I am on kind of a Links run lately…so bear with me. Here are a few random ones for your Saturday Morning. I hope you all ran out and found all the ingredients for a nice Planet of the Apes or three.
- Hero, or soon to be treated like the British Richard Jewel?
- Again, I must ask “which one of you was this?”
- Stupid Hillbillies…hey, wait a minute??
- Honestly, I am getting tired of asking…which one of you was this?
Imma go get another mug of coffee. When I get back, hopefully at least one of you will have ignored all these links and posted your own, someone else will have posted one of these links, and several of you will have suggested names for the two links that ask who amongst you this was. Cheers!
Mug of coffee, bitte!
The 22-year-old accidentally discovered the virus’s kill switch, but warned the hackers could return
Or maybe he’s the culprit!
*Sinister music plays*
If the British press stays true….there will be a round of lionizing….then accusatory articles, then back to lionizing, then a few gossipy ones and back to anonymity.
Also if they hold true to form, we will find out about a “drinks party” celebrating him, a drink driving conviction in his past, his maths scores from university and something else those mongoloids misspell on a regular basis.
See, sloopy knows exactly what I am talking about!
Everything I know about the English speaking English I learned from Henry Higgins.
-1 Richard Jewell
wasn’t he the guy who was accused of being the pipe bomber @ the 1996 olympics? or am i confusing that w/ someone else.
Yes, he was the security guard who saved a lot of people by discovering the bomb and starting the evacuation. Lazy FBI decided to publicly make him the fall guy before they figured out abortion bomber Eric Rudolph was the real guy.
I couldn’t remember if he’d actually done it or not.
I do remember the media camped outside his door and treated him like a child-rapist for like a week
Yes. I think he reported the bomb, then when they had no leads they accused him of planting it.
I hope you all ran out and found all the ingredients for a nice Planet of the Apes or three.
Wut? Linking to another Glib post? It’s a slippery slope to TSTSNBN lynx circa 2013…
Glibception
Glib 24/7
Hush yer gob!!!
That drink looks interesting. I think I’ve had some banana liquor sitting around for 15 years or so. Not sure about the dark rum. Wasnt there another’s recommendation for dark rum a few weeks ago?
Pussers is excellent – adds a rich molassesy flavor. Mrs. Dean prefers Pyrat, not quite as rich and molassesy.
This Piraat isn’t too bad either.
I love molasses, I’ll have to see if I can find Pussers. Our local grocery liquor store is lacking in variety.
Whaler’s is another good choice for a blackstrap rum.
Might have to hit some bars tonight and see if I can find a decent rum selection. Was planning to go out last night but alas didn’t happen.
What happened to the cartoon links?? Not serious enough or something?
Saturday Morning Cartoon Links….hmmm?
Secret Nazi President is supposed to be on Sunday evenings.
I can’t wait….talk about plenty of material for BP to use.
If last week is an indication, you may have to wait.
They’ll be recycled for evening. Swiss and I hadn’t done sufficient coffee coordination.
Caffeinated Bagels
They must have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque
+1 shoulda taken a left toin.
Here is a link for you. Howdy Bitch.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f-BVPo4dR5M
I must ask “which one of you was this?”
Not me. If I’m paying a stripper, she’s doing it on MY porch.
I was thinking the same thing. Besides, I cant see my neighbor’s porch.
The article was confusing, but it sounded like he didn’t always pay them.
The part about hookers and pimps looking in the windows was pretty funny.
“The visits from the strippers occurred at least 75 times.”
Those are some patient neighbors.
Sounds like they didn’t mind until the pimps tried to collect from them .
This seems more like it was one of the glibs
I…I…can’t argue with that.
This one, definitely not: http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/11/man-charged-with-murdering-girlfriend-says-she-choked-to-death-on-his-penis-6629521/
Hr better hope he’s a show-er and not a grower.
And doesn’t get a hung jury.
What a dick.
And how!
Only a cop would ask someone why they are masturbating.
But do they allow masturbating in the Australian Parliament?
“An Australian Senator named Larissa Waters has become the first politician to breastfeed in her nation’s parliament. ‘It’s frankly ridiculous, really, that feeding one’s baby is international news,’ she said yesterday.”
https://heatst.com/world/why-women-politicians-should-not-breastfeed-in-parliament/
They’ve got some strange ways down there.
They should let the jerk off. He’s helping Keep Portland Weird.
Can’t really fault his reasoning though.
They should let the jerk off.
*golf clap*
A classic Bastiat fallacy on display
I’d ask Michelle why she doesn’t want families to be able to choose which schools their children should attend.
Obviously because she wants kids to die
I read about that the other day. Fucked up. I can’t help but wonder what else was going on in that poor kids life.
It goes back to kids not understanding consequences. No way in hell does an 8 year old understand the ramifications and permanence of death.
Which is why anybody that would let a prepubescent child “transition” to another gender should be put in prison.
We’re having a serious discussion about whether we will allow transgender therapy for anyone under the age of 18. The “pro” side claims there are better outcomes the earlier you start, but there aren’t any long-term studies worth a crap, so I’m not convinced at all. The “con” side, which counts me among its members, has serious ethical issues with allowing someone who cannot legally consent to anything to have their endocrine system fucked with while they are still developing, and as adolescents are in that phase of life where your hormones maximally impair your judgment anyway.
This is dangerous territory for me, working in an organization which is very well stocked with partisan Democrats who adhere to every jot and tittle of the Current Orthodoxy, which is “celebrating” and encouraging the fuck out transitioning. My (legal) opinion that there are no federal statutes, and thus no valid federal regulations, prohibiting transgender discrimination was not popular in certain circles.
Were you being serious here?
Do you disagree?
I lost my father at 5, my sister was 3. Depending on the kid and how they cope, If one looses a parent or sibling early in childhood they catch on to the “death is permanent” thing pretty quick.
Don’t get me wrong, this kid probably had a few unspoken issues.
Or choose what they eat. Or choose what they learn. Or choose…anything.
Michelle Obama bullies an Olympic gold medalist on national TV.
Won’t someone please think of the children!!
Also, maybe it’s a political issue, because the government has stuck it’s nose into everything. If the government wasn’t in education, and schools had choices to follow our not the new standards, then it would be fast less political. Maybe it’s just me but things get political when you accuse people of having ulterior motives. Bitch.
If you think about it, anything involving the government is going to be political.
It’s aggravating when people want the government to take over some function, then when their political opponents get ahold of the power structure that THEY set up, they squeal, “Oh god, it’s become politicized!! Who did that?!” YOU made it political, you fucking dumbass!
Political problems have only political solutions.
“Don’t let anybody take us back…”
What an obnoxious phrase. What’s it supposed to imply? Jim Crow?
What kind of personality are you hoping to connect with when you use it?
It assumes that change for change’s sake is always and everywhere a good thing, and ignores that many changes don’t work out as net positives. It baffles me that people who, in a professional setting, espouse the “plan-do-check-act” methodology, throw it out the window when it comes to politics.
This has come up most recently with the AHCA “reform” bill. Certain of my colleagues have drunk the Kool-Aid that the ACA is the only thing keeping our hospital afloat, even though (a) we net only a few million from Medicaid expansion and (b) we cannot identify any financial uptick from health insurance exchange policies. They are (willingly) misleading themselves based on the way we account for “bad debt” – unpaid bills. We book those at our cost, but if someone has Medicaid (which often pays at a fraction of our cost), we don’t count our unpaid cost as bed debt. So, before Medicaid expansion, we might book bad debt of $10K for an operation. After Medicaid expansion, we might collect $3K for the same operation, but we book zero bad debt. Our bad debt now looks a lot better, but our actual revenue is short of the reduction in bad debt.
Goddammit, I had that one for the afternoon links. Grumble, grumble.
Anyway, because I don’t believe in name-calling and prefer rational debate, I’ll just say that she’s a sanctimonious cunt.
No sandbagging links. If you got one lay it out on the table
That’s one reactionary and arrogant broad.
reason #20928349283 she aint running for @)*(#$) president
Ah, the ol’ “I’m making a porno and I’d like you to audition for me” scam.
You could not pay me enough money in the world to have sex with that. ?♂️?
I honestly did not think anyone would fall for that…
A SJW Journalist who was stridently opposed to the horrifying misogyny of Gamergate…
… is currently being prosecuted on four charges of rape by deception for the same scam.
There seems to be a very strong correlation between outspoken male feminists and men who do horrible things to women.
Hugo Schwyzer being a notable example.
The old “I’m a POS that can’t control himself, therefore all other men must also be POSs that can’t control themselves” deal?
Maybe. I’m thinking it’s more like creeps using feminism to try to get in good with the ladies.
The guy looks like the brother of the “French model” in this ad.
I mean, it works for the guys in Backroom Casting Couch, right?
https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/politics/police-oppose-bill-banning-sexual-contact-sex-workers/
I think I shoulda been a cop. Sex with prostitutes, good drugs, can shoot a nigga when I want to. And a pension. I’ve wasted my life
We have a different law in La.
Here, if the suspect has any sexual contact any and all criminal charges are tossed. I guess they look at it as a temptation that no reasonable person can resist…a kind of coercion.
Sounds unusually reasonable.
You know…blind squirrels…
You do know why they’re blind….
Because they’ve found a lot of nuts?
“A zero-sexual-contact rule would doom investigations of prostitution — which remains illegal in Alaska — because sex workers have in the past quickly caught on to what police are allowed or not allowed to do in the course of such investigations, Case said.”
Good.
All you gotta do is ask if their a cop. They have to tell you orbits entrapment. I know this because of tv and it wouldn’t lie to me.
Sex with prostitutes, good drugs, can shoot a nigga when I want to.
Now that’s what I call a libertarian moment.
This Russia Trump angle is getting really hard to follow. Plus it’s kinda insulting to think everyone thinks Russia has all the good hackers.
Plus it’s kinda insulting to think everyone thinks Russia has all the good hackers.
Hey, I saw GoldenEye, those dudes seriously know how to send a spike.
THEY ARE INVINCIBLE!
click-click-click… click-click-click… KA-BOOM!
Yeah, no kidding. Especially since Wikileaks revealed that the NSA can pretty much make anything they do look like it was done by someone else.
Of course the media went silent on Vault 7 as soon as they realized it ran counter to the deep state narrative they’ve been supplying for decades.
It’s been months now, and I am still absolutely flabbergasted that the American Left, after decades of
1. Loving Russia and shouting down accusations of Russian influence.
2. Hating the CIA and the other spy agencies with the fury of a thousand suns
has so effortlessly flipped on both these positions. Like, they sound like the most authority fellating versions of the circa 2005 GOP screaming about how the noble spies are out there in the wilds keeping us safe and how dare you question them.
The only position they hold is that they want power. Everything that comes out of their mouth is aimed at that.
But there’s literally billions of them. How much power can they get when shared by so many? Or are they expecting to stab each other in the back until there’s only 1 left in the world?
I guess their trademark on “Question Authority” expired.
They never meant question their authority. Right-thinking only question authority they don’t like.
“The Shadow Brokers”?
Someone’s been playing Mass Effect.
This didn’t quite make it in the links this week, but I’d say it could be almost as significant as giving the Kurds more weaponry.
The referendum that’s been in the Iraqi Constitution since 2005 looks like it will finally be taking place after Mosul’s wrapped up.
There was a Times of London article too, but those bastards are behind a pay site now too.
FWIW, I think giving them a place of their own could do a lot for stabilization. Of course then it’s just the Shias vs the Sunnis down south…another proxy war between SA and Iran.
Your link led me here:
Sneaky Jewish bastards! I know your tricknology. Give me a taste for $1 then gyp me in the long run.
Hmm, it worked the first time.
This should make your day.
https://youtu.be/cG8JuJ3IDEA
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Wait that’s a Nazi meme isn’t it? ISN’T IT?
I think you mean it’s a (((Nazi))) theme.
“The Arts are going downhill” LOL
Oh the dude talking is hilarious.
“This is why I’m against the legalization of marijuana.”
I was picturing Hank Hill.
Me too:
https://youtu.be/ZBmAvrx9urU?t=16
Probably is part of her degree on intersectional feminist performance art and quantum mechanics.
An absolute would from me.
Was it the nice rack or the primal growling?
I miss threaded. Thought this was the creep neighbor thing.
Well, that was a spirited political debate.
That wasn’t an unhinged crazy person. That was strategic. If words are violence, that was a deliberate assault.
Was up all night finishing “Shattered”. Man, what a ride. What’s staggering about the book is that despite the authors being just absolutely enormous lefties and huge fans of Hillary Clinton, they still manage to show just how tone deaf, incompetent, and just completely unfit to lead she is. Like there will be a passage talking about how she’s so super gifted at policy details, followed by a passage explaining the absolutely retarded command structure that would only make sense to an apparatchik, anyone who had actually managed anything ever in the private sector would have recoiled in horror.
The page I read twice, shuddering with a little frisson of ecstasy, was the moment that Fox called Wisconsin, and the new data approach/analytics people knew it was over, but the old Clinton hands, the ones who had been with Her Majesty for 20 years, were just frantically wishing it would reverse itself, begging her not to call The Donald and concede, because “there’s still a chance!!!!” The image of all these loathsome parasites, the hope running from their eyes and faces as the doors of power they had been crawling to their whole lives were slammed shut in their faces by a man that they all not only disliked, but actively hated, and thought they were every single one of them, so much smarter than.
Man I wish I could have seen it in person.
Except she is not so super gifted at policy details. Remember the health care plan she cooked up as First Lady?
No but everybody says she is and that’s all that counts.
See also, the last eight years.
THAT WAS A GREAT PLAN, THE STUPID AMERICAN PUBLIC DIDN’T ACCEPT HER GREATNESS.
The after election chapter where she blamed Comey, the KGB, and the KKK for her loss was hilarious.
Yes, tens of thousands of people who voted for Obama twice voted for Trump, and that’s why the KKK (like, there are probably more Ready for HIllary!!! employees in the country then there are actual KKK members) is to blame for Her Wonderfulness losing.
I’d be surprised if all the actual KKK members couldn’t comfortably fit in a high school auditorium.
Oh yeah. Like, any mid sized school district’s teachers voting in lockstep for Clinton (and there’s a ton of them) would instantly nullify every single remaining Klansman.
But in the spongy, worm eaten brains of Clinton world, the KKK are an actual political force. These people literally live in the past. George Wallace is standing in every door.
The Democrat George Wallace?
THE PARTIES FLIPPED PLACES!!!!!!!!!!
From back in November, and a bit long to read, but still holds up:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
“Trump made gains among blacks. He made gains among Latinos. He made gains among Asians. The only major racial group where he didn’t get a gain of greater than 5% was white people. I want to repeat that: the group where Trump’s message resonated least over what we would predict from a generic Republican was the white population.”
No way I was reading the entire book but I did read that part in the bookstore. Enjoyed a bit of schadenfreude with my latte.
I noticed the lack of alcohol consumption during that night, so I’m not sure what other details were left out.
It sounded like Bill was the most calm and probably pleased that Hillary lost.
Scumbag Terry McAuliffe was planning to fly from VA to NYC for the big party. After Florida went bigly Trump, Bill called Terry and told him not to bother flying up.
Bill had been the only one in the room throughout who was tapped into the zeitgeist. He got it, he understood what drove the Trump supporters. He had repeatedly voiced his belief that the Clinton campaign had whiplashed way too hard from 2008. They decided from the start they would build the Obama coalition, completely fucking avoiding the fact that the Obama coalition was essentially a cult of personality. Obama got elected twice, and maintained high approval ratings, while his policies polled terribly and the Democratic Party imploded. There isn’t really an Obama coalition, there’s Obama, and his magic doesn’t transfer to other people. They weren’t ever gonna get the same response. The types of people who are all about Obama in 08 were either feeling the Bern in 2016, or like stupid young leftists throughout history, were voting Republican because they had realized that the when the Left talked about the 1%, they really meant anyone who actually earned enough money to pay taxes.
It was identity politics killed the beast. The deplorables remark crystallized 20 years of Democratic Party contempt for the white working class in one beautiful soundbite. White men are 35% of the electorate. Their wives, mothers, and daughters are another 35% of the electorate. When you make white men the designated Goldstein, responsible for all the ills and evils of the world, you’re instantly putting your ceiling at 55% of the electorate, tops.
Bill wasn’t pleased she lost, he did want her to win. But there’s definitely a sense of him having spent 2 years being smiled at and thanked for his input by all these analytics guys who thought that Obama beating McCain and Rommney meant that they had solved politics forever and Bill was just an old warhorse to be lead around the pasture once or twice and patronized. Except the Old Man was right the whole time, playing the role of Cassandra.
That’s the exact impression I got about Bill being ignored and quietly thinking “I told you” on election night.
I didn’t think that I would enjoy “Shattered” since the authors intended to write a hagiography of Clinton. But I must admit I am enjoying the hell out of the book. They are writing like it is a classic greek tragedy but with lots of inside baseball that should destroy Mook, Podesta and others from ever running a campaign above 8th Grade Class president. Bill comes across as the only adult in the room and it is clear from the first page HRC had no idea of the mood of the country, how to lead or a coherent reason for her to be POTUS besides it was her turn.
The deplorables remark crystallized 20 years of Democratic Party contempt for the white working class
I’ve thought the truly appalling part of that statement wasn’t the “basket of deplorables”, it was calling them “irredeemable” and “not America”.
She was reading them out of society, and saying under no circumstances should they be regarded as decent human beings or Americans. No matter what Trump says or does, I don’t think he will ever do anything that reprehensible.
I think you hit the nail on the head RC. That comment plus telling WV miners she was going to put them out of work doomed her in the rust belt. There were millions of people who wanted to send a huge “Fuck You Hillary and Media!” and DT was their means to do so.
She had already lost the votes of almost everybody who had ever held a security clearance and lived outside of DC with her mendacity over the server issue. “Shattered” at the start of an early chapter lays out how big of bed of lies she was making in regards to the server issue- HRC in 2008 had her campaign servers examined so she and a small group could find out who was “disloyal” to her in emails.
DT may well be a train wreck over the next four years but the country dodged a bullet by trying to put her out to pasture.
Holy crap. It has been a while since I looked at PJ Media. What a shit-show. It looks like they went down the same road as TSTSNBN, SoCon version. It looks like their commentariat also flew the coop.
The best thing Trump has done is getting everyone to rip off their masks.
It looks like they’re just passing them around.
That’s exactly somehting Robby would say
To be sure.
I thought that was something ENB would say.
So wait, you mean PJ media went full socon, or all the socons left? I don’t check that site.
By and large, I am disappointed with PJ Media. I still follow Instapundit and Belmont Club (which is essential reading, IMO), but other than that . . . .
Ugh, that’s dismaying. I like Ed Driscoll and some other writers there but I haven’t been reading PJ Media in a while either.
Once the FSB installs those fucking Trumputins into somebody’s brain, though, prospects become very dim. I checked back in on Reason when the Comey story broke, only to directly see what people were making inferences about here–breathlessly reporting the claim from anonymous sources in the NYT that investigation resources were denied, which was directly contradicted by McCabe, as an absolute fact that “we know”. Also, Soave not being accurate about the UW self-defense shooting, and the dead grandma thing a few months ago… I mean, I can get my pants-shitting fake news anywhere, Reason.
Man, if the branches are open, why can’t I send a domestic wire transfer on a Saturday? Fucking banks.
I know it’s ridicules. Banks need to move into this century. How many people are out car shopping today? And all the banks close early.
The case for libertarian fascism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2-jH1vFrW8
I like That Guy T, but in general I find sitting through YouTubes of people talking very time inefficient.
Amazing atheist is the Olberman of left leaning libertarians.
Left leaning libertarians? Wasn’t TAA a Bernie Bro?
Thought he referred to himself as one. Tend to tune him out real quick, though.
Yeah, he’s utterly obnoxious, even when it’s an anti-SJW video were I agree with him.
Pretty bad when the choir puts in ear plugs while listening to your sermon.
Frankly, both him and Undoomed get real old, real quick for me. I stopped watching them, just couldn’t take it anymore. I think someone like Bearing does a much better job of making fun of some stupidity while not being an over-the-top jackass with it.
My guilty pleasure YouTuber is Chris Ray Gun. I don’t expect much heavy lifting, but am usually entertained.
Amazing atheist is not a libertarian, he’s a left-winger who thinks social justice politics are insane. He’s also an idiot and a compulsive liar. He threw a hissy fit over Ron Paul a couple years ago about how he’s really a Nazi.
Why isnt comey going to testify?
This guy on photo of right called it
https://mobile.twitter.com/polNewsForever/status/863195898846826497
I don’t see any reverse vampires in his rationale. Grade = Incomplete
Aren’t all white house meetings recorded? Or did they quit that after Nixon?
Look what I found.
Thanks!
I know this was posted before, but it’s so retarded it bears repeating:
“The core responsibility, however, is to report bias claims. Bias incidents, which in recent years are increasingly being policed on college campuses, can range from outright acts of racism to far more subtle “microaggressions” such as referring to someone as a “guy” or wearing dreadlocks while white.”
https://heatst.com/culture-wars/u-of-arizona-is-hiring-social-justice-advocates-to-police-fellow-students-for-bias-incidents/
Dammit!
wearing dreadlocks while white.
Sigh. For the last time you morons, even if you follow your retarded cultural appropriation theories, dreadlocks are a part of Western culture, they go back to the bloody Greeks.
I’ve never been happier to have chosen not to attend UA. The only thing my college has to be embarrased about are frat fights resulting in homicide and gun owning, lesbian hippies.
East German StasiUniversity of Arizona offering payments tocollaborators“Social Justice Advocates” for reportingclass traitorsbias incidents.https://heatst.com/culture-wars/u-of-arizona-is-hiring-social-justice-advocates-to-police-fellow-students-for-bias-incidents/
(link via iowahawk)
I’ve never even been in Iowa.
“With the goal of creating a “safe space” in mind, a Detroit school has set out to hold a girls-only prom to celebrate traditional Muslim customs.”
https://heatst.com/culture-wars/detroit-school-to-hold-muslim-girls-only-prom/
To be fair, in Detroit, their “safe” space is literally a safe space. The parents used sjw retardedness to their advantage.
“Black Harvard students are holding their own, separate commencement ceremony two days before the ceremony being held for everybody else.
In a first for the Ivy League school, the event will take place on May 23, ahead of the main commencement on May 25. According to The Boston Globe, 170 students have signed up, plus 530 guests.
Graduating students will wear a stole – a kind of scarf – woven from African kente cloth during the ceremony, and hear from keynote speakers.”
https://heatst.com/world/harvard-lets-black-students-have-separate-graduation-ceremony/
Will there also be separate water fountains?
“Students who opt for the separate event will also go to the main commencement two days later.”
And that cost how much? Oh, that’s right, it doesn’t matter.
I’m sure they’ll want the rest of us to pay off their student loans though.
Make sure they put a sign out front reading “Coloreds Only.”
Maybe we can sell freedom of association soon?
The thing is about the whole sjw policing thing, is that there is NO limit to how far they can take it. That may be a good source of entertainment for years to come.
Remy calls Venezuela like it is.
Booyah!
Nailed it except for the part where the intellectual blames Chavez.
My latest favorite term is “State Capitalism”
Too Thicc for HM!
I think something’s being appropriated here….not sure what.
I’d like to appropriate some of that
Isn’t it interesting that while one sees a lot of ass-shaking from Brazil, one doesn’t see a whole lot of twerking?
Oh, there’s some, but samba seems to be the ass-shaker of choice.
Nobody needs 42 inches.
That picture needs a caption.
https://heatst.com/culture-wars/lauren-southern-detained-by-italians-for-trying-to-block-refugee-boats-entering-the-country/
God, I’m so sick of hearing “alt-right” already. It’s already become what “neocon” was during the Bush years. A word that might have actually had a real meaning at one point, but now is just a pejorative for anyone that supports Trump.
Whatever the definition is or was, Lauren Southern qualified for it.
Response. I haven’t watched whole thing yet but saw this earlier.
https://youtu.be/uSBpHqv-OUo
“That’s our job.”
/Italian Coast Guard
Then fucking do it.
Good morning!
How about a little hootenanny?
That was nice. Mellowing out to this tonight.
Only one released so far, it looks like. Funny, it sounds like the Outfield!
The World’s Blackest Material
https://www.sciencealert.com/this-object-has-been-sprayed-with-the-world-s-blackest-pigment-and-it-s-freaking-us-out
Racist?
Wow! That’s cool!
Oh. Never mind.
Your car would be hot as hell in the Summer.
Summer?
Oh sorry, I meant “July”.
Freaky
They call the color, “Anthony Mason”
“It sees light coming, and it slaps the shit out of it back to where it came from”
Road Runner used this stuff back in the day.
lol. Some day I’ll learn myself to read.
How much more black could it be?
It hasn’t yet gone through its afrocentric phase where it rejects the white scientist’s tricknology and demands to return to its homeland
I belatedly remembered the reference
No story about Vantablack is complete without the Stuart Semple / Anish Kapoor feud revolving around it.
Rapper Got Nothing On These Guys
I mean, really, Stuart is an artist who got a degree in materials science just to fuck with another artist.
… I’m not sure that’s a great idea.
Better application: go out in public buck naked with a couple of real-life censor bars covering one’s anatomy.
Jeebus, that Sun link on the cyber attack has more T&A in the sidebar than some porn sites-well done Brits.
They actually outdo the Daily Mail in that regard. Which is something.
Is it just me or does she look weird as a blonde?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4501120/Katy-Perry-gets-served-platter-Bon-Appetit-clip.html
It doesn’t suit her.
Still would, though.
First pic looks like a young Perry Farrell in a blonde wig but I have to concur on the would though.
Would not listen to, but would eat.
urge to kill rising
huh?
A Simpsons reference maybe (my avater and Jeebus) -possibly really dislikes T&A for some reason.
IIRC he is a fellow Liverpool fan.
This is correct.
Rand Paul calls Jeff Sessions a reprehensible shitheel.
Yet he voted to confirm Sessions. Knowing exactly what he’d be like.
Yes. This is the stuff that baffles me about Rand (and Amash, come to think of it). Gotta be horse trading, doesn’t it?
Very possible promises were made by Trump that there would be MJ federalism or a focus on violent drug offenders over non violent. Also possible Rand has worked with Sessions and thought he was making inroads.
“Is this Senator Paul’s new claim to fame? He has been at this issue for some time now, and it always wins bipartisan support. ”
The war on drugs has also always won bipartisan support.
Ebola: WHO declares outbreak in DR Congo
Which one of you is responsible for that?
At first glance I read “Ebola outbreak in Chicago” and I wasn’t the least bit surprised.
Oh goody. Another freakout about how immigration from Africa is going to kill 80 kajillion Americams, just like the last Ebola outbreak did.
Ah, the Great Ebola Freakout of 2014, never forget.
I remember having to fill out a form when I went to the doctor’s office.
A high school friend is now an infectious disease specialist doctor type person. He went to Liberia for that and wrote a pretty decent book about it. I was tempted to submit a review here, as I remember how it was a big deal at H&R, but then I realized it isn’t a foreign horror movie, video game, or recipe including Zatarains liquid crab boil so no one here would give a rats ass.
Those people didn’t understand the vibrancy and diversity of having low IQ immigrants was well worth the hospital costs to the taxpayer.
/Lights PapayaSF signal
“Sessions argued that a spike in violence in some big cities and the nation’s opioid epidemic call for a return to harsher prison sentences.”
We’ve done this experiment before. Sessions argument defies the data–and basic economics.
When sentencing for drug crimes exceeds sentencing for violent crime, it incentivises violence. If killing someone who might testify against you will get 5-7 years (after time off for good behavior), but being convicted for drug distribution in federal court means you’re doing 32 years minimum (parole eligibility only after you do 80% of your sentence), then having someone killed to prevent them from testifying against you for drug distribution is a no-brainer. Furthermore, you no longer depend on strangers for distribution. You only distribute using extremely violent gang soldiers a) who don’t squeal and b) who aren’t as afraid of doing time.
Much of the proliferation of violent gangs across the United States in the ’80s and early ’90s can be attributed to those kinds of incentives. The reason the Cripps and Bloods led the way had to do with them arming themselves to the teeth to defend against Daryl Gates’ introduction of SWAT tactics in Los Angeles. They wanted to defend their crack houses against the police–and the gangs could then turn those arms on each other. That the most heavily armed gangs predominated nationally as federal sentencing guidelines grew harsher shouldn’t have surprised anyone.
In all honesty, there was one thing that harsher sentences changed for the better in some ways–and that was the three strikes law.
Long story short, when California’s three strikes law came into effect, the people who were given life sentences because of three strikes blamed public support for the law on media hype about drive-by shootings, innocent bystanders being hit in drive-by shootings, etc. They started treating kids in prison convicted of drive-by shootings like they treat people convicted of sex crimes against children–and that all but killed the drive-by shooting as a phenomenon. Even then, though, the impact three strikes had wasn’t as expected. No one sold three strikes as a way to get rid of drive-by shooting by having convicts gang rape each other. And my complaint about three strikes has a moral dimension to it anyway. Double jeopardy, anybody?
Anyway, the new emergence of violence does not call for harsher prison sentences for drug distribution. If anything, the emergence of violence calls for harsher prison sentences for violent crime.
I think a big part of is with marijuana becoming increasingly legal, they want to double-down on opiates. There is too much money and power in the WOD.
Did anyone see Welch on Bill Maher’s show? i figure ‘no’
Not I.
Did you see it? Was it worth watching?
i’m downloading it just to see if welch wears a terrible tie.
the guests were supposed to be pretty good tho (rapper killer mike of Run the Jewels, and some time Independents guest, and Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau, who i was just reading about in Shattered). thought maybe some heavy-smack-talk broke out. Basically, Matt and Huge Black Rapper vs. Obama sycophant.
*matt’s tie was conservative and not so bad. navy/royal-striped on blue.
And is Favreau gay? i got pings the second he started talking.
I dunno but I liked him in Swingers.
even Maher was like, “This is the *other* – slimmer – Favreau”
which i think everyone recognizes is a joke that has gotten very old.
Maher has a very nice moment with Matt early in the show where he looks at him and goes, “You’re a republican right?” And Matt has to be like, “I TOLD YOU A MIZZILION TIMES YO” and then slaps back (to Maher) with “You gave Obama a million bucks, and call yourself ‘independent’.”
The word “libertarian” did not come up between either of them. take that as you will. I assume it was because Maher was being nice. He could have made Johnsonesque digs.
Also, the audience at that show is @(#*$( horrible
they clap at whatever Killer Mike says, because “black guy speaks in full sentences!!! horray!!” I suspect Mike recognizes this.
they applaud all mahers dumbest jokes, but there’s a long delay whenever he says anything smart. Matt gets stony silence.
Yeah, I hesitated to even make it but somebody was going to.
So, nothing’s changed since I stopped watching him more than a decade ago.
Hitchens nailed his audience years ago. Guess things haven’t changed.
The middle of Maher’s show last night was devoted to a 10 minute segment where Bill basically repeated “Trump is Fat!”. and then capped it off with his showing the audience a revised= “The Art of the Meal“-book.
the audience went wild. that’s the sort of stuff they think is ace material.
Here’s his “Trump is Fat” -segment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvLQqe79eGY
Deep stuff
Maybe I’m remembering wrong, but I could’ve sworn I’d seen a clip where even Maher admits his audience will clap for anything he says.
Last time I was in a studio audience there was a guy that stood in front with signs to instruct the audience what to do. You end up reacting more to the guy with the signs then you do to what is happening on stage.
And? What does it say about Favreau? And I’d like to know how did an actor get to be a political speechwriter?
Because I gotta say…not overly impressed.
Other than that…I too liked ‘Swingers’ because it depicts pretty much how things were for us in our 20s.
Sigh.
sigh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Favreau_(speechwriter)
i think its interesting about both Favreau and Ben Rhodes is that neither of them ever seem to have had a real job. they graduated college, got some internship with a political person, and then got “recommended” up the ladder until they were working for presidents.
he was one of these typical “college student government” types, who collects awards and scholarships and internships
Oh….THAT J.F.
I saw it for about 3 minutes. Adam Schiff said that if there wasn’t collusion between Trump and the Russians, then Comey would not have been fired. Although I forget his exact words.
Was that the guest at the beginning 1/3 of the show? I skipped right past that.
Yes, the one-on-one interview at the beginning.
Luckily not my personal Rep (he’s Burbank, IIRC) but a tool who’s on LA tv ALL THE FREAKING TIME. man, he’s such a Dem party whore.
Also – something that just occurred to me
they had Favreau on, who (according to Shattered) worked intimately w/ Hillary Clinton’s campaign right before it launched, but abandoned it in the beginning because he saw it was headed for disaster.
And Maher didn’t ask him a single fucking question about Hillary.
Uh what would Obama’s speechwriter know about Russian Hacking?
Finishing Shattered last night, I was struck by just how close the book came to finally understanding that the issue with Her has always been that she is who she is. It’s not the speeches, not the electorate, not the media, not the Russians. She sucks, in every way it is possible for a human being to suck, and the country fucking knows it, and showed it by electing a literal carnival freak President over her.
Hillary: We’re Just Not That Into You.
Speaking of insignificant sentences for violent crime:
“You never would have thought just one sucker punch would snuff his beautiful life out,” Julie Campos said.
Police Lt. Dan McGrath said Campos was standing in line outside the Vanguard Lounge when Beach stopped while walking past, asked what Campos was looking at, and punched him.
Beach’s attorney, Gregory Knapp, said his client didn’t mean to kill Campos, and will plead not guilty to a murder charge.
“It was a horrible accident and Mr. Beach feels terrible,” Knapp said of the 1:30 a.m. incident. “Words were exchanged on some level and a punch was thrown. There was no premeditation, no malice. You don’t expect someone to die. It was spontaneous.”
Beach was released from state prison in September 2014 after served more than four years for pleading . . . guilty to attempted murder and battery with a deadly weapon in a November 2008 shooting. A 19-year-old man was wounded in the heart and another man was wounded in the groin, according to court records.”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/felon-arrested-punch-death-las-vegas-sidewalk-47287148
Focus on that last sentence. He plead guilty to shooting someone in the heart and shooting another in the groin. He plead guilty to attempted murder and battery with a deadly weapon.
He served about four years in prison.
If an uptick in violence justifies anything, it isn’t harsher penalties for drug crimes; it justifies harsher penalties for violent crime.
What are you talking about? Your reasoning is faulty. The CJ system isnt there to protect you, silly.
*swoon*
Those beautiful dead eyes do it for you, eh?
Soulful, dead – whatevz.
FOX goes with the triptych treatment.
Gonna guess that was drug related. That’s the kind of “all in the game”/”no humans involved” crimes that David Simon wrote about a bunch.
Since the links seem to involve Portland, Hillbillys, and Drugs, I will provide another update on my ventures into agricultural entrepreneurship.
This week’s theme is, I didn’t choose the Start-up Life, the Start-up Life chose me.
Last week we went down to southern Oregon, in the back of beyond. A place that the three people in Bum Fuck, Egypt refer to as where Jesus Lost His Slippers. We helped some compadres who taught us a great deal, and one of whom is a helluva breeder, start clearing the land the purchased for their med grow. Couple of nights of camping rough, cutting trees, and building shit during the day, then spending the evening smoking up after shooting guns into the stumps.
Back at our farm, we continue to make improvements. We have a factory of sorts setup. There’s the veg room where we do cloning and getting seeds up to size. We’ve spent this week redoing it to make it easier and more efficient; adding drains and better storage, improving the water delivery system. The next step is the hoop houses where we can either grow the plants from 5 gallon up to 65 gallon pots. We have those wired now, and improved ventilation. Probably the part of most interest is I got to practice using a wood chipper. We had a couple of cedar trees that were blocking the light, so they came down and we rented a wood chipper and chewed those bitches up to make mulch for inside the hoops to keep pests and grass down. When the revolution comes I will be ready to do my part.
The flower room hit harvest time, so we are drying the product. We’ve done some test smokes, and made some shatter from that already, but the bulk of it needs to cure. I’m really looking forward to make some RSO out of a strain called Frank’s Gift. A colleague provided some capsules last year with RSO in it and the pain relief for sore muscles and joints is terrific without making you high (unless you have a really low tolerance). The bulk though has to dry and then be further trimmed and cured before it is ready to sell. We have most of it earmarked for specific patients already.
Which is the other good thing. We are finally out of the pre-revenue stage! We have revenue. Most of the shatter is already claimed and we’ll be giving that to our patient later today and he will have a nice donation for us. We also provided another patient with clones yesterday. We have more lined up and that’s going to be a nice revenue stream every week. We finally have the equipment to basically turn enough of those out each week that we can be consistent.
The house I’m selling is under contract. But I’ve spent way too much time this week cleaning up dried cat piss before the inspection. Fucking renters snuck in a cat that was not well-behaved. I kept their security deposit, but I think I have the problem solved. We’re in escrow now so if the back out it is going to cost them 10 grand. Got to get that finalized though. We are going to look at a beautiful piece of land on Monday that may be the spot for the rec grow. A river bounds it on two sides and it has serious potential. If that works out, we could be setting up the second med grow and starting the rec grow approval process by the end of May. Fingers crossed.
The Mrs. has been incredibly patient as I see her for about an hour in the mornings when I take her to work, and then maybe she sees me at night for five minutes when I make it to bed. I use to cook dinner every night, but we’re usually working now, and she’s been up to her own devices. Which means Ramen, Spaghettios, and Cheese Quesadillas for dinner for her. She made a comment about the long hours and number of days in a row working, which is when I made the “I didn’t choose the Start-Up Life” comment. This afternoon and evening is date day though so that’s good. The girl on the side has drifted away a bit, but I kind of expected that. Not enough time to keep it going. Fortunately seems there are no hard feelings and I don’t blame her for not wanting to deal with the lunatic schedule I’m keeping now.
As always, feel free to ask questions.
What’s an RSO?
It stands for Rick Simpson Oil. It’s an oil made from buds and fan leaves from certain strains that has primarily medical uses. Simpson claims it cured his cancer. I have my doubts about that, but in my experience taking it in a gel cap or adding it to lineament helps with joint pain and muscle soreness.
OK, thanks.
The Robert Stigwood Organisation.
Que?
What part of that needs explaining?
The Mrs. has been incredibly patient as I see her for about an hour in the mornings
Could be her dream come true, you know.
We do have one night/day per week that are date nights. But yes, she can introvert and read without me being all loud and extroverty.
The Mrs. and I aren’t monogamous. We aren’t swingers, but we both occasionally allow a relationship to develop as it will.
Go on…
Awesome. Can’t imagine why you would need more than a five gallon pot for any of your plants, though. A, uh, friend of mine had some very successful grows in five gallon buckets.
Being legal for a med grow, the limit is on the number of plants, not the pounds produced. The only way to increase yield is bigger plants. So…bigger buckets. The method we are using is a type of trellising that can net 8+ lbs per plant.
Interesting. Things have advanced since my friend was growing. I would think the only way to get a gargantuan plant would be to delay flowering, which you could only do with a fully indoor grow.
Oh, we use light deprivation to control when it goes into flower even with the hoop houses. We also use a non-nutrient medium that allows for more frequent feeding so it can grow larger, faster during veg state. But yes, that’s effectively what we’re doing. We are prolonging that veg state to make the plants bigger. I don’t understand that part 100%. I’m more the jack-leg engineer / operations / metrics / penny pincher.
Push N, starve PK, is an approach to grow large leafy vegetables before they bolt.
48 cars crash into the same house over the course of a year. That would be shocking if not for the country involved.
https://heatst.com/world/forty-eight-cars-crash-into-same-house-during-the-last-year/
Somalia?
neat: US Phds awarded by gender and field
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17306/datatables/tab-06.htm
I was pleased to see that about half of PhDs are for STEM fields. I was worried that lots of bullshit PhDs were being awarded.
I wonder what the breakdown is for 4 yr degrees.
For four year degrees (all types), I would expect it to be about 60% female, based on enrollment. The fact that people are still gibbering and hooting about how “our girls” need special treatment in our education system when they do better across the board by any metric (due to the feminization of our education system and the resulting hostility to normal boys) infuriates me.
For STEM, I have no idea.
More Adderall should help to correct that disparity.
I read a funny story about a mother of two girls watching some young boys play. The mother of the girls was horrified and told the mother of the boys that they all had ADHD and why wasn’t she medicating them?
A boy that can sit still for hours is either heavily drugged, sick, or depressed.
“There are 96 ridges on every checker, except this one.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BwV26j9iY0
Or me. I was that kid that sat in a chair with a book all day.
Well, you’re, um, ‘special’.
Heh, fortunately there were always kids around me who were far nerdier and bore the brunt of all that shit.
random thought: You studied German, right? Here’s a story you might like:
In my 12th grade English class, we spent a few weeks on Slaughterhouse Five. The teacher told us that there was a joke in the name Valencia Merble, the fat wife. She said Valencia means furniture in German. I corrected her and told her that no, but Merble sounds like the German word for furniture (Moebel). She was unhappy at that because I guess she had spent several years teaching the wrong thing.
I gave her a college scholarship essay to edit and her suggestions were appalling. It looked like a blind idiot translation from Japanese. It was shocking that a college-educated native speaker of English could write so poorly…and still end up as an English teacher.
Nah, I have it on good authority that schoolteachers are all super duper smart, you know they’re smart because they’re often the smartest people in the room!!!!
Plus they hate the Drumpf, which is worth like 30 IQ points right there.
Yup. Exchange-studented there too.
And I don’t know how anyone with a high-school diploma let alone a college degree could possibly go through life believing that.
Incidental reports suggest that there are still few women civil engineering graduates. Apparently they’re just not that interested.
Many more on the environmental engineering side, and I see a lot of women biologists working on commercial real estate projects. One time, we had representatives from our biology consultant meet on site with two reps each from Fish and Wildlife, The County, and the state of CA, and everyone there was a woman except for me.
I suspect there’s more to the fact that women dominate allied healthcare and education than just their natural proclivities and interests. I think they’ve gravitated to those industries in the past because they know it isn’t dominated by men. I think a lot of them don’t like the idea of being the only woman on the job site– and all their bosses men–and so they don’t bother jumping through the hoops to become a geotechnical engineer. They jump through the hoops to become a surgical nurse or a physical therapist.
Actually, that’s my working theory on why there were so many gay guys in healthcare, too. I think women have historically been more tolerant of that in the past, and so gay guys gravitated to professions where management, certainly on the clinical side, tended to be dominated by women: the Director of Nursing, Health Information Management even, etc.
When I was working construction as a kid, there were plenty of smart guys out there who would have had a hard time imagining themselves working in an office full of women, where they constantly had to worry about what they were saying and how they said it. They just didn’t find that idea appealing. For women, I think it may be the same thing in reverse. Do you really want to be the only female? Even when they go out, they go out in a group, which is why you need a wingman.
When I was in school civil engineering was not considered to be a very rigorous discipline by the other engineering fields. The joke was he who couldn’t became a civie. At least they were required to have some basic hard science. Not a lot of woman in hard science because their brains are not wired that way.
I spent about 4 years working at a museum where my boss was a civie. His ability to apply basic science (alternative energy projects) was none to impressive. All the biologist at the museum except one were woman and quite bright. The one male biologist was a meat head. His emails you would have thought were written by a third grader. Biology is a lot of memorization and some basic chemistry. Not really hard science.
In the spring we got a half a dozen freshly minted ivy league educated ‘environmental engineering’ interns. Female to male ratio was 5:1. Hard science was entirely foreign to them. They didn’t know the difference between a Watt and a Joul and you could probably get most of them to sign a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide. They were essentially a bag of walking talking environmental myths. Calling them engineers reminds me of Iowahawk’s description of what lefties do to institutions which can equally apply to what they do to the English language.
1. Identify a respected label (engineering).
2. Kill it.
3. Gut it.
4. Wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
more women than men in Humanities/Soc Sci and life sciences. That means so many ‘intersectional feminists” getting degrees in garbage.
Saw AEI stats the other day that more women than men are getting degrees at every level now (AA to PhD).
I thought this stat was interesting:
“Nearly 40% of all women earning engineering degrees quit the profession within the first few years of their career or never enter the field. Which, in combination with the low percentage entering the field in the first place, helps explain why it is estimated women represent only 11% of all practicing engineers in the United States.”
https://www.pddnet.com/blog/2015/06/why-it-so-hard-hire-female-engineer
That’s kinda huge.
4 yr degree breakdown:
***
Of the 1,870,000 bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2013–14, the greatest numbers of degrees were conferred in the fields of business (358,000), health professions and related programs (199,000), social sciences and history (173,000), psychology (117,000), biological and biomedical sciences (105,000), and education (99,000). At the master’s degree level, the greatest numbers of degrees were conferred in the fields of business (189,000), education (155,000), and health professions and related programs (97,000). At the doctor’s degree level, the greatest numbers of degrees were conferred in the fields of health professions and related programs (67,400), legal professions and studies (44,200), education (10,900), engineering (10,000), biological and biomedical sciences (8,300), psychology (6,600), and physical sciences and science technologies (5,800).
***
40 yrs of degree trends in one graph
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/05/09/310114739/whats-your-major-four-decades-of-college-degrees-in-1-graph
The main trend is the expansion of business degrees and the decline of education degrees.
re: MBA’s
i’ve worked in consulting and for investment banks. No one I’ve ever met thinks an MBA is worth shit. I’d guess the perceived value is even less now.
I’ve long assumed a “business” degree was just a sort of default “I graduated college” degree.
as an undergraduate degree, it pretty much is. I’d guess some people might see it as less signalling of ‘dull intelligence’ now because ….well, kids with BA’s could be anything from sober and intelligent, to screaming gender-studies lunatics. at least the word “business” signals that they are someone who wants to apply themselves to some practical purpose.
My son has a business degree. I was not enthusiastic about him studying that, I was a STEM major. He is very smart so I wanted him to study a field that would polish that. I was never the ‘do as I say’ kind of parent so I encouraged him in whatever he wanted to do. I am glad I never said anything.
He is 26 now, has his own business and brings in 20 – 30 K per month.
I think i probably mis-spoke when i suggested it was inherently less-valuable than some other sorts of degrees.
my pov was from the POV of a corporation hiring kids fresh out the gate, where the only thing the degree implies is the level of intellectual ambition.
If your aim is to run your own business, there’s probably no better thing to study. because its the most practically-oriented.
If your aim is to work for a big corporation, its mostly a waste since all the stuff you’ll learn superficial bits about (e.g. accounting, operations management, finance, etc) are things there are entire departments full of already.
If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of business?
If I told you you wouldn’t believe it at first, then after a little reflection you would have a ‘holy shit, of course’ moment.
Also, I understood what you meant. There are two kinds of business degrees; the ones who cant do anything and just want a degree because daddy said so and the ones who are just getting their ticket stamped on their way to setting the world on fire.
Ah. Porn.
He’s said here before a few times.
Owns a gym.
But it COULD be a sex gym.
Playa is correct. I think of him as a marriage counselor for trophy wives. Every time I walk in the place he and I are the only two males on the premises. The women dont know who I am and they treat me like I just walked into the women’s restroom. It must be a woman thing, no one is supposed to know they are there. I guess because then people know their asses are getting wider and their trophy days are slipping away.
He has about 2500 sq ft and it stays packed. He has no openings for memberships. They go in and out in hourly rotations from 5am to 8pm at $100/mo.
He has been rolling like that for two years now. It is incredible really.
So it IS a sex gym.
Yes.
My view is that most jobs and social interactions in general revolve around lying and ass-kissing. This isn’t just my cynicism. My old boss at the plastic bag factory often boasted about how he got through college by telling the professors what they wanted to hear. He tried to sell me on his idea of success through kissing people’s asses and telling them it tastes like ice cream. I told him I see no point in tip-toeing through life just to arrive safely at death.
We didn’t get along.
I think it happens a lot, I think a lot of people rise through the ranks that way. However, someone still has to get the job done. If you have the drive, the work ethic, and the willingness to learn (even if that means self learning), people are going to want to have you on their team. No ass kissing or lying required. Obviously you have to respect the politics of your situation just as you do with every other aspect of your life, but that doesn’t mean you have to sell your soul. I keep my head down, my nose to the grindstone, and kick ass and I get respect for it without any of that nonsense.
Same here. I don’t lie and I don’t kiss ass. I “wear my heart on my sleeve” and sometimes that confuses people when they see exactly what I think of them…
My heart is in a locked chest at the bottom of the ocean where it belongs.
Same here. Under the Antarctic ice sheet.
I certainly have seen that where I work. Several people in Senior Management that I’ve worked with. Not sure if they got there through ass kissing, backstabbing, stealing credit, or from the fact that they look like barbie dolls, but it sure as shit had nothing to do with brains or competency.
For federal employees, and for state and local .gov employees, a requirement for advancement into supervisory positions is often an MBA/MBA-like degree, or sometimes just a “masters degree”.
There’s a whole industry for churning out .gov and .mil “masters degrees”, often MBAs.
My wife works in public housing where the director, with an MBA, has managed to burn through the 3/4 of a million dollars they had in reserve in 5 years. I cannot begin to describe how dumb this director is.
The Spectator posts a review of Seventh Function of Language, a novel that seems designed for Heroic Mulatto.
Amazon won’t have it up till August, but it sounds like a fun Eco-style thriller, geared more towards idiots like me than Eco was.
i read this sentence before i read your excerpt and thought you meant “Environmental”.
Umberto Eco. (name of the rose, foucaults pendulum, etc) Just so other people get it.
Yes, that was exactly the impression i got when it was suggested as both “mocking intellectuals while taking their ideas seriously” I think Saul Bellow did that w/ things like Ravelstein.
A book like this can be published in the UK before it reaches America. Check Amazon UK.
Yep, “https://www.amazon.co.uk/7th-Function-Language-Laurent-Binet/dp/1910701580/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1494714822&sr=1-1&keywords=the+seventh+function+of+language”>it’s available there.
I have zero idea why that didn’t work; copied it straight from my HTML editor. Bizarre.
Concatenated the “href” bit for some reason. Huh.
Also from The Spectator, sometime Reason contributor and my favorite British Leftist (sorry, Sargon), Brendan O’Neil blasts Labour proposal to outlaw unpaid internships.
Dumb dumb dumb dumb
It’s a bad sign when British leftists write a better farewell to Obama than the libertarians at Reason.
Farewell. Fare. Well.
Nope, thats not what I said when he left.
O’Neill gets it. I think if he makes an error here is in assuming that Obama is different than other political figures in this respect. He is, a little. More people had more invested in him. But i think politics-as-emotional-wish-fulfillment affects everyone.
That column is soooooooooooo racist.
Random thoughts
I think education could be much more efficient if it focused on what will be retained in the long term vs throwing as much knowledge at people and hoping it sticks. It appears that even after 12 or 16 years of school, people forget most of it.
I think there was a Guido Sarducci joke about how he could teach you in 5 minutes what you’ll remember 5 years after graduating college.
Given that, why not just teach a summarized form, since that has the best chance of being remembered?
I really like the big picture. It’s my nature to summarize and simplify things and I get bored with details quickly. I tried reading the first Game of Thrones book, but I couldn’t get past the first page because there was a whole paragraph describing some chump’s gloves.
I love details, especially in a big thick novel full of them.
But yeah, I’ve probably forgotten 90% of what I learned in high school – especially in math and science, which my school focused on.
Why do I need to know Python Golem’s Theorem?
To get to the next level and destroy Mog?
The Ferengi bartender on ST: DS9?
You mean the (((Ferengi))) bartender?
No, that was Nog, and he was a filthy race traitor that joined Starfleet.
/Huge nerd.
“Why do I need to know Python Golem’s Theorem?”
You dont. Not to remember it of course, but you should learn it. You should learn how to derive the equations for the conic sections. You should learn how electrical currents work. How cells divide and Mendelian genetics. The periodic table of elements and the electronic structures of the elements.
You should learn these things because it teaches you how to think, how to structure logical arguments, how the parts of problems are connected to each other and thus solve them, even just how to tell a story.
Look at the argle bargle bullshit that comes out of the mouths of SJWs and you wonder how they can be so absurd? They never learned how not to be.
I left out darwinian evolution. Ooops. thats high on the list too.
I love details too. That’s why I prefer HD porn.
Pages of furniture porn /cryptonomicon
“I love details, especially in a big thick novel full of them.”
Yesterday, I asked a guy about a big thick fantasy novel he was reading. The premise was interesting: a wandering Roman soldier who forgets everything when goes to sleep and can talk to gods and other supernatural creatures. He writes down everything that happens in a little notebook so he can function. So he’s on a quest to learn his true identity and cure his condition and he meets with gods who help him when he does various tasks. It sounded like the labors of Hercules to me.
Anyway, I asked him if he got bored from slogging through all those details. Couldn’t the story be summarized in a few hundred words. He said he doesn’t read all the words, he just skips over the boring parts and spends more time on the parts he likes. I guess the hunt for interesting details is what he likes.
I have tried to write fiction, but I never like the results because I always end up summarizing the story instead of writing it.
I’ve heard that from a few people and it baffles the hell out of me. How do you keep your place? How do you know you haven’t missed something?
I do that all the time in non-fiction, sure. But in a story? It’s madness.
I’ve watched crappy movies where I’ve fast-forwarded through things like musical numbers or fight scenes.
GoT annoyed the first time I tried to read it, because it introduces all the Starks and their household, plus King Robert and household in the first chapter. I couldn’t follow it.
Then I watched the show’s first season, went back and read the book, and since I already knew the characters it went much smoother.
Watched the first episode, decided the show was utter crap and haven’t watched anymore. Nor am I going to bother to read any of it.
Yeah, I think breaking things up into certifications is the way to go. I also think the college requirements structure is outdated, especially considering the cost per credit today. Is it “nice” to learn about things outside your discipline? Of course, that’s why we have the internet which doesn’t add 50K to bill.
I think there was a Guido Sarducci joke about how he could teach you in 5 minutes what you’ll remember 5 years after graduating college.
I was a Russian major, so not true for me.
One day, one day, ONE DAY! Hillary will find her VOICE! And the Foundations of Patriarchy will CRUMBLE!
More random thoughts
Many people will do shitty things if they perceive a low risk of punishment. This is one of the main arguments given for the importance of religion- it discourages people from evil by convincing them they will not escape punishment.
I wonder what the equivalent of religion would be in a society that never had it. My only conclusion is that it would basically be everyone spying on everyone.
In a way, modern social media is taking the place of religion in discouraging bad behavior.
I can see why religion is a universal phenomenon. Like money and language, it is a very useful fiction.
An assassin’s guild.
Or encouraging it.
You’re exactly right that “risk of perceived punishment” is a huge thing that affects people’s behavior. The other, less talked about issue is “Shame”.
I hear it very rarely discussed. But shame isn’t so much “punishment”, but rather the internalization of certain standards, which if you fall short of them, the only one to punish you is ‘you’. Religious shame is not the only kind.
Yeah. I have had people present me with contrived moral dilemmas or ‘what would you do’ fictional situations.
“But why not? C’mon man, no one would ever know!”
“I would”
That’s guilt, though, not shame.
Some argue that’s why some cultures are corrupt shitholes, because one only fears what others think (i.e., shame) and some aren’t because one fears how one would feel about himself (i.e., guilt)
Maybe that’s right. At least according to those definitions.
But I’ve never thought of shame as being something elusively based on the opinions of others. I considered “shame” either an alternative form or subset of guilt which was connected to the concept of ‘dignity’, or self worth.
e.g. , i would feel guilt for hurting someone i cared about, or causing unnecessary pain to someone, but not shame.
(e.g. if i borrowed someone’s car and it was vandalized? i accidentally ran over someone’s dog?)
I would feel shame if i behaved in a way that i privately believed violated my own sense of principle.
the only example that pops into my mind except an early moment in my first job where i was basically instructed to lie to clients about the reasons for X product being delayed.
No one anywhere in the company found the behavior at all odd or anything other than ‘normal business’, but i simply couldn’t stomach doing it, and finally told the boss i would not, and he would have to find someone else to do it. It did not benefit me at all, and no one else thought i was morally in the right for objecting, but it personally made me feel like a whore, so i wouldn’t do it.
If your definitions (shame being “public guilt”) are more semantically accurate, maybe i need a different word.
Well Derp, that is one of the aspects of religion that swayed me against it when I was a kid. It was painfully obvious to me that it was just about controlling people, something I naturally had an aversion to. I also didn’t understand the need for it. I was too young to realize that the majority of people WILL do whatever they think they can get away with. Rape, robbery and murder would be much more common if people didn’t have guns pointed at them.
I know it now, but I dont get it, if you know what I mean.
“I wonder what the equivalent of religion would be in a society that never had it.”
Since no society survived into the historical record without it, we might deduce that a society that never had religion can’t survive.
So many of us have come to think of evolution as something that happens in our genes–for a couple of reasons. For one, the breakthroughs we’ve made in recent years in our ability to analyze genetic information means genetics is where the new data is coming from, it gets all the headlines, etc. The other reason is that talking about social changes and the advantages they confer smacks of social Darwinism, which is only less popular than . . . well, nothing is less popular, in academic circles or elsewhere, than social Darwinism.
That being said, anthropologists study religion like they study language–as an evolutionary adaptation that conferred certain benefits. There’s no evidence that any society survived into the historical record without language, and we might deduce from this fact that if any society could exist without language, it probably couldn’t survive. And isn’t the burden of proof on those who believe in something for which there is no evidence in the natural world?
Likewise, someone might argue that if any society could have survived into the historical record without religion, isn’t it reasonable to think it would have done so? By the same logic as with language, anyone who believes that a society could survive into the historical record without ever having religion would bear the burden of proof. Where’s the evidence for this theory?
“There’s no evidence that any society survived into the historical record without language, and we might deduce from this fact that if any society could exist without language, it probably couldn’t survive.”
I think it’s a little more complicated than that. There is evidence of human-made tools with no discernible writing or language associated with them. I think it would be difficult to prove that every society had language.
Similarly, I think it would be difficult to prove that every society had religion, too, (or, perhaps we’d need to define exactly what we mean by religion).
I highly suspect that both language and religion are fairly common things people do, though.
Are there records of non-religious societies perishing due to their lack of religion?
If all historical writings of all societies show that they all had religion, then that really doesn’t tell us anything about the survivability of non-religious societies.
It seems self evident that any social animal must have means of communicating with others of its kind, otherwise it wouldn’t be a social animal.
Circular reasoning for the win.
Language and communication aren’t the same thing. Bees communicate with dancing. Bees do not have language.
Anthropology holds that genus homo developed brains the way they did in no small part due to the development of language. They also hold that language developed the way it did to suit the homo brain.
And, yeah, it could be that society requires religion to develop much like it depends on language. Whatever it is that makes society cohesive, helps people deal with death, etc. may depend on having had religion.
There are no examples of societies surviving into the historical record without religion–certainly none of which I’m aware.
Things are not true or false depending on whether they seem intuitive.
“Similarly, I think it would be difficult to prove that every society had religion, too.”
No society survived into the historical record without religion.
Go ahead and name the one that did.
That’s not what I said.
It’s what you wrote.
You also wrote this:
“If all historical writings of all societies show that they all had religion, then that really doesn’t tell us anything about the survivability of non-religious societies.”
Anthropology has it that that language and religion both developed to accommodate the human brain–and that the brain grew and evolved as it did to accommodate the advantages conferred by both language and religion.
I’d love to say I’m the Noble Prize laureate who discovered and found the support for all this stuff, but this is Anthro 101 (both physical and cultural)/Wikipedia stuff.
From the WIki:
“Robin Dunbar argues that the critical event in the evolution of the neocortex took place at the speciation of archaic homo sapiens about 500,000 years ago. His study indicates that only after the speciation event is the neocortex large enough to process complex social phenomena such as language and religion. The study is based on a regression analysis of neocortex size plotted against a number of social behaviors of living and extinct hominids.[10]
Stephen Jay Gould suggests that religion may have grown out of evolutionary changes which favored larger brains as a means of cementing group coherence among savannah hunters, after that larger brain enabled reflection on the inevitability of personal mortality.”[11]
—-“Evolutionary Origins of Religions”
You can read a synopsis of some of Dunbar’s relevant work here:
“Processing power limits social group size: computational evidence for the cognitive costs of sociality”
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1765/20131151
Short version?
No religion, no civilization.
I often come across people on the web who seem to be proponents of what I call “supernatural atheism”. Somehow their atheism has no basis in the natural world. Their beliefs seem to be meme driven, or maybe it’s that they’re so used to “debating” Christian fundamentalists and creationists, that they don’t stop to think about the implications of what they’re saying.
I’ve had similar arguments with people (some of them atheists!) about altruism arising naturally from evolution–as if that were impossible. Wasn’t that you the other day who seemed to be mystified by the idea that millions of individuals pursuing their own best interests outperform a unified society? Regardless, if altruism didn’t arise naturally from evolutionary pressures, that would be an excellent argument for the existence of God. Meanwhile, all the evidence seems to confirm that religion was a necessary ingredient in order for a society exist–much less for any particular society to survive into the historical record.
P.S. No civilization survived into the historical record without religion.
Addendum:
I suppose someone could argue that some “societies” survived into the historical record without religion in the form of chimpanzees or other lesser apes, but that isn’t what you were talking about was it? I don’t believe they have the neocortex for it, and that’s part of the point.
Oh, but Neanderthals may have. There’s some dispute about the extent to which their “burials” represent ritual, but Paleolithic religion is a real thing.
“Religious behaviour is thought[by whom?] to have emerged by the Upper Paleolithic, before 30,000 years ago at the latest,[1] but behavioral patterns such as burial rites that one might characterize as religious — or as ancestral to religious behaviour — reach back into the Middle Paleolithic, as early as 300,000 years ago, coinciding with the first appearance of Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens.”
Correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation, but it’s consistent with Dunbar if religious ritual started about the same time that homo sapiens differentiated themselves in regards to the neocortex, right?
Right.
This time with the link!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_religion
That’s not what I wrote.
I never limited my context to historically recorded history only.
We know enough to know that history is incomplete.
Since when does an incomplete record limit the applicability of the scientific method?
The scientific record is always incomplete. Science is built on that observation. You don’t need a citation for the problem of induction, do you?
Yeah, science is limited by the available data, and that can lead us to question the relative certainty of scientific results–but there isn’t anything new about that here. That is always true.
We have evidence of paleolithic religion and ritual.
Dunbar provides evidence that the size of a society is limited by the size and development of the neocortex.
We have evidence that our neocortex evolved as it did in response to the advantages given by language and religion.
There is no evidence that a society survived into the historical record without religion.
You don’t need me to put that all together for you, do you?
You’re not Tulpa, right?
“We have evidence of paleolithic religion and ritual.
Dunbar provides evidence that the size of a society is limited by the size and development of the neocortex.
We have evidence that our neocortex evolved as it did in response to the advantages given by language and religion.
There is no evidence that a society survived into the historical record without religion.”
Here’s my point:
1. We’ve uncovered buried Paleolithic people. I understand that scholars dispute whether or not there is religious meaning in that.
2. Does this mean they all buried their dead? We know that burial isn’t the only way of dealing with corpses, so, at some point, multiple techniques would have developed. That’s an important question, since the act of burial greatly preserves the dead. Any society that buried their dead would more likely survive into the historical record. So, in terms of paleolithic man: does no religion mean no survival, or just no history? We don’t have the death records and burials of every paleolithic society.
3. The capacity for language and religion does not imply the behavior of language or religion. My legs give me the capacity to dance, but I don’t.
4. I’m sure our brains have evolved with language and religion, but “evolved with” is not the same as “can’t survive without.”
“There is no evidence that a society survived into the historical record without religion.”
Has there, truly, never been an atheist society? No town or village?
Maybe that’s the issue: define “society” and “religion.”
Also, none of this has anything to say about the future, or possibilities.
For example: no society survived without sex.
Does that mean no society without sex can survive?
We actually have the technology now such that people could reproduce without sex.
Is it impossible?
I wouldn’t go around saying that history shows us that societies without religion don’t survive. There are plenty of atheists, they seem totally functional, there are many societies with growing and growing atheist demographics. I’m not convinced that, at some point, their atheism will doom their society to failure because paleolithic people were buried.
It’s awful close to an argument that “Nothing new ever happens.” If you’re willing to make “society” sufficiently small enough, I bet it already has.
“The capacity for language and religion does not imply the behavior of language or religion. My legs give me the capacity to dance, but I don’t.”
Are you Tulpa?
Are you a creationist? I’m certainly not certain you understand evolution.
I’ve already cited this quote–along with an abstract of Dunbar’s study:
“His study indicates that only after the speciation event is the neocortex large enough to process complex social phenomena such as language and religion. The study is based on a regression analysis of neocortex size plotted against a number of social behaviors of living and extinct hominids.[10]”
Yes, the understanding is that the benefits of language and religion led to people being born with a larger and larger neocortex–and they benefited from those things. Yes, the use of language and religion was necessary in order for there to be benefits. Those things, religion and language, conferred advantages that competitors lacked. Those who could enjoy the advantages proliferated.
Yes, we can infer use from the predominance of opposable thumbs. Their usefulness is why we evolved opposable thumbs. We evolved opposable thumbs because they were put to good use.
If you’re not Tulpa, you and Tulpa should go bowling.
I took religion to be search for purpose in life. I mean if you want to define religion around controlling people’s behavior through a belief in moral and ethical rules than you can drop libertarianism into the same bucket.
Um wut?
Social media encourages incredibly bad, superficial, and shallow behavior. If your circle of friends on the internet disapproves of your behavior, you just find a new circle that accepts it.
How is that different from church?
It’s like church at the speed of light.
30 years ago, we would have called it being a “drifter”; someone who wears out their welcome in one town could just move on, but the new town would view him with suspicion.
It’s a lot easier to be a drifter now.
Oh, and I get what you’re saying about church, but how many churches host websites glorifying drunken 3am bitch slapping, hair pulling, and food fights at Denny’s?
If you aren’t familiar, please visit worldstarhiphop.com.
News report of firefight in Vietnam in 1970
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89_3DgW_7mg
Pretty much the whole war in a five minute story.
A small group was dropped off in the middle of the jungle for a search and destroy mission. They didn’t find much. When they were heading back, they got ambushed. 1 American was wounded. No enemy dead recovered.
If you haven’t read it, get and read the book “Matterhorn” by Karl Marlantes
it looks chunky but it reads very fast.
Collards simmering on stove.
Wifey makes a soup with those weeds named ‘caldo verde’. Good stuff.
Bacon? Neck bones? Salt pork? Which part of the magical beast did she put in it?
Not sure you’re replying to me or JB, Suthen, but if I assume me, there’s potatoes and something, something, and something. Not sure if there’s pork or what meat. Have to ask.
I was asking Almighty what his wife put in the collards. I am partial to mustard greens myself, but if there is enough suidae present I will eat collards. Also, cornbread.
If I have been half clever or entertaining today I think that is about gone. I fell off of the wagon a couple of hours ago and I think I am now drunk.
High five.
First beer for me. Tri tip in the water bath. Time for a swim.
I’m considering breaking open a bottle of Woodford Reserve Ive had for a few weeks.
I generally don’t drink liquor because it’s too easy to cross the line. Special occasions, sure. I fully plan on ruining a certain libertarian wedding next month.
I did come across a 24 pack of Stone Original IPA at Costco. Haven’t had it in a while. Also a plus: cans. I don’t want to look like an alcoholic to my neighbors on trash day.
I usually don’t drink liquor either and I almost never drink at home. Just thinking about sipping a small one and maybe go out for tacos and brews after a shower. It’s craft week in Ohio this week so seems almost manditory.
Ended up going with some already opened BlackBerry moonshine and Sprite zero. Only had one can of the zero so going to have to go to next step soon.
if only someone had told me about this “line” thing, i’d have fewer scars, and more memories.
*i find i am a very good drinker as long as i have beer in between my whiskey consumption. When i have made the mistake of “just drinking whiskey” all night, the night tends to end poorly.
Yeah, i used to drink a lot of liquor. Also woke up outside not remembering how I got there too many times.
Also a plus: cans. I don’t want to look like an alcoholic to my neighbors on trash day.
Drink wine. You won’t go through as many cans. Also, the neighbors will think you’re classier.
Ted, can your trash compactor crush wine bottles?
Sauted onion, shallot, garlic in bacon grease along with 3 pieces of the crispy bacon chopped up. Added the wilted down the greens adding red pepper flakes, s&p. Added chicken stock and simmered covered 45 minutes until tender. Finished with apple cider vinegar at the end. Just ate it with some cornbread and was delish.
Oh, also used a little roasted garlic and paprika spice blend that we put on most all veggies.
I cooked the collards, wife made the cornbread which seemed to be missing something. Maybe could have used more sugar. I like mine kind of sweet.
Ah, sorry. Collards are wonderful in caldo verde. I just stopped drinking beer, still drinking, just mostly vodka/gin. Lost 2 kilos in a week.
“lost 2 Kilos in a week”
So liquor making you forgetful huh
That O’Neil piece is the shit. Probably the only sane/sober thing i’ve read about Obama since he’s left office.
Yeah, I bookmarked it.
I don’t thing it’s going to go over very well when I decide to use it.
I might post that as a reply for the next time someone posts a “I miss Obama, he was sooooooo smart/wise/kind/awesome” post.
You’re basically telling them that they need therapy.
I dont think he would be wrong.
Do you think it might work?
Sure it will, if your policy is the same as mine:
I don’t ever unfriend people. I bait them into unfriending me.
Oh, I share a policy of never unfriending people. I’ve got one that will sometimes share the most insipid and asinine Democrat and Regressive crap, but I don’t unfriend her for it. Now, I wouldn’t say I try to get anyone to unfriend me, but I’m not afraid of posting and sharing stuff that I’m sure would trigger them if they ever actually read or watched any of it. If they want to be so petty as to unfriend me because I have a different political opinion, that’ll be on them.
It happens.
One of my close friends (I went to HS and College with her) posted some shit about how women’s uteruses are more regulated than guns. In California.
I asked her if she had to lock her uterus in the trunk if she drove by a school or daycare. Unfriended.
15 years of history, gone. Her problem, not mine. I feel sorry for her.
It’s amazing how petty some people can be over politics. It’s like a religion to many people. If you insult or speak badly about their favorite politicians it’s like you just cursed their god or made an attack on their religion.
Morning links? It’s afternoon!
Don’t worry. ZARDOZ will have links for us brutal this evening.
I think we all agree it is Trump’s fault. This is just another in a long line of impeachable offenses committed by the man who makes Hitler look like a warm and kind man committed to Democracy.
*Brutals, stupid autocorrect.
(probably going to end up re-posting this in the afternoon/evening/nighttime links when they go up…)
My mother lives in Weston, Florida, which is home to a pretty large Venezuelan ex-pat community. Was heading to help her with something and drove past a pretty good-sized protest by the Venezuelan ex-pat community. Plenty of “Venezuela Si Maduro No” posters as well as “SOS Venezuela”, which has been their rallying cry (you see it all over the place; on the back windows of cars, in signs in Venezuelan restaurants, and the like).
When running into Mauro supporters here and there, I’ve often invited them to a meal, paid for by me, at a local Venezuelan restaurant if they told the ex-pats to their faces what they were saying online. For some reason I’ve had no takers.
They aren’t fans of Venezuelan cuisine, obviously.
Drag the fucking commie pieces of shit down there anyway.
My wife had a class few years ago with several Venezuelans. They were pretty much in agreement that they wanted to hang Chavez from a lamp post, gut him, and strew his entrails about for the vermin to feed upon.
Having talked to a couple down here, I’m pretty sure they think what happened to Mussolini would be to good for either Chavez or Maduro.
*too good. Damn tipoz.
No. The author of this ransomware wrote it to take advantage of the same vulnerability underlying an NSA exploit released by the Shadow Brokers. No one believes that the Shadow Brokers, widely assumed to be Russian intelligence, wrote some ransomware asking for $300.
I’m pretty sure that’s what everyone who reads the NYT/WaPo is currently being told
I know you’re joking but I looked at the WaPo writeup (which is passable) and god, the comments:
(Note: the WaPo piece also called the NHS “beloved”.)
Also a lot of freetards in the comments.
So stupid they aren’t even wrong.
My favorite (other than the Wikileaks ones you quote):
I think if the NSA wrote the protocol in question, it would have been a lot simpler.
FREE HEALTHCARE FREE FREE FREE BECAUSE IF YOU PAY FOR IT WITH TAXES IT MAGICALLY DOENST COST ANYTHING!!!!! FRICKING TEATHUGLIKKKANS READ A BOOK.
Wait, if that’s the case, why do they constantly go on about how we spend more on military than the next 5 countries combined? Isn’t that military free?
What like, Her Highness needs to be compensated for all the lost opportunity for graft?
It’s because the NHS doesn’t have enough funding, and hasn’t for awhile.
/prog
Single-payer legal care.
Because no lawyer does anything worth more than minimum wage.
today’s obscure history lesson
When the Allies were preparing a victory parade for the liberation of Paris, the consensus was that a French unit should be first, because feels. The problem was at the time most French units were about 40% Africans from French colonies. And since this was back when racism meant a bit more than a white guy wearing a sombrero on May 5th, there was a crisis. They ended up taking a French unit with the most whites and then replacing the non-whites with white soldiers from other units.
It’s good to remember the the good guys were not saints.
They tried this with Gilmore’s avatar. There were no survivors.
today’s obscure language trivia
In medieval Cairo, the rule was that if you weren’t in the city by sunset, you had to sleep outside the gates, which sucked because of the weather. The only exception was for people bringing koosah (zucchini) to market because it zucchini spoils quickly. See if you guess what happened next.
Well, soon enough traders started bribing the guards to let them in after sunset. A trader would bring his cart with the load under a cloth. He’d tell the guard he had zucchini. When the guard peeked under the cloth, he’d see onions or whatever and a small pile of money. The guard would pocket the money and yell “it’s zucchini, open the gate”.
Today the word for zucchini in Egyptian Arabic means a shady situation or something fishy going on.
Foreign types with the koosah pipes say way-oh way-oh, way-oh way oh
Nobel Laureate in physics explains why he thinks global warming is a hoax
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXxHfb66ZgM
My favorite part:
from 1880 to 2013, the world population increased from 1.5 billion to 7 billion.
for the same period, the average global temperature increased from 288K to 288.8K.
So if people are causing global warming, how is it that such a huge increase in human activity caused such a small increase in temperature?
Hopefully this hasn’t been posted yet. Your Saturday nut punch:
State could start taxing Netflix, Spotify and other streaming services.
http://www.al.com/business/index.ssf/2017/03/state_could_start_taxing_netfl.html
Hell, when the 2ieme Blindee was formed in Algeria, a lot of its units had to be reformed to be sufficiently “white” – which meant that the Free French who came back to help liberate France were substantially former Vichy, because the actual hard core there-from-the-beginning guys were mostly colonials.
Vulnerability Management Saturday
The ransomware of the moment…am I screwed?
At this point in time, just about every scanner can detect if your systems are vulnerable to MS17-010. But, maybe you didn’t pay the money for one.
Metasploit’s auxilary/scanner/smb/smb_ms17_010 module will find vulnerable hosts, as will this guy’s Python port of that module.
So,
So, what?
I don’t even know. Sad, really.
The only network TV show with a sympathetic conservative/libertarian character has been cancelled.
https://heatst.com/culture-wars/abc-besieged-by-boycott-calls-as-uproar-intensifies-over-cancellation-of-conservative-tim-allens-hit-show/
the best part
***
ABC came under fire last year for its failed sitcom The Real O’Neals which cruelly mocked Irish Catholics. The hopelessly homophobic fictional Irish Catholic family in the sitcom had a statue of the Blessed Virgin above their toilet and made Jesus-shaped pancakes for breakfast. The executive producer of The Real O’Neals, Dan Savage, on whose life the sitcom was based, is known for his obscene sex advice column, and for gaming Google search results on conservative Christian Senator Rick Santorum so that the first search result for “Santorum” was a page defining the Senator’s name as “a frothy mixture of lubricant and fecal matter as an occasional byproduct of anal sex.” Savage also famously once tried to sicken conservative activist Gary Bauer by licking the door handle to his motel room.
ABC also recently was fiercely criticized for mocking police and Middle America with its March gay rights miniseries When We Rise, which appeared to glorify the firebombing of police cars and overwhelmingly portrayed white, straight characters as ignorant, hateful rubes.
Unlike The Last Man Standing, When We Rise was a catastrophic ratings bomb.
***
People still watch network TV?
Old people mainly. Ditto for cable news, which explains why all the commercials are for medicine and retirement planning.
8 million viewers is great by today’s standards. There’s no way this was canceled for ratings.