptions for the hospitals in my neck of the woods never involve paper. It is a machine to machine transmission. The medical records system sends a fax to the pharmacy’s prescription system. It is more like a database sending a record to another database using the fax protocol. Another advantage of using the fax protocol is the transmission is verified at the time it is received unlike email. While you could use read receipts to verify reception there is no mechanism to request a re-transmit in the case of a corrupt email. IOW, email lacks the hand shaking between transmitter and receiver that insures a reliable transfer. Finally, there is nothing preventing use of encryption with the fax protocol.

    2. Our office copier/fax/printer still routinely gets fax spam – vacations!!

    3. jesse.in.mb

      Hipsters

      Also, soothe your frayed nerves with this catchy tune.

      1. SugarFree

        Is that EDM? I’ve already had enough fax machines screeching at me today.

        1. jesse.in.mb

          So surly today, who spit in your metformin?

          1. SugarFree

            A fax machine keeps calling me. Bastards.

    4. Glitterstorm

      The entire nation of Japan

    5. BakedPenguin

      MD offices. They need the paper trail because…

      government regulation!

      1. Pope Jimbo

        It is also easier for old time MD’s to be HIPPA compliant with nothing but paper. You don’t have to worry about some punk hacker getting access to your MS Access database.

        Seriously, a company I used to work for was still making tons of money with a fax product that converted faxes to pdfs. Tons and tons of people still use faxes, but doctors had a big share of that.

        1. Fatty Bolger

          Faxes are still very common between doctors on different medical systems.

    6. Trolleric the Goth

      lots of people. Worst is when they fax what was clearly a printed PDF!

      1. SugarFree

        I always take things I’m supposed to fax and turn them into PDFs. Anarchy!

    7. Financial advisors. Seriously, we only recently upgraded beyond the 80s.

      1. Gilmore

        anyone that collects lots of signatures, really. lawyers, etc.

        1. Right.

          A lot of clients even ask, “Well, can you email it to me?” … No, we can’t. We really can’t. I’m so sorry that we’re going on 40 years behind technology advances.

          1. robc

            How is an emailed pdf of a scanned document any different than a fax?

          2. robc

            Print.
            Sign.
            Scan.
            Email.
            Print.

            vs

            Print.
            Sign.
            Fax.

            In both cases a duplicate of the original signed document ends up on a piece of paper at the recipient. But I don’t need some fancy piece of 1890s technology on my end to pull it off.

            Heck, set up the special email account to forward to your fax machine and you won’t even know the difference!

          3. Bobarian LMD

            1890s technology

            The Maxim machine gun?

            The juke box?

            The automobile?

          4. The typewriter. He puts the standardized forms in it and fills them out that way.

          5. The canned response from the powers that be is that faxing is secure. Emailing has a greater possibility for being hacked or some such.

          6. robc

            No, seriously, what is the real answer?

          7. robc

            Next time I have to send a fax, I will ask for the public key for the fax machine so I can send it encrypted.

          8. The Last American Hero

            Not in my case. I send my emails from a homebrew server in the basement of my dacha.

          9. Zunalter

            “Reasons” I assume.

          10. Seriously. That is the real answer from the home office on faxing vs emailing.

            They do have a process for sending a secure email that involves the recipient setting up a dummy user id and password, etc. But it’s only supposed to be used as a last resort.

          11. robc

            They do have a process for sending a secure email that involves the recipient setting up a dummy user id and password, etc.

            PGP was invented in 1991 to solve this very problem.

            How is the dummy id and password somehow more secure than using, I don’t know, real security?

          12. kbolino

            The whole premise behind “fax is more secure than email” is that faxes transit the public switched telephone network rather than the Internet; i.e. that they go over dedicated wires to facilities owned by telephone companies and can’t be intercepted or modified in transit without some serious investment by the would-be snooper/interloper.

            That’s just fine and dandy if it’s 2001. The problem is that in 2017, a significant amount of telephone infrastructure is now VoIP. I don’t know if your average fax transits the Internet today, but if it doesn’t now, it probably will within the next decade. Even if fax security wasn’t a myth a decade ago, it is now.

          13. Gilmore

            what is the real answer?

            regulations, and corporate policy responses to regulations.

            if you try and decode it logically, you’re doing it wrong. companies establish use-of-fax policy in Financial Services for a variety of reasons. e.g. one of the problems w/ email is that it creates multiple copies of documents in various places which can’t necessarily be tracked or controlled by the customer/vendor after the fact.

            e.g. you send something via your Gmail, there’s now a perma-copy of these docs w. all your financial info, account #s, SS#, AND signature floating in the ‘cloud’ now.

            How is the corporate vendor supposed to maintain security while simultaneously encouraging clients to spread their documents all over the goddamn internet? Can you imagine the liability exposure?

            So they create “rules” which say that clients are only supposed to fax physical copies of docs if they can’t physically hand them over.

            of course, not everyone follows the rules, but the rules exist to protect companies from lawsuits when that info gets leaked/stolen/disclosed, or to blame the agent/advisor instead of their own lax enforcement, etc.

          14. if you try and decode it logically, you’re doing it wrong.

            Spoken like a veteran of the industry. There is absolutely no logic in this place.

          15. robc

            How is the corporate vendor supposed to maintain security while simultaneously encouraging clients to spread their documents all over the goddamn internet? Can you imagine the liability exposure?

            Then do as I suggested and require submissions be encrypted. The fact that I can encrypt my emails (even though I dont) and I am pretty damn sure the fax machine doesn’t support encryption is a big flag to me.

            Require emails to be encrypted. I can handle that a hell of a lot easier than I can find a fax machine.

          16. Gilmore

            require submissions be encrypted

            again = you don’t understand

            the rules aren’t about practical-solutions to practical-problems; the rules are about ensuring a lowest-denominator approach to an issue which presents the least complexity and least litigation-exposure

            and that latter component – litigation risk – probably outweighs any consideration of technical issues entirely.

            that said – there are probably also decent technical reasons. many clients/consumers don’t understand encryption on their own end – and they don’t even have any consistent access to @#()*@() computers.
            (do you know how many clients don’t even have outlook? much less any facility w/ encryption)

            the fact is that putting very sensitive financial docs into any ‘internet’ environment at all presents a host of “what if” problems that most companies don’t want to be responsible for. You have no idea how ridiculous the regulatory requirements are for handling these things.

            the simplest solution is to simply have an industry-wide standard which poses the least complexity and the best ‘document security’. You might *think* that the solution is obvious, but that’s because you’re not the CIO of State Street or Vanguard.

          17. Rhywun

            I have never heard of a “fax policy”. I work with sensitive information (insurance) and we encrypt emails.

          18. Gilmore

            I have never heard of a “fax policy”. I work with sensitive information (insurance) and we encrypt emails.

            I think its worth pointing out that what’s “normal” for a NYC-based office is by no means necessarily normal for the way business gets done all over the country. and i’m referring specifically to client-agency/firm communications, not business-to-business or intra-corporate document sharing.

            when i refer to industry-wide practices, i mean that the way FINRA establishes “bare minimum” practices that companies are supposed to theoretically adhere to. Most companies probably exceed them, or go far beyond them, to the point that most people are far more concerned with Company-level compliance than they are FINRA-level compliance.

            my own office probably does 90% of our client-document traffic via encrypted email. But it wasn’t even very long ago (say, 2012?) when companies were first adopting any consistent encryption-standards and practices. Fax machines were very much still the standard.*

            [and while Faxing was ‘standard’, there was still widespread violation of these regs, and plenty of people sending all sorts of sensitive docs to internet-mail accounts etc. Simply because a rule exists doesn’t mean its observed.]

          19. Rhywun

            Yeah, I am referring to business-to-business. We have been required to encrypt emails (or files via FTP) for awhile now. I’m not involved with customers.

          20. Gilmore

            lastly (and i think i’ve typed 1000 more words on this than i’ve needed to)….

            …mostly what we’re talking about is *signatures*

            not just ‘any client docs’. its stuff that needs a john hancock.

          21. R C Dean

            How is an emailed pdf of a scanned document any different than a fax?

            Well, the scan has one very significant superiority – you retain an electronic copy of it, which you need anyway for your archives.

            You also have the email of what you sent, so you can show exactly what was sent, and when, if you need to later. So make that two reasons scan-n-email is superior.

          22. Greg F

            Well, the scan has one very significant superiority – you retain an electronic copy of it, which you need anyway for your archives.

            I have done work for a large investment company who’s name everybody would recognize. All their faxes are archived electronically. It would be rather trivial for me to set up the same at my place of employment if management so desired.

    8. Glitterstorm

      I hate working on fax machines man. It makes me want to jump in front of the express train. POW!

    9. robc

      “Send a fax to 555-1111”

      “Can I just email it to you?”

      “No.”

  9. Playa Manhattan

    That symbolic arrest bullshit…. wow.

    Now I’m going through my head and wondering how many times I saw it happen without realizing.

    1. Bobarian LMD

      The symbolic beatings give it a nice touch, though.

  10. Kate Upton has large breasts /Mr. Obvious

    1. Glitterstorm

      Some would say Humungus

      1. Drake

        I would say just right.

    2. bacon-magic

      And how.

    3. Just Say’n

      Kate Upton reminds us why America is the greatest country on earth

  11. Worker and Parasite

    I’d be fine having the most disproportionately popular job in Idaho. It doesn’t sound like a desk job.

    1. “Shampooers” – WTF, NJ?

      1. Diane Reynolds

        Salons and spray tans. So you’ve never heard of Jersey Shore?

  12. Gilmore

    The most disproportionately popular job in each state.

    WTF is a “roustabout”?

    It makes me wonder if i can enter “ne’er–do–well” on my offical title

    1. Negroni Please

      I’ve listed that as an occupation on my 1040 before. Also Wizard, Power Ranger, and General Malcontent. No one has questioned it so far.

      1. Enough About Palin

        Try Pimp sometime.

    2. SugarFree

      The low man on the totem pole at an oil drilling site.

      1. Playa Manhattan

        The guy inside the barrel on Glory Hole Fridays?

        1. jesse.in.mb

          Is…is that a career track?

          *updates resume*

        2. Brett L

          You laugh, but the cleanest shitter on the whole job site is the blowjob portajohn. And workers will enforce that like God himself decreed it.

      2. Bobarian LMD

        Euphemism for pivot man at the circle jerk?

    3. jesse.in.mb

      Roustabout is an official classification of natural gas and oil rig personnel. Roustabouts working in oil fields typically perform various jobs requiring little training.

      I had exactly the same thought.

      1. robc

        Someone can copy/paste from google I see.

        I was going to, but SF beat me to it.

        1. SugarFree

          I only knew because that’s how jesse addresses me in all business correspondence.

    4. Wasn’t there an Elvis movie with this title – something motorcycles something carnival?

      1. SugarFree

    5. Suthenboy

      What? You….oh. I live in Louisiana. Unemployed roustabouts are like mosquitoes down here.

      1. Brett L

        four weeks of work, twelve weeks of laying around after they get fired.

    6. square circle

      In the 60s my dad was a roustabout at Mobile Oil in San Pedro. His description was “entry level job for kids where you do random shitty things no one else wants to do.”

    7. westernsloper

      I’m moving to MO and getting on the locker/coat room attendant gravy train. Roustabout is too much work.

  13. Drake

    Who Lost Turkey (Revisited).

    Too bad the Kemalist Republic is gone.

    1. Just Say’n

      Ataturk was a great man. Erdogen has spit on his legacy

      1. John Titor

        Standard “Great men are rarely good men” statement applies however.

        1. Pan Zagloba

          Also, after reading his biography, I concluded that the man was born with an anti-libertarian instinct. Even when he tried to be liberal, he did it in an authoritarian way.

          1. John Titor

            That’s what happens when you let an army officer reform a country.

          2. Just Say’n

            I’d still take Ataturk over Erdogen every day

          3. John Titor

            Yes, but let’s be real, you wouldn’t be saying that if you were a Kurd.

          4. Just Say’n

            True. If I were a Kurd I wouldn’t take either, though

          5. Gustave Lytton

            Give Erdogen a couple of years.

          6. Drake

            You are reading history with a Western bias by assuming a non-authoritarian / libertarian could have possibly transformed the Ottoman Empire into a modern republic.

        2. kbolino

          Kemalism was fascistic and corrupt. The worship of “Ataturk” was creepy at times, and borderline idolatrous. The Islamists got a lot of their power just by pointing out these facts. The fact that they’re a lot worse than the Kemalists on the whole doesn’t seem to matter to their supporters, because their flavor of fascism is decidedly Islamic in character.

          1. Pan Zagloba

            Also, Erdogan got into power by being economically more liberal (in old-timey meaning of the word) than any Kemalist before him. They had decades to free up economy and reap the benefits, but they let it lie there and now there’s a neo-Ottoman ruling them again.

            Luckily, he won’t be one of the bright Sultans. Ottoman’s aren’t a problem until some Serb or Albanian gets the position of Grand Vizier…

          2. John Titor

            Mehmed II and Suleiman disagree.

          3. Pan Zagloba

            Suleiman the Magnificent is literally who I had in mind

          4. John Titor

            He wasn’t running the show when Suleiman rolled into Rhodes, or Belgrade, or Hungary, or Vienna…

          5. Pan Zagloba

            God bless Wikipedia, you can actually get Viziers sorted by sultan!

            Lots and lots of non-Turks from the Balkans. Which isn’t unreasonable, given that Janissary corps was considered loyal, reliable and capable men were in position to make connection with the Sultan.

      2. stilljustcarol

        I don’t know if they still do it but when I lived in Turkey the men walked around with their heels exposed because they believed that Ataturk would come back in the form of a cat and bite the next great leader on the heel. I always wondered why the men didn’t just wear sandals instead of breaking down the backs of their loafers but I didn’t want to insult anyone by asking.

        1. westernsloper

          That is common in Kurdistan too. I assumed it was because their shoes didn’t fit well, and or the fact everyone wore dress shoes for everything whether it be a soccer game, military service, or outdoor work. None of which is a comfortable thing to do when wearing dress shoes. Turn them into slippers is a good option.

  14. John Titor

    Hopefully 400 million or so were of this.

    *Stares at history degree on wall*

    Man I wish it worked like that.

  15. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Note to self, watch out for weird dudes in the locker rooms in St Louis.

    1. BakedPenguin

      Yeah, most of these weren’t unsurprising, but that was a bowl of WTF.

  16. Juvenile Bluster

    Of course the most disproportionately popular job in DC is something as useless as “Political scientist”

    1. Diane Reynolds

      I didn’t know it was a job. I thought it was a class you took for the easy A.

      1. Bobarian LMD

        It’s an easy A until the instructor says something patently and obviously stupid and you call them on it.

        “Have you ever actually been outside?”

  17. Why all the home entertainment installers in Arizona? Old people? A love of porn?

    1. Glitterstorm

      It’s hot outside.

      1. Diane Reynolds

        This. No one in Arizona goes outdoors.

        1. mexican sharpshooter

          “Why all the home entertainment installers in Arizona? Old people?”
          Yeah

          “A love of porn?”
          Yup

          “It’s hot outside”
          Not really. Its only 90 right now.

          “This. No one in Arizona goes outdoors.”
          Only true between May-September. The rest of the year is about the only reason people move here.

          1. Vhyrus

            I cannot be the only person that goes shooting in the desert in the summer.

          2. Mad Scientist

            Nope. I did all the time when I lived there.

          3. mexican sharpshooter

            That’s totally different, because reasons.

  18. Just Say’n

    I’m sorry, but if you don’t like Kate Upton then you’re a communist and you hate America.

    1. Glitterstorm

      Imagine not wanting to smash her tits.

      1. Juvenile Bluster

        meh.

        1. Glitterstorm

          I’m normie signalling sorry.

      2. … nope, can’t do it. WOULD SMASH!

  19. Playa Manhattan

    I have just discovered that Trader Joe’s sells a spatchcocked and fully marinated lemon-herb chicken.

    Will report back on the results soon.

    1. SugarFree

      spatchcocked

      Um, a NSFW would be nice.

      1. Is that treatable with current antibiotics?

        1. Playa Manhattan

          It’s more of a needle and thread type deal.

        2. Negroni Please

          God no! Whole foods says you should never treat chickens with antibiotics

      2. Playa Manhattan

        It’s not like I posted a pic of its innards. I will if you want me to, though.

    2. Diane Reynolds

      Trader what’s?

      1. Playa Manhattan
        1. Diane Reynolds

          Huh, I think there’s one of those around the corner from me. White people. Lots of white people. Subarus and Priuses.

          1. Mad Scientist

            Yep, that’s the place.

          2. Diane Reynolds

            I remember it. I pulled in to the parking lot with this theme music backing me. Security asked me to leave.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ShRhnfmj-o

          3. Vhyrus

            What’s wrong with Subarus?!

          4. jesse.in.mb

            Love, it’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru.

          5. Vhyrus

            Shit, I forgot when I admit I am a Subaru owner I have to immediately clarify that I am also not gay.

          6. Mad Scientist

            Subarus are great cars. Miatas are great cars. The new Mini Cooper….not so much.

          7. Vhyrus

            I like how you said miatas instead of mazdas, neatly sidestepping that whole ‘mazda makes other models’ can of worms.

          8. jesse.in.mb

            My reminder was gentle. I find it weird that they went so hard on the marketing, but I guess if you’re already strongly associated with something in the popular imagination you might as well go for broke with it. The whole exchange is fun, but this part made me laugh.

            Rav Danya Ruttenberg‏Verified account @TheRaDR 27 Jun 2015
            @uhaul @michellej you think they know the 2nd date joke?

            U-Haul Cares‏Verified account @UHaul_Cares 27 Jun 2015
            @TheRaDR Oh….we know 😉

            Fabulous

          9. DOOMco

            They don’t count.

          10. Vhyrus

            I have been a Subaru guy for a long time. I remember on the forums a guy told a story about how he was invited to be on some internal training video for Subaru where they interview actual owners. He got a copy of the video for himself and he said out of the ten customers they interviewed he was the only not obviously 100% gay person in the whole video.

          11. Vhyrus

            NTTAWWT

          12. jesse.in.mb

            I know they have a lot of customer loyalty. I also love how many of my friends have Subaru owning dads and immediately respond to raised eyebrows with “He’s NOT a lesbian…I don’t think he’s a lesbian.”

          13. Mad Scientist

            He got a copy of the video for himself and he said out of the ten customers they interviewed he was the only not obviously 100% gay person in the whole video.

            He was just regular gay then?

          14. DOOMco

            What sucks is that the reliability of Subaru has dropped significantly in the last few years. I think the list I saw last had Kia or Hyundai above them.

          15. westernsloper

            @Vhyrus You don’t have to clarify you are not gay. You just have to admit you drive the same car as dread-lock sporting hippie chics and white yuppies wanting to social signal they are outdoorsy. Nobody cares that you are gay.

          16. As far as I am concerned, the Japanese word for lemon is “Subaru”

            The last Subaru that I will ever own (TLSTIWEO) was the worst car that I ever owned. How bad? Worse than a 1963 Rambler, worse than a 1972 Cricket, worse than a 1948 Ford that never ran.

            That’s how bad.

            … Hobbit

    3. But Enough About Me

      The one time I got spatchcocked the doc said it’d be several years before I’d be able to walk normally again.

  20. I’m going to meander home, work out, and then fix myself a tall gin ‘n’ tonic.

    Farewell and do not die! /obscure reference

    1. Are you going to pick some stuff up and put it down? … And then pick it up again?

        1. jesse.in.mb

          Pics?

  21. Juvenile Bluster

    *not posting spoilers about Bayern-Madrid but wow*

    1. Wow is right.

    2. Rhywun

      I’m vomiting more than Brett’s kids.

  22. Glitterstorm

    I literally had never heard of antifa until this election. They’re getting so much air time for a group of roughly 10,000 people. By all means keep giving them airtime.

    1. John Titor

      They keep it up and you’re going to hear a lot more about them. Probably related to to casualties and jail time.

      That dreadlocked girl that got punched is the perfect representation of antifa’s idiocy. What 90 pound woman thinks its a good idea to attack people and ‘collect 100 Nazi scalps’ except one completely delusional and out of touch with reality? As soon as anyone stands up to you you’re going to get your ass kicked, violence is not to your advantage. Same with antifa. These people are going to get freaking rolled in protest after protest if they keep it up, either by their opponents or the police. Hell, there’s a reason they’re going to be pulling this shit in California and not, say, the south. A Houston antifa assault would end up with corpses.

      1. Playa Manhattan

        She also has a hairy snatch.

          1. Diane Reynolds

            I’ve seen the unibomber, thank you very much.

      2. I can’t wait for them to start suing the big Hollywood studios for giving them the wrong impression on what results when a woman hits a man.

      3. Diane Reynolds

        Plus, they carry airsoft rifles to gun fights.

        1. Chipwooder

          Beats Pop Tart guns, though

          1. Bobarian LMD

            Pop tarts probably won’t get you shot by a hero..

      4. Glitterstorm

        I remember seeing some hardcore lefts when I went to school in (ATL) but they never, ever tried shit like that.

      5. Houston might be receptive to them. As long as they stay really close to southeast. But they start getting close to Post Oak or The Heights? They’ll be heads rolling.

        Literally. I believe the locals would don’t amember them and send their heads rolling town the street as a warning to those that might depress their property values.

        1. Brett L

          Post Oak for sho’. Heights is Noveau Riche. When I was there 15 years ago it was still the place where poor young people who wanted to live inside the Loop lived.

        2. OneOut

          no the South East has a high percentage of old school plant worker redneck types. Furthet South is Clear Lake area and it ain’t going down there either.

    2. Pan Zagloba

      Huh, to me they seemed the same lot that I remember from…Seattle anti-globalization demo I think was the first time. The only difference is that cops used to do their job and stop them, then they stopped doing it for a while, then conservatives finally realized fighting back is something they can do.

      1. John Titor

        Were they really ‘antifa’ or more just your standard shitbag Black bloc riot morons?

        1. Suthenboy

          They are pinko radicals. They want violence in the street. It doesnt matter what group they belong to because they are all the same kinds of people wanting the same thing. Try appeasing them and giving them something they ask for and tomorrow they will be back in the street with some other pretense for lighting fires and assaulting people.

          1. John Titor

            It doesnt matter what group they belong to because they are all the same kinds of people wanting the same thing.

            The violent left in the 70s completely discredits this line of reasoning. The book everyone here likes to reference talks about how radical black groups like the Black Panthers wanted nothing to do with morons like the Weather Underground. They are not some amorphous blob of people demanding the same thing, there’s diversity to their idiocy.

          2. Suthenboy

            Diversity that always seems to boil down to ‘we must destroy capitalism’. The violence is an attempt to disrupt the system.

          3. John Titor

            To ignore the nuance of one’s enemies is to promote weakness in oneself, and other such Taoist quotes.

          4. John Titor

            Furthermore, declaring that they ‘all what the same things’ is the exact kind of collective tribalism that has the left branding populists, social conservatives, libertarians, and constitutionalists as ‘fascists’.

          5. Glitterstorm

            Yeah I don’t think they all want the same thing, there’s a lot pet issues they have.

          6. Suthenboy

            In a general sense they do. Destroy capitalism by overwhelming and disrupting the system. Replace with authoritarianism with me in charge. They all have their pet issues and they all envision their own group as being in charge but look past that they are all the same kinds of people. If they ever do pull the system down they will slaughter each other like mad in an attempt to have primary power. We would be just like the third world shitholes where there is never ending tribal war. Step back and all those tribes look the same to me.

          7. John Titor

            Again, this is something that could be regurgitated by any leftist about the right. Pretending that your opponents do not have division and complexity to their positions is only detrimental to your challenge of them.

        2. Pan Zagloba

          Is “antifa” not an outgrowth of Black Block? Same tactics, same flags, presumably new generation of idiots…

          1. John Titor

            Not to be the ‘black bloc is a tactic, not a movement’ asshole, but black bloc is ‘sort of’ a tactic, not a movement. Yes they always have their supposed incoherent anarcho-socialist ideals they claim to be striving for, but the reality is they’re more about what they’re protesting against than a political ideology. In the 80s they were all about anti-nuclear power/war, the 90s and early 2000s it was all about anti-globalization, now its some vague notion of everybody being fascists. Current ‘antifa’ is less a continuation of some black bloc political legacy and more jackass middle class kids desperate to indulge their emotional temper tantrums.

          2. Glitterstorm

            What a shift lol

          3. Vhyrus

            When I was younger (and even not so young) I would play a lot of mil sim paintball. There would be huge games with hundreds of people, and story lines, and objectives, and sub plots, and factions, and all this sort of pseudo LARP shit involved with it. Some people would get really into it to the point that I am not 100% sure they remembered it was a game the whole time. I really think the majority of these black block kids are basically playing a LARP style game where they are fighting back the early stages of the third Reich and they see themselves as this psuedo tragic hero, but I don’t really think they think of this stuff as ‘real’ in the sense that they don’t view their opponents as actual people nor do they see their actions as anything other than a justified response to a tangible threat, even if the threat is completely narrated to them externally.

          4. Gilmore

            jackass middle class kids desperate to indulge their emotional temper tantrums.

            exactly. I’d add, ‘act out fantasies of being the vanguard of some popular revolt against oppression‘ when they’re actually mostly just white kids from the suburbs and crusty punks allying temporarily to fuck shit up for fun

          5. antisthenes

            They prefer the term “Civil War Preinactors”

          6. LT_Fish

            About 10 years ago I started seeing them a lot in the Euro news – I think that’s where the abbreviation really started – particularly in response to EDL and National Front.

            Could be wrong, but I didn’t see them specifically called Antifa here stateside until much more recently – vice the traditional black bloc in Seattle, WTO protests, etc.

  23. jesse.in.mb

    In which, Kevin D. Williamson proves he’s secretly a Glibertarians reader and ripping off contributor jesse.in.mb.

    Not gonna lie it feels good to have scooped National Review by a few months.

  24. totally_not_an_escaped_ai

    ** Dances around excitedly like a 13-year old girl getting ready to see whatever the boy band du jour is**

    Going to see Radiohead play tonight (haters gonna hate; don’t care)! Unfortunately, it’s at the Greek theater in the middle of UC Berkeley. I’m not looking to get arrested, symbolically or otherwise. I need a costume to disguise my total shit-lordness so I don’t get string-sprayed. Any suggestions?

    1. Playa Manhattan

      Sneak in from the forest. The hills are safe.

      1. square circle

        ^ This.

        The Greek is actually on the eastern edge of campus, and if you come down from the Strawberry Canyon side you can park up the hill and sneak in and out pretty easily. Plus, that’s the frat-row, football-stadium side of campus, not the stinky-activist side of campus, which is the south side.

    2. jesse.in.mb

      Brigitte Helm?

    3. Haybob

      Skinny jeans and an ironic t-shirt should be fine.

    4. Negroni Please

      Judging from your handle you just need to convey that you really are an OK Computer and not at all a paranoid android

      1. totally_not_an_escaped_ai

        Ha! Nice!

    5. Just wear whatever you want. Say you’re being ironic.

    6. BakedPenguin

      Pretend you’re a NZ rugby fan.

    7. Brett L

      Just wear a black ski mask and keep a MAGA hat close to hand.

  25. Playa Manhattan

    Uh oh. Another Aloha Snackbar.. This time, in Fresno.

    1. These writers realize most of America thinks they’re mealy-mouthed pussies every time they say “motive was unclear” or “no reason had been determined yet” a couple paragraphs after they quote him saying “allah ackbar” and that he hated all white people, don’t they?

      1. BakedPenguin

        Damned Amish.

      2. kbolino

        It would not bother me so much if they applied the same standards, uh, literally anywhere else. But when they want to build a narrative, not only will they impute motive before any of the facts are in, they will state it with rock-solid certainty. Somebody shouts “allahu ackbar” = wasn’t Islam, nothing to see here. A white guy shoots a black guy, literally no other facts are known = must be racism, no further developments can change this immutable truth.

        1. Remember that nutball that shot up an abortion clinic in Colorado a white le back? They were calling him a Christian fundie anti-abortion zealot before he had even been identified.

          But a Muslim says he hates white people and is shouting “god is great!” when the cops get there, well they just can’t be sure about him.

          1. mexican sharpshooter

            If I remember correctly that occurred in Colorado Springs. Colorado Springs happens to be a Christian fundie, anti-abortion, SOCON happy land.

            Seriously, its where the 90 Kids and Counting Family goes on vacation.

      3. Suthenboy

        It isnt that people think they are mealy mouthed pussies.

        1. I used the phrase “mealy mouthed” the other day at work and my boss looked at me like I had three heads.

          Apparently it’s not as common a phrase as I had previously thought.

    2. The security guard should have left a light on for him.

    3. Pope Jimbo

      Two of the people shot outside Catholic Charities may have been clients of the social service agency, not employees, Dyer said. The third victim was a passenger in a Pacific Gas & Electric truck. A fourth man was shot at but not injured.

      Hmmm…. Killing “clients” of Catholic Charities? I’m intrigued by this. Could this be scaled up to solve the homeless problem in Fresno once and for all?

  26. Thanks for posting that story on the dude from Oregon.

    The left have jumped the shark.

  27. Gilmore

    Georgetown University = We Are Sorry About Slavery

    Of course, John Thompson had already been rectifying historical inequity for many years, via never actually playing any white basketball players on the team.

    *while double checking the veracity of that generalization, i came across an article which – no joke – claimed Gtown was ‘racist’ because its student body was so much whiter than its basketball team.

    But how black is Georgetown? In 2010, the US was about 64% white and 12% black (h). Washington, DC was about 39% white and 51% black (i). Washington has a much higher proportion of African-Americans than is average when compared to the rest of the country. Also—compared to the demographics of the US—a high percent of applicants to Georgetown are black (around 46% white and 20% black) (j). However, these black applicants, whether being rejected or choosing to go somewhere else, don’t seem to be attending Georgetown. Georgetown’s student body is about 60% white and 6% black (k). That seems awfully white for a university represented by a predominately black team

    the piece went on to note that JT had actually given at least 1 white player some decent minutes

    Nate Lubick is the only white player to have played consistent, meaningful minutes in the past decade for Georgetown. His nickname? Thundersnow (n).

    let the racial healing commence

    A true anecdote = a good friend of mine was a student @ Gtown in the mid 1990s. His freshman year there was a party / meet and greet in the basement of one of the freshman dorms. We’re talking “cookies and punch”. a ‘Social’. apparently there was an open-mic and some music or something.

    So anyway, into this event walks 7′ Dakimbe Mutumbo, who probably sucked the light right out of nearby florescent bulbs. The way my friend described it was like he was staring at a herd of zebra, deciding which needed to be skinned. Then he strode to the microphone and seized it, glared around the room, and said in his booming baritone voice =

    “WHO WANT TO SEX DAKIMBE!?!”

    even if that is slightly exaggerated, i think that’s sort of a wonderful moment to imagine.

    1. Gilmore

      *early 1990s. I think he overlapped w/ dakimbe for 2 years.

      1. Juvenile Bluster

        Mutumbo graduated from Georgetown in ’91 or ’92, I think.

      2. Bobarian LMD

        don’t leave us hanging, did your “friend” SEX him?

    2. Scruffy Nerfherder

      Given that Mutumbo is from the DRC, that was probably his subtle approach to soliciting sex.

    3. Juvenile Bluster

      Dikembe.

      Full name Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo

      One of the only people to come out from Georgetown I respect.

      1. Gilmore

        mekka lekka hai mekka heiny ho

        1. square circle

          +1 floating Jambi head

      2. I miss Iverson. That fucker had a little baggage and probably should have never escaped jail in high school for that bowling alley incident. But that guy gave his heart and soul every time he suited up for a game.

        Basketball needs people like him.

        1. Gilmore

          this. he was like Starks, but with a million times more talent.

        2. Juvenile Bluster

          AI another person out of Georgetown I respect. Wretched hive of scum and villainy it is.

        3. F. Stupidity Jr.

          Sloopy, did you see the Netflix documentary about him? It really casts doubt on the official version of the bowling alley incident.

          Granted, the doc has a certain bias, but so does law enforcement.

          I think of Iverson as more “temperamental artist” than “basketball player”. People talk about how amazing it was that he dragged the 2001 76ers to
          the NBA Finals, but (besides being in the then-substantially weaker Eastern Conference) I’m not sure a team with him as its best player could ever
          handle another ball-dominant type. The odious Bill Conlin had a good line about that team: “Allen Iverson and eleven guys named Aaron McKie.”

          1. Juvenile Bluster

            That Iverson was able to pretty much single-handedly win the first game of that ’01 Finals against that Lakers team still amazes me.

        4. Domestic Dissident

          Last I heard of him he was busto and banned from every MGM casino property in America. Hopefully he has gotten his life together a little.

    4. PBRstreetgang

      I have a good friend who was an athlete at Georgetown, overlapping with Dikembe by a year or two, she told me a nearly identical story. Also said that Mutumbo is super intelligent, just not much for beating around the bush.

      1. Gilmore

        lol. he told me that anecdote 20+ years ago. maybe it was a popular urban legend on the campus.

        unfortunately the video where Dikimbe debunks the claim is unavailable there.

  28. John Titor

    I saw someone a couple days ago was talking about making a book about how white males aren’t the root evil of the world and if they didn’t exist history would have still been as oppressive and shitty as it was.

    That book already exists, and doesn’t really put Islam or the Chinese in a positive light.

    1. robc

      I never finished his Mars trilogy so I avoided everything else.

      1. Drake

        That sounds like waayy too much KSR for me.

        I forced myself to power through the Mars trilogy for some reason but have little desire to read more of his stuff.

    2. Suthenboy

      The truth is that the world today is much less shitty, oppressive and savage precisely because of white western european men.

    3. Heroic Mulatto

      Fuck Red Kim.

      1. Vhyrus

        What about Blue Kim and Green Kim?

        1. Heroic Mulatto

          I gave up after the first 1,000 page Kim.

      2. Rhywun

        Frown. The book sounds interesting – no good?

        1. Heroic Mulatto

          The book is good.

          The author’s politics are atrocious.

          1. Rhywun

            Ah, so like most other books I read.

      3. jesse.in.mb

        I enjoyed 2312 for the most part. His politics were definitely ham-fisted in it though.

      4. John Titor

        I don’t consider an author’s politics to be a criticism of his work. Hell, I read Eric Flint, and that guy’s politics leaks into his work far too much.

        1. Rhywun

          Yeah, China Mieville came up here recently. I really liked a sample I read – something whose name escapes me about two cities/cultures mixed together – but man his politics uffda.

          1. Heroic Mulatto

            Un Lun Dun?

            And agree 100 percent about Mieville. Perdido Street Station and The Scar were excellent. But he just couldn’t help himself with Iron Council. I rooted for the “bad guys” from page 1.

          2. Rhywun

            Un Lun Dun?

            I’m reading various synopses on wikipedia and nothing seems to match. But the idea was that you belong to one city/nation/culture and your neighbor might belong to the other one, and you don’t mix or talk to each other or anything.

          3. Heroic Mulatto

            Hmm…maybe The City & the City then?

          4. Rhywun

            Ah, OK. I didn’t read far enough.

        2. Heroic Mulatto

          I don’t consider an author’s politics to be a criticism of his work.

          So do I, which is why I just criticized his politics.

          That having been said, jesse is right. While I didn’t read 2312, I found the Mars trilogy to be ham-fisted as well. Especially since Bogdanov had already wrote Red Star nearly a century prior.

          1. John Titor

            Fair enough, I was responding to the reflexive ‘fuck ’em’ comment. I thought the book was a fairly good alternative history perspective, and I didn’t even consider the author’s politics when I promoted it.

          2. Rhywun

            I luv an interesting alternative history, so it’s gone on my wishlist.

          3. John Titor

            If you’re looking for fun alternative history, I also suggest the Axis of Time trilogy, which is pretty apolitical beyond “racism is bad” and “fuck the Nazis and the Soviets”.

            It also, hilariously (and as a product of it being written before the 2008 election) has an aircraft carrier named the USS Hilary Clinton.

          4. Rhywun

            Cool – thanks

          5. jesse.in.mb

            “That having been said, jesse is right.”

            Well shucks

            *throws out old headstone, buys new one, has that engraved on it*

  29. american socialist

    Any word on georgia 6? I really hope it goes to a runoff

    That dem looks like a sniveling pos and is pure bernie prog

    1. Just Say’n

      95% of his campaign funding has come from out-of-state. Every decent person should hope he fails, if only to see Samantha Bee and Robby Soave cry

      1. american socialist

        But out of state money shouldnt influence politics!

      2. F. Stupidity Jr.

        95% of his campaign funding has come from out-of-state.

        But remember folks, we have got to get dark money out of politics!

      3. square circle

        I heard a piece on NPR last week that spun the whole things as “look at all the out-of-state money in politics!”, implying that there was just as much out of state funding behind the Team Red candidates. They avoided specifics, for some reason.

        It reminded me of coverage I saw of one of the recent bouts of Berkeley violence – “both sides came armed and ready for a fight!” The detail was that the one side, the antifa people, showed up in masks with baseball bats and various other bona fide weapons. The pro-Trump demonstrators had also brought with them a bunch of big sticks to beat their opponents with.

        Of course, the fact that these big sticks had signs taped to them was just part of the clever disguise.

        1. DOOMco

          That made me laugh.
          did you know we’re bombing the middle east? we just started, after a good 8 year hiatus.

          1. square circle

            And it’s unconstitutional to do it without congressional approval, dontcha know?

          2. DOOMco

            I just can’t remember my friends calling for that same impeachment a year ago. I must have missed it?

          3. Glitterstorm

            Well Obama did it with charisma

        2. Suthenboy

          One of our very own Vikings commented this morning that he was raised in Progtopia and described his childhood learning as developing a superhuman ability to apply completely different sets of values and standards to varying circumstances. It is what we used to call film-flam. Now we just call it progressivism.

    2. Last I heard, Hillary had a 98% chance of winning. So we’ll have to wait and see.

    3. thrakkorzog

      I’m guessing he’s going to do about as well as Abortion Barbie did in Texas.

  30. Juvenile Bluster

    Fuck you, UEFA.

    1. Rhywun

      If by “UEFA” you mean “incompetent refereeing” I would have to agree.

      1. Juvenile Bluster

        Where do you think it comes from?

        So curious that this type of thing always seems to benefit Real Madrid and Barcelona.

        1. Rhywun

          Enh, there’s a victim stack for this. Bayern Munich have had the benefit of many dubious calls against “lesser” opposition over the years.

          But just fucking get score reviews already. I didn’t see the red card because I would rather jam hot pokers in my eyes than watch Real Madrid but I saw extra time and the commentators were all talking about that and you-know-who’s offside-not-offside.

          1. I’m surprised the EPL teams don’t get more benefit of dubious calls, considering the worldwide popularity of the league.

            Then again, they’re the league likeliest to go their own way and say screw UEFA.

          2. BakedPenguin

            EPLexit?

          3. Rhywun

            Depends. Man U is another juggernaut who gets a lot of calls going their way over the right opposition.

  31. Pope Jimbo

    I have always thought that an alarm clock that played the sound of a kid puking instead of beeping would be a huge hit.

    No other sound in my life has caused my eyes to snap open faster and me to leap out of bed as quickly as the sound of one of my kids gagging at 3 am just before projectile vomiting over anything.

    1. Where is your nanny, you fucking savage?

      1. The Last American Hero

        Passed out next to him after getting her annual review.

    2. Mad Scientist

      I don’t have children, but I do have dogs. And that exact same retching sound from one of them springs me out of bed in an instant. But with dogs, if I can’t get them into the yard in time, at least they’ll clean up their own mess.

      1. Vhyrus

        the oatmeal once described his dog as a solo reenactment of the human centipede.

    3. Vhyrus

      This also works with pet sounds. Pets puking, pets peeing, etc.

  32. Enough About Palin

    Both my kids have a stomach flu. So they’re basically running around depositing vomit in random locations in my house like puke-Roombas. Hope your day is going better.

    You don’t have a root-cellar?

  33. Timeloose

    Brett, I love me some Bob Schneider. Thanks for posting the video. I have seen him with Lonelyland and the Scabs many times.

    I still like to see him at the Saxon pub when I’m in Austin.

  34. Hyperion

    “This has the potential to be the Glibertarians version of the Cleveland Browns joke”

    Look, who cares, if we’re gonna talk about foozball, we need to talk about the Raiders and BEAST FUCKING MODE!

    1. Vhyrus

      Oh so you’re a Las Vegas fan?

      1. Hyperion

        Raiders fan.

      2. Hyperion

        And BTW, Lynch is never going to play in Vegas. He’s probably going to get a 1 or 2 year contract, he’ll be 31 in about a week. But I’m one of those hopeful that he still has a couple of years left in the tank. He doesn’t need to carry the ball 30 times a game, he just needs to be the beast a few critical times in a game and it’s all good.

    2. F. Stupidity Jr.
      1. DOOMco

        i had no idea. thanks!

      2. Hyperion

        Mandatory throw in some BEAST MODE!!!

        1. DOOMco

          will that happen though? Seattle has to let him go, right?

          1. Hyperion

            He’s retired, so they will. If he comes out of retirement, the Sea Chickens owe him 9 million dollars. Popular opinion is Raiders get him for a 6-7th round draft pick and he maybe costs 3-5 million for 2 years. Totally worth it in my opinion for both sides.

          2. DOOMco

            I’d say so. That would really give the Raiders a great advantage. Every D they play will have to stay ready for him, giving Carr some help as well.

          3. Hyperion

            I think it’s a pretty safe deal, and if Marshawn has 80% of what he was before, it makes the Raiders offense scary as hell. He’s 31 so of course he’s lost a step or two in speed. Doesn’t matter, The Raiders have two fast munchkin backs already. All that Marshawn has to do is be Beast Mode on short runs several times a game and there’s no reason why a 31 year old would have lost much in the power stat. He’s a powerful guy, I doubt he’s lost any of that at 31.

  35. Juvenile Bluster

    The county-level LP where I live put up a post about taxation being theft. This was the first reply to it. I cannot even.

    If you voluntary went to work knowing you would be required to pay taxes, then you are paying them voluntarily, regardless of your feelings about it

    1. Vhyrus

      Exactly, why aren’t you out subsistence farming while forcing your children/orphans to run on a treadmill for power, Mr. Anarchist?!

      1. Juvenile Bluster

        That sounds like slavery with extra steps.

        1. DOOMco

          A state level LP had a post with that image recently.

        2. thrakkorzog

          Well sounds like somebody us getting laid at college.

    2. kbolino

      Does this person actually, you know, have a job?

    3. Juice

      Damn, that hurt. My hand palmed my face a bit too hard.

    4. Fatty Bolger

      Because the only reason anybody works is to fund the collective.

    5. Juvenile Bluster

      So after I, um, helpfully asked this guy what the fuck he meant, he replied thusly. I don’t want to live on this planet any more.

      Yes. Live without money, that is the other option. If you want to participate in a system, you have to abide by the rules of the system or find a different system. That’s natural law

      1. Vhyrus

        When you have been brainwashed so thoroughly for so long the idea of taxes as a positive becomes an instinctive law of nature. You might as well have told him the world is flat or that the sun orbits the earth. How can you not want roads, neanderthal?!

      2. Mad Scientist

        So he wants you to find a different system, but it’s perfectly OK for him to want to change that same system.

      3. Juvenile Bluster

        More fun with his Facebook

        The great depression (TGD) at it’s worst in 1933 vs. Today

        TGD, people living in poverty 31 million
        Today, people living in poverty 47 million

        TGD, suicides in one year ~18,750
        Today, suicides in the last year ~35,200

        #checkTheMath

        Of course, the population is around 3x what it was back then, but hey!

        1. Juvenile Bluster

          I’m not looking any longer. It’s an absolute cavern of derp and if I go any deeper I’m afraid I’ll never make it out.

      4. american socialist

        Ask if he used to support gay marriage bans… or even better busting eric garner for selling loosies for denying state money? Mention if he rebuts that local taxes disproportionately fall on minorities and poor like sales tax, soda taxes etc

        Or if he supported jim crow laws cause rules are rules?

        Or poll taxes? Since tax a part of society

      5. westernsloper

        So natural law = slavery. Good to know.

    6. Juvenile Bluster

      Also, I stalked the guy’s Facebook (which is completely public) and it’s nothing but “screw capitalists!” type memes. He also posted this, which shows an incredible amount of intentional blindness.

      Peer review is not a democracy either. 99% of scientists can agree on something and if 1% has proof it’s wrong, then it’s wrong. End of the story.

      1. DOOMco

        brilliant.

      2. Vhyrus

        So he agreed that man made climate change is a hoax then correct?

        1. Juvenile Bluster

          That’s different! I’m not sure how, but it probably is.

      3. american socialist

        so i take it he doesnt believe in climate change since i hear it is 3 percent?

  36. John Titor

    Bitching about the Other Site, if you don’t care fair enough:

    Ed Krayewski’s take on Trump congratulating Erdogan includes a line stating that the transition from “…a parliamentary to a presidential one in a way that will also leave the presidency with fewer checks and balances—reinforcing Trump’s preference for an authoritarian style of government.”

    I have checked his work on when the coup was going on, and found no declaration of Obama’s favouritism for authoritarian governments for supporting the crackdown.

    But of course Trump Derangement Syndrome doesn’t exist and the Other Site’s quality hasn’t been in rapid decline or anything.

    ~~~modded~~~

    1. Juvenile Bluster

      See, that would’ve been just fine without the part after the hyphen. But they just can’t resist, can they?

      And Ed K’s been one of my favorite writers there too.

      1. DOOMco

        unprecedented. This kind of presidency is totally unheard of. SO EXTREME. SO NEW. not in anyway an expansion of the last several administrations.

      2. John Titor

        Reason has been particularly scummy because they posted the stupid editorials about how “we’re not going to call Trump a fascist…yet” like it’s reflective of some intellectual integrity on their part while their writers constantly spew the ‘authoritarian’ label for actions that they’d never do so for if Trump was just some career politician.

        1. kbolino

          It’s not that their standards have been slipping. It’s that everyone who points this fact out just can’t handle their measured and thoughtful criticism of Trump.

          *sniffs farts*

    2. John Titor

      Thank you mod.

      ~~~curtsies politely, and away!~~~

    3. Vhyrus

      Not that anything you just said is wrong, but why did Trump congratulate what seems to be from every perspective the start of a muslim dictatorship inside of NATO? Was he just being polite or is there something else going on?

      1. John Titor

        Shitty diplomatic optics probably, nothing more. Unless you had a President who would be going hardline against Turkey this is standard fare.

      2. Juvenile Bluster

        He’s trying to keep Turkey on our side when it comes to Syria. That’s why.

      3. westernsloper

        Why didn’t Obama slam him for essentially starting the dictatorship during the “coup” attempt? I am not convinced Erdogan didn’t stage the whole thing for this purpose.

  37. Juvenile Bluster

    Stuff’s going to go down at Auburn tonight. Richard Spencer’s speaking (and he’s speaking because a court order overturned Auburn’s attempt to stop the event on free speech grounds). Locals seem… unhappy.

    1. Vhyrus

      I would go see him just to see how much of a mountain the media has made out of this molehill of a man. I would also walk up to him with my girlfriend and say “Hello, I am first generation immigrant jew, and this is my black wiccan hetero life mate. We’re huge fans of yours!”

      1. Playa Manhattan

        Life mate? Does she know?

        1. Vhyrus

          Yeah, she hates it when I call her that… which is exactly why I do it.

      2. Juvenile Bluster

        I’m a Catholic whore, currently enjoying congress out of wedlock with my black Jewish boyfriend who works at a military abortion clinic. So, hail Satan, and have a lovely afternoon, sir.

        1. Vhyrus

          “I’m a Catholic whore,…”

          but you repeat yourself, sir.

    2. Glitterstorm

      I’d have more sympathy for him if he weren’t such a turd but I’m glad he still has the right to speak there.

    3. Juvenile Bluster

      via Twitter:

      Steve Hirsch‏ @Stevenwhirsch99 30m30 minutes ago

      Well, that was easy. The few antifa that were here were asked by police to take their masks off and then they left. #Auburn

  38. DOOMco

    So watched game 3 last night of the Bruins Senators game. Did Boston have a little riot after? They were pretty angry at that penalty call, and started throwing things after the loss.

  39. AlmightyJB

    100 points for bringing your kids to the bar, double points for taking them out to the smoked filled porch, triple for the one on the stroller.

    1. Vhyrus

      How many points for slipping the toddler a shot of jaeger?

      1. westernsloper

        You are a purveyor of links of weird shit I have never heard of. But I am old.

        1. DOOMco

          I’m no HM.

          1. Heroic Mulatto
          2. DOOMco

            SEE?!

          3. jesse.in.mb
    1. Rhywun

      The goal, according to the mayor, is to improve health by reducing consumption of sugary drinks, and fund education programs aimed at improving the graduation rate of minority youth.

      Um… OK

      1. Vhyrus

        Chance of either happening?

        1. DOOMco

          Oh, it will reduce soda purchases in town. It may cut consumption, but I bet that number is very low.

          1. quincy

            And… soda smuggler becomes an occupation of choice for the high school dropout.

          2. Vhyrus

            I already made a joke about selling untaxed loosies the last time this came up but it is still relevant.

          3. quincy

            The Fatal Conceit never sleeps.

        2. Diane Reynolds

          Negative 100%

          Yes, Seattle is the city where when they tackle a problem, it gets way WAY worse.

          See: Homelessness
          See: Affordable housing

    2. Playa Manhattan

      Compare this:

      ““I would say the Berkeley tax was a home run,” said Dr. Lynn Silver, an author of the study. “During the first year of the tax, people bought fewer sugary drinks, and more healthy beverages like water, unsweetened teas and milk. Grocery bills did not go up and store revenue did not go down.”

      With this:

      “The study, which comes as Mayor Ed Murray proposes a similar tax in Seattle, also concluded that sales of sugar-sweetened beverages increased almost 7 percent in cities outside Berkeley. That suggests some residents may have gone to neighboring communities to buy sugary drinks and avoid the penny-per-ounce tax.”

      1. Derpetologist

        If that’s the level of their thinking, Berkeley could cut gasoline consumption by putting a tax on it. People in Berkeley would buy less of that evil dinosaur juice….

        ….because they would buy it for less a few miles away.

      2. westernsloper

        Lesson:

        If you are a soft drink distributor in a community neighboring a prog stronghold, lobby to increase soda tax in said prog stronghold.

  40. Vhyrus

    So are we not getting a (((Tuesday))) post?

    1. Juvenile Bluster

      Passover’s about to end. We’re going to go gorge on bread.

  41. Vhyrus

    FML I looked up Richard Spencer in response to the Auburn comment earlier and now google is fucking giving me updates about him! FUCK HOW DO I GET THIS OFF MAH PHONE!! OMG NO I DON’T WANT MEIN KAMPF ON PAPERBACK EITHER FFS!!

    1. DOOMco

      No, you looked something up, which means you approve and condone it.

      1. Diane Reynolds

        That explains all the midget port I get on my phone.

        1. jesse.in.mb

          How does that compare to tawny port?

          1. Vhyrus

            About the same, you just get less.

          2. Diane Reynolds

            Less anal. Or is it ‘fewer’ anal? What’s the rule, if it can be counted… never mind.

          3. Vhyrus

            I think this is the rare case where both terms are simultaneously correct.

          4. The banality of anal.

    2. Lachowsky

      Your copy of The Turner Diaries has already been shipped. Your name is on the list.

  42. Derpetologist

    A few leftovers regarding my road article:

    First, I’d like to thank Suthenboy for teaching me that Paris got wide, paved streets to make it easier to put down rebellions. I did not know that.

    When I was researching the article, I was puzzled as to what would be the point of paving the streets of a city before the widespread use of wheeled vehicles and aesthetics was the only explanation that came to my mind.

    Here are 2 facts I left out because I couldn’t get them to flow with the article:

    1. The oldest known road is in Egypt and dates to about 2400 BC. It was used to haul stone blocks to from the quarry to construction sites. Interestingly, the road predates the earliest known use of carts by a few hundred years. The blocks were probably transported with manpower and log rollers, and probably not by the tractor beams of flying saucers.

    2. After the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, Ceausescu ordered the construction of a road to aid the movement of the Romanian army in case of invasion. Hundreds of workers were killed, many of the reckless use of dynamite, during the construction.

    3, The Dept of Transportation says the idea that the interstates were designed to be emergency runways for bombers is a myth, which is of course, exactly what they would say if the interstates really were designed for that.

    https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/interstatemyths.cfm#question5

    1. Vhyrus

      1. The oldest known road is in Egypt and dates to about 2400 BC. It was used to haul stone blocks to from the quarry to construction sites. Interestingly, the road predates the earliest known use of carts by a few hundred years. The blocks were probably transported with manpower and log rollers, and probably not by the tractor beams of flying saucers.

      [citation needed]

      1. jesse.in.mb

        I’ll just put this here.

          1. John Titor

            They don’t got ‘spolsions and young Amanda Tapping.

          2. Raven Nation

            Well, they got one of them:
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9s1h3WJ5kg

          3. DOOMco

            My grandfather was there for the Trinity explosion.
            He said he was jealous when he drew a high number in the lottery, and had to watch from 20 something miles away.
            Looking back, he said he was pretty lucky to be that far away.

          4. jesse.in.mb

            I’m kind of sad Claudia Black and Ben Browder were less sexy by the time they made it to SG-1.

          5. John Titor

            Agreed on Black, I was used to her on Farscape reruns. But the show was downhill after Anderson left.

            Honestly Atlantis was actually a better show in the long run, just because it was more coherent overall. It’s a shame it was cancelled. It also had the best Canadian nerd ever.

      2. Diane Reynolds

        Exactly. I’m instructed daily that black people can’t even maintain a driver’s license, now you’re gonna tell me they built the pyramids? I think not.

      3. westernsloper

        Yep. If it wasn’t tractor beams and flying saucers how did the Mayans do it too? Have you ever seen a Mayan? Little folk. Aliens all the way built that stuff.

    2. Rhywun

      Ceausescu did a little “city of light” work on Bucharest too, demolishing huge swaths of town for broad avenues and erecting a gigantic palace for himself at the end of one of them. It’s good to be dictator.

      1. Diane Reynolds

        Yeah, but he went out in a post office basement with a Makarov to the head. They way all good commies should go.

        1. Derpetologist

          A helicopter ride probably costs more, but I think it’s worth it.

          Stalin got the death he deserved:

          On the evening of Feb. 28, Stalin invited several of his close political associates to his dacha to watch a movie. Georgy Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev, Nikolai Bulganin, and secret policeman Lavrenti Beria attended. The evening included a feast and heavy drinking, and the party broke up around four in the morning. All the guests later recalled that Stalin had looked perfectly healthy.

          The next morning, March 1, Stalin’s bodyguards felt concerned when the leader didn’t stir. A long-standing order stated that they were not to enter his bedroom unless called for, and there was only silence from the other side of the door. Around 6:30 in the evening a light came on in the bedroom, and the guards believed that Stalin had merely slept late. Still, there was no other activity from the bedroom.

          A few hours later a courier arrived with a package. The ranking guard, Pavel Lozgachëv, decided he would risk the leader’s wrath and entered the bedroom with the package. Lozgachëv found that Stalin had apparently suffered a stroke and had fallen to the floor, conscious but unable to move.

          In the book, “Stalin,” biographer Robert Service wrote, “No one dared do the most obvious thing and call a doctor. Needing an instruction from higher authority, the guards phoned Minister of State Security Sergei Ignatev in Moscow. Even Ignatev felt out of his depth and phoned Malenkov and Beria. Everyone at the dacha frantically wished to receive orders. All they did on their own initiative was to lift Stalin from the floor and move him on to his divan and place a blanket over him.”

          As Politburo members began arriving and witnessing the leader in such dire straits, no one wanted to phone a doctor. For Stalin’s underlings it was a bit of a no-win scenario. If they called a doctor and Stalin recovered, would he blame them for interfering and involving a member of the hated group he was now targeting? Or, if they did nothing and he recovered, would he blame then for failing to help him. Men had lost their lives in the Soviet Union for far less.

          Finally, the Politburo members decided that doctors must be brought in. With Beria, the secret policeman, taking charge, Stalin’s son Vasily and his daughter, Svetlana, were soon called for as well. The doctors confirmed that Stalin had had a stroke, and cleaned him up from the urine soaked state that they found him. Vasily started drinking heavily.

          The next few days continued with the air of comic opera. Specialists who had been arrested and sent to Lubyanka Prison in Moscow weeks before were suddenly asked their opinions about hypothetical symptoms of a stroke, an unusual change of pace from their current routine of torture intended to produce false confessions of treason. At the dacha, or country estate, once it was clear that Stalin was not going to recover, Beria began to denounce him for his crimes, only to grovel when the Soviet leader appeared to rally.

          In the book “Stalin: Breaker of Nations,” biographer Robert Conquest offers Svetlana’s description of Stalin’s last moments in the evening of March 5:

          “For the last twelve hours the lack of oxygen became acute. His face and lips blackened as he suffered slow strangulation. The death agony was terrible. He literally choked to death as we watched. At what seemed like the very last moment, he opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a terrible glance, insane or perhaps angry, and full of death. (Then) he suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something up above and bringing down a curse on all. The gesture was incomprehensible and full of menace.”

          http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865623419/This-week-in-history-Stalins-death-played-out-like-comic-opera.html

          1. Raven Nation

            Didn’t suffer long enough.

            I’ve been watching some short youtube vids for my students to use & the ones I’ve found on Stalin, all have the same basic summary: it’s a mixed verdict. On the one hand, he slaughtered millions of people BUT he did create an economic giant.

            Assholes.

          2. DOOMco

            “sure, it’s a plantation filled with slaves. But look at the cotton production!”

          3. Diane Reynolds

            He meant well.

          4. Lachowsky

            I’m no believer. However, I would take consolance if I arrived in He’ll after my death and knew Stalin was there to burn with me.

        2. Rhywun

          OK… it’s good to be dictator while it lasts.

    3. Derpetologist

      oopsy- 3 facts

      1. I figured one of them was the Spot the Not.

  43. Glitterstorm

    I’m really glad when disagreements happen on this site it doesn’t devolve into shit flinging cuck name calling
    Boy what relief to actual see cogent sides to arguments

    1. Vhyrus

      Well sometimes it does, but then we get drunk and forget what happened the next day. Ignorance is bliss.

    2. DOOMco

      Who’s a shit flinging cuck?

      1. Vhyrus

        Is this a ‘You know who else…’?

      2. Glitterstorm

        Guilty!

      3. jesse.in.mb

        *rolls out playmat*

        1. DOOMco

          It better be the one with the town on it. I have a box of hot wheels!

    3. Diane Reynolds

      There are no disagreements here. We all voted for Trump. Hunnert percent.

      1. Vhyrus

        Fuck yea! I voted twice and then stood outside the booths with a Garand to make sure those damn negros and spics didn’t get in. MURICA!

      2. Hyperion

        Well, you closet Rethuglicans. /shreek

      3. quincy

        I didn’t.

        1. Diane Reynolds

          cuck

  44. american socialist

    Perhaps it is just me but i havent been to reason since discovering here. The comments there (used to be) were the best part and most informative I think. Once everyone left it wasn’t really worthwhile to me and commenting system sucks

    I do miss some of John’s posts regarding progs. I think he has those cucks nailed

    1. Rhywun

      I go when I’m at work. But John has vanished entirely. I too miss some of his take-downs.

      1. jesse.in.mb

        Yeah. I went over there to check out Shackford’s article on Marinelli/CalExit and the comments were incredibly lame and surprisingly full of paid Russian apologists, but there was no John fuming in them.

        1. Rhywun

          Oh god the comments are so lame. There’s a couple sane holdovers like Crusty and a few of our regulars but it’s mostly just trolls.

        2. Rufus the Monocled

          Call me nuts but I wouldn’t mind John coming over here.

          He adds passion.

          1. John Titor

            You’re not wrong, I think John is a fucking cunt and I wouldn’t mind him over here. He does raise good points once and awhile, and if he controlled his personality issues he’d be a treasured member of the community.

          2. Vhyrus

            If nothing else it would be tier 1 entertainment.

        3. John Titor

          That Russia apologist used to be libertree I think, he pops up randomly. I don’t know if Russia has something similar to China’s 50 cent Army but it’s hilarious if they waste their time on libertarian websites.

  45. american socialist

    Anyone know how ga6 is doing?

    1. Glitterstorm

      Osoff in the lead i think

      1. american socialist

        Shit is that just due to early voting or have polls closed?

  46. Rufus the Monocled

    OT: Lord that was poor officiating tonight in the Real-Bayern game. Vidal was jobbed. I mean wtf? Ruined the game. I get the feeling the same kind of garbage is gonna go Barca’s way tomorrow.

    1. Bayern screwed themselves when Javi Martínez got sent off (deservedly IMO) in the first leg.

      1. Rufus the Monocled

        Maybe but TWO of Ronaldo’s goals were offside FFS. The second was so blatant. Retarded.

        The officiating didn’t help Bayern.

        1. Rhywun

          Ronaldo could pull down his shorts and take a dump on the fourth official and everyone would clap like seals.

    2. westernsloper

      Lord officiating game, wtf, feeling garbage tomorrow

      The only words I understood in that sentence.