Well the Penguins righted the ship last night (sort of). The Celtics closed out the Bullets (finally). And Sharapova won her first match at a major after her return from her doping suspension (um, ok). But this is not the day to dwell on sports news. Oh nosiree! There’s enough craziness out there in the rest of the world that needs a mention.
So without further ado I give you…the links!
“Botched robbery victim” Seth Rich
Investigator believes he may have the tie in between Wikileaks and the DNC. Unfortunately, the local cops already said his death was a botched robbery attempt. Which would definitely explain why they or the FBI have his laptop.
If you want to know what equal protection under the law looks like, then look elsewhere. Because you sure as shit ain’t gonna find it by clicking through this link.
The left-media suicide pact explained pretty succinctly.
Louisiana House passes bill that would allow locals to decide whether or not to take down monuments. Leftists outraged. Look, this is a contentious topic. And I’d like to see where you guys fall on it. So please discuss this in the comments. I have my own feelings on it. I’d like to see how they jibe with those of the the rest of you.
Libertarian Space Explorer
Derpa derpa derp. Da tum ta tidally derp. (I was at a loss how to properly introduce this steaming nugget.)
And if you thought that was derpy….baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet. (TW; Salon doing what they do best: being retarded as shit by thinking they’re hammering libertarianism.)
Sometimes the best solution is: do nothing.
Have a great day, friends.
A WaPo story picked up by my local rag about a bloated whale carcass washing up on shore in Indonesia. The entire thing is just terrible, but I thought the worst part was the author doing his best to blame global warming…
Turns out that it says absolutely nothing about global warming:
No whale ever died before the global warmenings. This is known.
What are you, a science denier?
Nearly all large whale species have larger populations now than they did 100 years ago due to the spread of electricity making whale oil use for lamps obsolete. Whales should be happy for global warming.
I really wish Whale Wars was still on. I loved seeing the Japanese put the wood to those hippies.
WaPo: Cetacea dies in Calignosity
THE WARMENING CHANGED THEYS MIGRATION ROUTEZ!
Sometimes when I listen to NPR (drink), I have to laugh about the tortured lengths some people will go through to inject global warming innuendo into a topic. Relevant: Thoreau!
I can’t get thru the uptalk and vocal fry anymore. The female reporters are horrible.
I like vocal fry with spicy ketchup.
Do they train people to talk like that?
Okay, I know what uptalk is but I didn’t know what vocal fry was so I Googled it and the first result was this. Now I still don’t know what vocal fry is and the first paragraph alone made my brain bleed.
Just think of George Lucas giving an interview. Note his voice as it goes in and out of full strength, as though his vocal cords can’t take the strain of sustaining his full voice. That’s vocal fry.
There’s nothing it can’t do!
Ummm…I’m neither and I think I have a pretty good life. And my bills are paid.
And that’s only the second paragraph. Sloopy, you done hit derp pay-dirt with that one!
Thank Brett L. He fed me that smorgasbord of retardation.
Pay-derp.
As soon as I hit the Post Comment button, I regretted not going that route.
My small company alone has plenty of work, and a need to hire. Of course, we need STEM majors, so the people majoring in grievance studies are out of luck.
You work?
In fact….
DON’T ANY OF YOU HAVE TO BE SOMEWHERE?
Maybe for us work is keeping an eye on you dangerous anti government types.
SHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
I do…my desk. Where I have a computer that I am using to goof off and comment here.
It used to be that college was for men to acquire skills. Now it is a place for women to learn the rules and how to enforce them.
– the Z-Man
We hire too – Science and / or Business related majors.
There is not enough work which is why many advanced countries get a whole lot of immigrants to fill jobs. There are to many doctors, engineers, plumbers, electricians, machinists and whatnot. All very qualified and out of work. Something needs to be done.
Holly crap there is not one paragraph in the article that is not full of stupid. You would think that accidentally they would write something decent.
There are a couple where he threatens to make sense, then quickly returns to full-fledged stupid. Like this one:
Right. I think that’s my favorite because it neatly dodges the Labor Theory of Value fallacy and falls directly into the Single Earner/Single Job fallacy.
I pay a 16 year old to mow my lawn. He mows my lawn once a week for $25 per month, his work ethic is atrocious. But luckily for him, my lawn mowing standards are rather low given the price I pay. I don’t even have the decency to give him enough money to pay a mortgage and raise five children on his own, so why does he work? To prove what a good worker he is? (even though I know he doesn’t give a fuck about work ethic)
This author is retarded. What part of mutual benefit is so hard to understand?
Slaver! You are like, literally Hitler.
If you understand that the problem they want to solve has nothing to do with what they pretend it is, then it makes sense. These are people that want a system where they are taken care of from cradle to grave, at other people’s expense, while they do nothing productive.
“Holly crap” worst female adult film star ever.
Two Girls One Crap?
Her study of the shipping industry, “Tramp Steamer”?
Rule 34 says someone here is googling her right now.
That’s a load of shit!
*narrows gaze*
Maybe she’s German. I hear they are into that sort of thing.
Looking at the people of my acquaintance who are not in work, including retirees and teen-agers, not having a job doesn’t seem to do a good job of increasing human happiness or flourishing. Everybody seems to be happier and do better when they have something they do for society on a regular basis.
For retirees or teen-agers this may take the form of church service or other volunteer work, rather than paid employment. But those who retire and just leave the world to work on their yards or whatever just seem aimless, and teen-agers who think summers are for playing video games are simply pitiful.
Regular working-age people without a job, in my experience, are almost universally despicable. Even if it’s for a legitimate injury, there’s something about being home all the time that turns you into an asshole.
My brother in law once said while observing the news years ago (well before 9/11) about the Middle-East: Those people need to go to work. They have too much time on their hands protesting in their slippers.
Was he a fan of Voltaire? “History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.”
I’ll be honest with you lads, in a post-scarcity environment I would do absolutely nothing but indulge my own shallow interests with shameless disregard for society or the betterment of anyone but myself. The sole reason I do any type of paid labor is to exchange it for life’s necessities, and if I didn’t have to do that, I wouldn’t.
Yeah I would become even more of a drunk, visiting bars across the nation in my self-driving car with a sexbot in tow.
“Hey there LH, I was coming up behind you on the freeway there and noticed that that sexbot you were towing was dripping something. Uffda, a guy should probably get that checked out.”
that sexbot you were towing
He likes his sexbots on the portly side, Minnesoda Farm Girl style?
Axe handle wide across the ass and strong enough to haul in a cord of wood by herself. What isn’t to like about a good Norwegian gal from Northern Minnesoda?
So as they used to say at the other site, pretty explicit euphemism for masturbation?
I agree that the transition from here to a post-scarcity world is going to be interesting. I think that there will be some people who will just have to have a job. Like a border collie. They need something to do and sitting around the house is not it.
I like to think that I would be like a lab. Most of the time I would sit around the house sucking up to the magic man who brought home food. Sometime barking crazily at some dog way down the block to warn him not to come near my yard (aka posting here) and living for a few months every year when I’d go hunting. That would be the one thing that would justify to the magic man why he feeds me all year. I’d absolutely love these months.
I honestly think that I have some kind of mental illness that compels me to work. I try to enjoy vacation days but I can’t. I’m scheduled off tomorrow and two days next week for doctor appointments and the thought makes me ill. I’ve never been able to relax. When the kids were younger I would take them to the beach for a week each year and so long as they kept me busy I was fine but once the would wind down for the day I was miserable. I even hate the weekends.
Our old neighbor was very similar to you. We’d invite her and her husband up to the cabin for a weekend. She would be miserable unless we found something for her to do.
Her husband and I were fine sitting on the deck or toodling around on the pontoon doing nothing (well, maybe drinking beer) while our combined kids were swimming or goofing off. She couldn’t handle it though.
I finally started giving her chores around the cabin (she put down new linoleum tiles one weekend) and she loved it.
I hate to say it, but I’m a little bit that way as well. My favorite part of going to the cabin was working on projects. Splitting wood, clearing scrub, hauling rock…
I had a cup holder on the tractor for my beer, though!
You know the jobs they give disgraced teachers hoping they’ll quit so the system doesn’t have to fire them? That’s pretty much the job I have. Nowhere near as bad, of course: I have pretty generous internet privileges. They’re not trying to get me to quit. But the actual work I do relative to the four hours a day I spend here is asinine. Which is beside the point, since my real function is simply being present in case my coworker takes a day off or doesn’t make it in. I am a human redundancy system.
So you can imagine the sort of free time I have on my hands when I’m not taking classes. I normally spend that time doing manual labor, jacking up and pouring concrete, digging trenches, demolishing store interiors, framing. But since that’s dried up in the last couple months, I’m down to all that shallow self-indulgence and shameless disregard for society… and it gets old mighty fucking quick.
doing manual labor, jacking up and pouring concrete, digging trenches, demolishing store interiors, framing.
PAY ATTENTION EVERYONE!
These are the proper way to do euphemisms.
If a pot of gold lands in my lap, rest assured that I won’t just sit in a dark room playing video games the rest of my life. But I sure as shit won’t be serving customers or bowing to an employer. Fuuuuuuuuck that. Though I would hard pressed not to want to produce something of value to increase my wealth further. I guess I’d be a farmer and landowner.
Don’t sell stupid entry level jobs short. If you don’t need them to provide your actual income they can be sort of fun.
Back in the day, I’d always pick up extra shifts of temp work. The nice thing about them was that if someone gave you shit, you could just drop your name tag on the floor tell whoever it was (jackass manager or jerk customer) to go fuck themselves and walk out the door. There is a lot of satisfaction in your life when you do that.
My old plan was to work as a video store clerk after I retired for something to do. Unfortunately NetFlix fucked that plan up. Still I will do something just for fun. But I’d be willing to drop it in a second if anyone hassled me.
I’m going to go work at the hardware store. It’s one of my favorite places in the world.
About 10 years ago I got a job in a record store* for some extra Christmas cash. I was the oldest one there by at least 10 years. There was a serious culture clash between myself and every single one of the rest of the staff. Not to mention I had forgotten how much I hate retail. About 8 days in I had enough and just walked. None of them were surprised.
*No. There wasn’t a record in sight. All CD’s. But they will always be “record stores” to me. Now get off my lawn!
I’m gonna be a liftie or some shit at a ski resort.
My dad retires July 1. He’s already lining up his usher’s job at Tropicana Field.
I think I agree if we’re talking about the idea that people are most motivated when they have an obligation to someone else, or expectations to meet. It’s the same reason that the best way to train for a marathon is to sign up for a marathon. It seems like, for most people, putting themselves in a position where they’re accountable to others is strong motivation.
Everybody seems to be happier and do better when they have something they do for society on a regular basis.
Er, wut?
Society can go screw – I will do what I need to provide for me and mine – and anything else I do for church, the VFW, etc, etc, is none of the business of “society”.
OTOH, if this writer ceased to have gainful employment, I think everyone else would be happier and do better.
“Haven’t the doomsayers, those damn Malthusians, always been proved wrong by rising productivity, new fields of enterprise, new economic opportunities?”
I think he means Luddites
You should correct him in the comments on his story.
Oh, that’s right. They don’t have comments open on places like that. Because they’d get mocked mercilessly by people with more than two brain cells.
They do have comments though. I did not go through them.
Where? A couple of us looked and couldn’t find them.
Lower left a rectangle saying How should work change? with some 587 responses
Don’t do it!
Seems the comments are old, but there is some good ones:
Look at that there. A Marxist wanting to used forced labor. Ha!
living in luxury it seems
Would a true Marxist have it any other way?
Holy typos batman *makes more coffee*
Bring back the treadmill, amirite? The only mistake those Brits made when sending poor folks to the treadmill is they weren’t generating energy from it!
“National service would help a lot, and even some crazy scheme to let prisoners (and students) pedal an hour a day to generate energy”
The Black Mirror is strong in this one.
Freudian slip — he is a closet lover of Julian Simon’s work but can’t admit it to his prog friends.
Yeah, I’m not as rich as I would like to be, but being in the top 5-10% (or wherever I am) is not a bad place. House, two cars, some property up north, and some money socked away in stocks. Not bad for a lazy bum like me.
I mean, there’s a massive glut of pig ignorant illiterates across the globe living subsistence existences pulling what they can out of the land, which is the natural condition for humans. The unprecedented demand for programmers and statisticians doesn’t really mean shit to an African tribesman with no written language. But that’s not really what they’re talking about. And the tribesman still has plenty of work keeping himself alive from one day to the next. If only we were all so lucky to be gainfully employed…
In a post scarcity (devleoped) world, the African tribesman has every incentive to move to Europe or North America to make tens times the living with lifting a finger to do it. I can’t blame them, the math is pretty simple. But it’s going to be a huge problem once developed countries are run by third worlders and the open borders crowd will be thoroughly out of vogue, but probably not until it’s too late.
*without lifting a finger
James Livingston is professor of history at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
I always trust professors from state schools to tell me about real work.
I’m unclear on how learning extensively about things that happened in the past qualifies someone to write as a non-expert on that assortment of topics with any more authority than a 3rd grader.
“I was writing for Socialist Revolution, In These Times, democracy, Marxist Perspectives, and Cineaste on critical realignments”
This sounds crucial.
Derpetologist call your office.
Critical, even.
Its too bad he was never required to take a rhetoric class. I think that is the “r” most sorely missed from American education.
Reading his bio made me think this:
https://youtu.be/fBrhxF7fkgg
Imagine if this clown got his hands on the levers of power and actually tried to implement his ideas.
I’m certain that even he’d realize that some people would still have to work. Crops don’t grow by themselves and someone has to deliver those beans to the coffee houses where all the hipsters will be whiling away their time. Let’s even suppose he somehow talks these people into continuing to work.
The problem with his whole scheme would be that the drones who simply sit around consuming the goods and services wouldn’t have the decency to simply sit around and quietly thank their lucky stars that they get to suck on the teat of society. No, within a few weeks, they’d all be writing manifestos about how they should get MOAR. Being limited to just a couple latte’s at the coffee house is not fair. They should get as many as they want.
Those poor jerks you slickered into continuing to work are going to look around at some point and say, “fuck this”.
This reminds me of walking through downtown Portland with an acid-tongued friend a few years ago. Some able-bodied young panhandler asks for money and my buddy says, “Why can’t you work? You look like you’re in ok shape and not too crazy. Go get a job.” Reply: “Why?!? So I can be a SLAVE like you!??”
Just increase taxes on “the rich” and all will be ok though.
Pay no mind to that $20T of govt debt. We can afford to subsidize people who don’t want to work.
Shit no need to even raise taxes. Just print more money.
He has that covered:
We already have the highest corporate income tax in the free world! Yes, let’s just drive every goddamn medium-large company out of the country. That’ll work wonders for the fiscal situation.
I wonder how many people who insist we have this “moral deficit” realize just how much is spent on social welfare payments in this country?
He saw you coming:
Well, shit, if I could just declare that inconvenient truths don’t even exist, then my worldview could be a lot simpler, too!
I’m praying that he attempts to prove gravity doesn’t exist.
Something like this.
Tell that to Burger King, Medtronic, and Purina. (Plus more)
Also, raising the SS cap is not a solution. The returns from doubling it diminish rapidly. The first doubling nets you something like $200 billion more. The second doubling nets you something like $70 billion. Then, removing the cap entirely at that point wouldn’t net more than $10 billion. That’s $300 billion more with generous rounding, and supposing everybody just takes it on the nose and there are no negative economic consequences whatsoever.
We have a deficit in excess of $1 trillion. You want to raise taxes on people who are already net taxpayers to not really close the deficit so you can slightly extend the time you can pay for people who are net beneficiaries. Brilliant plan.
The funny thing about this strategy is that it fucks the very people they are on the other hand purporting to help. It’s an ouroboros; welfare-inflation-welfare-inflation-welfare-inflation ad infinitum.
I was walking around downtown Asheville and this hippy literally took a toke off his pipe and then asked me for cash. I said “weed is a luxury item. You mighht as well be driving a Porsche and asking me for money”
“Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”
I’ve had them talking on their cell phones and wearing a gold watch asking me for money. “Ok, $5 for the watch.”
Oh, and I firsted the hell out of these links
I wouldn’t expect any different from the best third baseman of all time.
“To have his [Mike Schmidt’s] body, I’d trade him mine and my wife’s, and I’d throw in some cash.” –Pete Rose
2 1/2 hours later and no one has “misread” this comment yet? I am disappoint. Many sadz
How can I misread something I didn’t try to read?
Fair enough
My rectum hasn’t recovered enough to comment on this yet, give a break!
I thought that was what the bat was for.
28) I’ve visited a couple zoos in the past year. It struck me at one point that as far as animals go, humans are really weird-looking creatures. I mean, I like an attractive female human as much as anybody, but objectively speaking, I think any aliens that come to Earth will not see pulchritude as one of our advantages.
In fact, primates in general are kind of awkward looking, and making us hairless and upright doesn’t help. Most of the really beautiful animals, I think, are felines or birds. Tigers, panthers, cheetahs—those guys are sleek and streamlined. And birds get all the colors, plumage, elegance in flight, plus they often have lovely songs. Giraffes have a weird shape but probably the best markings. Sharks are cool-looking. Lots of insects are really gorgeous. As for us, we’re going to have to rely on our sparkling personalities in the galactic zoo, because our looks just aren’t going to do it.
I do not recommend trying to bang a panther
This reminds me of a short story by Charles Bukowski about a cat lady who really, really took things too far.
yeah, I think Bukowski had a little too much port before he wrote the tiger sex story. But hey, Bukowski was a drunk and insane hobo who somehow conned the world into believing he was a poet, so a little weirdness is to be expected.
Yeah, I know he’s a pretty good read, but god who’d want to be such an asshole?
personal experience teaches us many important things
What about cougars?
I dunno – a good set of hips/legs goes a long way.
It doesn’t really matter what we look like because we’re smart enough to kill the fuck out of pretty much every other living thing on earth. Most of the adaptations of the more aesthetic animals have something to do with camouflage or defense. Nothing’s gonna come and fuck with the ugly hairless chimps with high explosives.
No doubt. It strikes me that many of the most talented creatures on earth are the weirdest looking–octopi, elephants.
+1 Acme products.
Its okay, we have several other brony/otherkins around. You can be open about your dream of consensual sexual encounters with animals here.
You’re going to love my story about an erotic shark encounter.
We already have the picture.
Once thing I consider an engineering flaw of not just the human body, but most animals on Earth is the concept of a head. Why put so many eggs in that one basket? If you had sensory organs, central nervous system and ingestion more decentralized wouldn’t that make the whole system more robust and resilient? As it stands now, decapitation is relatively simple and completely unrecoverable. Why did we evolve like that?
The reduced distance between sensory organs and data processing permitted better reaction times. A delay in nerve transmissions can be fatal, and thus resulting in removal from the gene pool. Armoring up the weak spot was a more resilient answer. Few natural threats can attain a decapitation strike. And those that can are capable of doing mortal injury upon any part of the body they hit.
There is also the consideration of the shock absorbtion that being on a stacking swivel gives to protect the brain. Regular jarring causes brain damage. Even walking and running would be hard on the brain, were it in a more centralized location.
Weren’t the moties in that Niven/Pournelle book built with redundant brains?
Also, thank G-d for big perky tits. That is all.
Look, this is a contentious topic. And I’d like to see where you guys fall on it. So please discuss this in the comments.
It’s public property. There should probably be some public process for adding and subtracting decorations to it. And by that I mean, something more democratic than a tiny handful of griefers throwing temper tantrums until the local lords do their bidding. If you disagree with the majority of people in your area about any particular pissant local issue, you can always move.
SLD: there shouldn’t be any public property or public monuments – generous patrons could purchase land and erect and destroy whatever statues or monuments they like.
Eh, I’m OK with the process as is. I really don’t think you want a referendum on every modification made to a public park or another local government committee. This is what local elections are for.
No public monuments.
I dunno. I enjoy the National monuments. I guess I fall on leaving it up to elected officials. Want someone built or town down? Vote for people who will make it happen.
Best place to find Bigfoot is Olympic National Park
STEVE SMITH KNOW ALL ABOUT INTRUSION
STEVE SMITH PREFER BRISK AIR AFTER SWEATY RAPE. ALSO SEATTLE HIPPIES NO PUT UP HARD FIGHT!
STEVE SMITH LIKE LOTS OF “HUMAN INTRUSION”, IF YOU KNOW WHAT STEVE AM SAYING.
STEVE LIKE TO EUPHEMIZE TOO.
Abortion Time Machine:
Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem: More Abortions Would Stop Global Warming
…because women are the major agricultural workers in the world, and also the carriers of water and the feeders of families and so on, it’s a disproportionate burden.
[citation needed]
Well, in the model of modern civilization known as sub-Saharan Africa….
“I am a man, if you need me, you can find me sitting under that tree over there.”
women are the major agricultural workers in the world
Um, yeah, nah.
“for over the 500 years of patriarchy”
Only 500?
I mean 500 out of 6000 aint bad
Yeah see i thought things had been getting better for women. Looks like we need to go back to treating them like property.
If we had not been systematically forcing women to have children they don’t want or can’t care for over
Some women – scratch that- I bet the majority of women, probably WANT to have children at some point in their lives. *gasp!*
Tags! How do they work here??
i = em
b = strong
Blame W3C
Technically, the W3C is no longer on the “get rid of i and b” bandwagon. That ship sailed long ago (thankfully). But not everybody got the memo repealing the previous memo.
I’m having trouble following this key…
The italics tag is “em” between greater than and less than symbols instead of “i” between greater than and less than symbols; the bold tag is “strong” between greater than and less than symbols instead of “b” between greater than and less than symbols. It’s a WordPress thing, whereas Reason accepted “i” and “b” tags, which has caused some confusion for people who were accustomed to the old tags. The Worldwide Web Consortium had previously attempted to deprecate “i” and “b” tags in favor of “em” and “strong” so a lot of web platforms followed that convention.
I assumed you probably tried to use one of those two tags and it didn’t work.
Oh, weird! Thanks for you help!!
Or install Monocle and then you can use the provided buttons
I’m on a work computer so I can’t install much of anything…
I may be way off, but I don’t think you are are really installing a program, rather adding a script to your browser. I was able to do it on my work PC in Firefox, and IT has us locked down fairly tight. You might be able to.
I’m scared to do this, who knows what IT is tracking.
o.o
Most big employers not only block browser configurations but actively track who even tries to make changes, and then bring down the hammer on these people…
Dear Gloria,
Its not too late to start with you.
Sincerely,
Brett
What a maroon.
Ah yes, Gloria “Makes it up as she goes along” Steinem. More Abortions Would Stop Global Warming…..also we need more third world migrants because the population in [insert developed country] is too low!
Right, China’s One Child Policy totally led to climate utopia. how did we miss that???
Also, doesn’t that last sentence read as if everything she knows about Africa was from some photos in National Geographic in 1988?
American University is blocking whites from cafe designated as ‘sanctuary’ for nonwhites
::ticks off another red flag::
Reinforces notion that my daughter is going to make an extremely defensible case to me if I help subsidise university for her in 15 years. I’m not so keen on having my daughter hang around crybaby-racists.
Don’t do it! I maintain that kids should be expected to pay for their own college. Everyone I know who had to pay their own way took it very seriously and most everyone that had their parents pay for it did not. I think if you want to help the kiddo then the best of both worlds is to expect them to pay their own way, make them get the loans, and then if they get good grades, get a good job, and make some payments on time for their loans, THEN you can pay them off.
I’m keen on a partial subsidy if the work ethic is there, and there is a real business case in the chosen path. I’ve long maintained that I won’t put a red cent towards the sort of mindless “continuation of high school” choice process. If my daughter wants to go to business school, I probably won’t put forward a penny for that and would rather allocate the monies as a zero interest business startup loan.
I think a lot is going to happen with higher education in 15 years too, some of these institutions are self destructing.
The trajectory for higher education is not looking good. The value of the degree is going into the gutter. Keep your eyes peeled for alternative methods of higher education, because they will keep popping up, and will become more viable. Particularly because they are *not* accredited.
https://fee.org/articles/the-ugly-truth-about-college-accreditation/
I firmly agree with this. I paid my own way and took school deadly serious. Around 70% of my friends that had parents paying didn’t even finish college.
I did both. I went to Miami of Ohio on Dad’s dime for a year and a half of advanced drinking studies, with a minor in embarrassing places/states to wake up. Then dropped out (I believe my final semester was straight incompletes) and worked and eventually started a business. Around age 30 I got motivated, went back to school while running my business and graduated Summa (4.0) in 2 years with BAs in both History and Philosophy, Then Law School.
Must just be coincidence that when someone else paid I was a worthless bum and when I paid I put in effort.
Meh. The only difference would have been that I would have had to start working to support my lifestyle earlier. If I had the courage to sell drugs in college, I would never have got on the straight and narrow.
Hey Mr Tally-man, tally me banana….
Racist!
How could something like that possibly stand up to a lawsuit?
Leftist judges advancing an agenda?
Because equality was never the goal and egalitarianism is a delusion.
These racists should be punished without the chance for a peel.
Can we not produce better puns than this?
Indeed. Hopefully our efforts to improve the situation will bear fruit.
A bunch, but not today.
What are you, yellow?
It’s a slippery slope.
If they ever had a chance of getting my alumni money in the past (they did not), this just put them over top to a big ol’ “FUCK no!”
Yeah there is no reason for whites to sense that they’re being systemically discriminated against in the very societies they built.
No link on the breaking Trump story?
Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador
At this point they should probably just child proof the entire government.
Contradicted by 4 folks in the meeting plus a few anonymous sources saying wapo isnt true
This was a hit job as the wapo article is hearsay and there is no way to prove or disprove which is why it is an effective hit job
The material so sensitive that they leaked to wapo? Come on
Where’s the link for the folks contradicting this?
See below.
Thank you kindly!
Dogs and cats getting along? What’s next?
So did tillerson, powell and the russian foreign minister spokesman
And an nbjc journo intel source said what was discussed was already known
So 4 on record and anonymous vs a few anonymous
This is the salient point.
For those who missed it, there was the line “country who’s name was withheld by the Washington Post” and “location withheld by the Washington Post”. The location was the most sensitive part, along with the cooperating nation. It was self-evidently stupid and evil for Trump to leak these tidbits. They are “code word” secret. Super-duper extra secret. Yet they were leaked to the WaPo by the same person who thought Trump was treasonous for bragging to the Ruskies about it.
I seem to recall from high school civics that the president is the diplomat-in-chief and the commander-in-chief, with wide latitude for determining our national strategy….
National Security Advisor McMaster denies Trump revealed highly classified information.
To which Trump replied, “Nuh-uh. I totally told them.”
They just can’t get their act together over there.
McMaster denied the part about Trump revealing the sensitive information about the source and origin of the intel. They are not denying that Trump shared some intel relating to danger from certain types of attacks. Which intel was also apparently known from other sources.
I have insufficient evidence to weigh in on the accuracy.
Given WaPo’s track record, I am not currently inclined to believe them without corroboration.
Which is why it is effective you can’t corroborate or disprove
Given WaPo’s track record, I don’t believe one goddamned word they print. When was the last time they broke “news” that did not rely on anonymous sources? They are a joke now.
The Russians could be cyber-creeping around in our electrical grid RIGHT NOW, and why aren’t you shitting your pants?!
Given the media’s track record as a whole when it comes to hysteria over Trump, how could anyone believe much of anything they report? Crikey, I’m no fan of Trump but when it’s become clear that they will report virtually anything, no matter how outlandish, to discredit him, then why would they have any credibility left at all?
The crying wolf problem is very real. The media has compromised themselves so much in regards to Trump is that when he does something truly undemocratic or unsavory, less people will be able to believe the story.
Anything bad that trump may do is sadly all for nothing because the conclusion will not be “maybe there’s a bit to much power in government”, but Trump is bad and next time we must get the right top man. Russia! Citizens United! Educayshun!
I seem to recall the Russians divulged intelligence on terrorism to the U.S. – when they warned about Tsarnaev.
Which the FBI promptly ignored. Because fuck it.
The left assured me that video this was a non-issue last year.
Issue not video… :Kicks rock:
Was the issue a non-video?
Was working so couldn’t watch the Pens game but my wife gave me outstanding play-by-play over Skype and I’m not gonna lie it was pretty sexy.
Why? Did she show you the five hole?
What’s the five hole? Is it like the Cadillac? Two in the front, three in the rear? Not to be confused with the mini-van, which is two in the front eight in the rear and requires both hands and some serious talent.
Yep, but he refused to bite. Went back door instead.
Well, great. Manon Rheume five hole is now in my search history. And I couldn’t even find a decent video.
She’s still playing? I went to see her in ATL a few times a decade or so back. Second tier hockey rocks!
She’s done. She actually lives in the area these days. Her kid is a goalie and headed to Notre Dame.
I doubt it, she’s got to be in her mid-40s by now.
Sports related euphemisms are my favorite.
Local peoples should have control over their local monuments. Personally, I’m not really okay with taking from people (taxes) to build giant statues (useless). But it definitely pisses me off when a bunch of protesters from California, New York City, or some other shithole go down to southern states to tell local peoples what statues they can have.
Especially when said statues are decades old and already long paid for. Also, the arrogance of thinking we know so much better than people who lived in the past! We’re totally woke, while those dudes were just straight-up racist….
I always ask how they think future humans which the luxury of hindsight will judge them.
Public monuments are just like public everything else, subject to the whims of the prevailing sentiment. I’ve got no skin in that game and don’t really care. I would prefer that the government get out of it altogether.
You know who else was really big on monuments?
The Pharaohs?
Some of them were small on monuments. *cough*tut*cough*
Thomas Jefferson?
No wait, he’s on a really big monument.
Rameses II?
The Sith?
Tito?
I give Tito Ortiz a lot of credit as one of the first guys who understood that his old fighting style was bullshit and he was gonna have to learn to wrassle if he wanted to have a career in UFC/MMA, but I don’t think he deserves a monument.
Wait what? He was a wrestler all along. He just added some shitty boxing to his lay and pray wrestling style. Ok to be fair he had some ok ground and pound, but anytime anyone defended against it at all he went back to lay and pray. One of the most obnoxious personalities in MMA history and one of the most boring fighters.
I guess you didn’t see the first UFC he was in (5 maybe? back when people had actual styles) where he was a TKD standup guy and got beat to shit by Royce Gracie. Including getting his shitty little ponytail pulled half out of his head.
You’re fucking with me aren’t you? It’s working. I’m asping out now on MMA history. I believe you are talking about Kimo Leopoldo who was a TKD fruitcake with a super long pony tail. Tito Ortiz was a high school wrestler, turned collegiate wrestler, turned MMA guy.
What are you talking about? Ortiz was a college all-American wrestler who debuted at UFC 13 against Wes Albritton.
Yeah. I conflated those guys.
Ozymandias?
Bender Bending Rodriguez?
Ideally, the government-owned Confederate monuments should be sold off to people like the Sons of Confederate Veterans for them to maintain and honor to their hearts’ content…and avoid moving the monument if possible unless it’s so central as to necessarily convey some kind of govt endorsement. In which case do some kind of relocation.
But these ideas are for consideration of the people in the affected area.
At some point, maybe a century from now, people are going to really regret taking down the confederate monuments. Go through any really old city and there’s tons of monuments built in celebration of stuff that nobody would condone today.
I hope I clarified that I didn’t want them taken down, just privatized.
Seattle has a god-damned Lenin statue. Once we get around to tearing that thing down, come talk to me about taking down a statue of a US President or some Civil War general.
Holy shit, I had never heard that. I officially don’t want to hear one more goddamned thing about statues of Confederate generals so long as a leftist city has a statue of that monster.
As somebody who lives in a ‘progressive’ city, I get a little annoyed at all this local control, and the current obsession with making every little thing reflect the politics of the moment. In Minneapolis the local progressives have become obsessed with renaming a lake. It was named Lake Calhoun, after former Vice President John Calhoun. But he apparently owned slaves so now we’re supposed to call it “Bde Maka Ska”, which was the name supposedly used by the Dakota Indians, who had violently and viciously conquered the area a century earlier…
Lake Calhoun is being renamed?! Wow, ok, didn’t see that coming. A quick search revealed that it’s just at the park service level for now, so who knows if it will actually become official once it gets to county, state, etc.
It probably won’t officially happen, but the douchebags have already added it to the signs.
I swear, some days I really wish we had less certainty about where our next meal was coming from. Free time = stupidity.
Discovered this gem on a prog friends derpbook feed last night. It’s pretty stupid, although I have limited expirience with the tabletop community so maybe UnCiv can chip in wiht his insight. I can say that despite what the author seems to think, that every gook group I have been a part of is very accepting, so long as you have the right geek cred.
http://www.themillions.com/2017/05/dragons-are-for-white-kids-with-money-on-the-friction-of-geekdom-and-race.html
Have you been in a lot of gook groups? Are they still very accepting even when you call them gooks?
Well, I’m shit until my coffee kicks in. Also all the gooks love me, long time.
So not to beaucoup?
I got maybe three paragraphs before I came to the conclusion that this person misses the point of escapism.
Their ideology has so damaged their perceptions that they can’t escape the self-torture.
That was my feel as well. I mean, does this guy understand, actually understand, grimdark, complaining that one of your opponents has ‘ss like’ paintings on their people/tanks is kinda the point.
Spare me your bullshit whining. Jesus, grow a spine.
Given that my group’s Dungeon Master is black, my official response is “fuck you.”
I can’t speak to the races of the people I last gamed with – it was done online by voice.
But from years past the common thread was – if you wanted to play and were not an asshole or otherwise a source of problems, you’d be welcome.
Exactly — he’s an awesome DM too. We joke about race, sure, but everyone gets shit. It’s fun. Our joke of the week last week was “what do you call an anti-social justice warrior? An adult.”
Our group makeup is a black DM (he has all the power! *gasp*), 2 white guys and 2 girls. As for the commenters saying that women are over-sexualized? One of the girls specifically made her character to be overly sexual – its part of her RP. Some women like sex *gasp!*
Please defy the stereotype. Tell me she isn’t a big girl who needs loving IRL.
No she’s actually very in shape. She’s a rock climber. Super hot, 20 years old.
Huh. D&D has come a long way, baby.
Yeah right, and she’s a huge Rush fan too.
and she’s a huge Rush fan too.
Oh…and then you lost me.
Pics or it didn’t happen.
Yep, gaming (table top or otherwise) has come a long way. It’s not just for nerds or out of shape basement dwellers (stereotype, I know).
And no, TLAH, she wouldn’t even know what Rush is. She’s not old enough to remember dial-up internet.
She’s entirely made up, right?
No, but unfortunately she’s dating a good friend of mine. So she’s off limits. 🙁
Okay. I believed all of this until you threw that TWO girls are involved. Too far, sir. Too far.
Both are also very attractive *gasp!*
/frantically digs into storage boxes for old D&D dice.
Both also have boyfriends (one of which is with the DM, so she lives with him)
🙁
Cast a charm spell on her.
That’s rude, bro, these people are my friends.
Once you black…
Once you black…
*rolls dice to determine what happens next*
My group his all the stereotypes 4 white guys and an Asian. Then again this is Utah so statistically it would be more remarkable if we had a black guy in the group
Viet Cong?
‘Charlie’s in the trees!’
I read it. My only takeaway is that “No speaka tha Taco” made me laugh
That also made me chuckle. It sounds like something me and me friends would have used as a catchphrase in college.
Ok one comment was good.
” What courage it must have taken to overcome these three incidents. No one ever has a awkward experience, you know, or is insulted, especially among hordes of teenage boys. If something happened, it’s a significant racist experience. Even personally defining!
Maybe that subtle feeling of no one liking you because of your skin color is really because all you talk about is racism – you’re THAT guy. And no one wants to discuss Space Marine tactics with some dude who says he’s discriminated against by a tabletop game because the characters are default painted as white. Whenever I read these articles I imagine the utter incomprehension that 99.999% of the world (everyone who didn’t get a humanities degree at an elite liberal arts college) would read it with.
Who cares if sci-fi is predominately white? It was invented by a bunch of white male geeks! If you think just it by having a natural set-point of “white perspective” is automatically discrimination, maybe you should stop culturally appropriating it?”
I didn’t bother w/ the comments but that one is pretty good, actually.
I saw that one too. Loved it! Someone down the comments responded to him along the lines of “honestly, why do you care?” followed by something, something, you’re probably white.
Dafuq? Half elves are boss, at least in 1ED
Yeah, I’m guessing that this dude is not as good a DM as he thinks and probably slips a lot of shit like this in his campaigns to test his friends reactions.
If this is true, what a horrible existence it must be, constantly torturing yourself and mistrusting your friends…
I still remember a game where I ended up taking over a tyrannical kingdom and becoming a tyrant, but was loved by the people because I was “Not as bad” as what had come before… and I’d brought stability by breaking the backs of the groups that would threaten the core regions. That particular character had his sights set high (researching means of apotheosis, etc.)
Anyway, I don’t recall a single game with any group where the plight of a generic NPC group mattered. If there were NPCs we knew in that group, or if there were PCs from that group, there was a chance we’d give a darn. But adventuring was about self-advancement through the application of violence.
Jeezus fucking Chrysler. These people are so goddamn overwrought and way too self-analytical. Calm the fuck down.
PWR BTTM’s Music is Being Pulled From Digital Music Services
Accusations = Convictions.
I don’t want to lecture somebody from my past on how to do their job. But Reporting the first two paragraphs as absolute fact without any concrete evidence is pretty irresponsible.
But TDS makes people do strange shit.
Oh maybe you want to just a little bit
Gah! I clicked on the link!
Things really have turned into sewage over there.
Except Trump kinda acknowledged that he did it. He tweeted that he wanted to share intel on ISIS terrorism for humanitarian reasons and to get them to step up their anti-isis game.
This is getting to be Robby’s new schtick when he wants to seem witty. It’s one degree removed from saying something like “Yeah I really love your music…….NOT!” and passing it off as wit.
It’s sad how far the other side has slipped. I know in my brain that it’s not the commentariat exodus that causes it, but I still feel a little responsible for their decline, nonetheless.
whiny, petulant
The projection, it’s off the charts.
Way to live uo to your handle.
less snarkily, my reaction is ‘meh’.
So the trolls and dupes have their own little support group over there now. How adorable!
After you all left, they started running the show. Hail Retaxes and DanO are prolific posters now and you can scarcely find yourself in a decent conversation before one of them or their socks come along and shit all over the place. That’s why I’m here now, I caught the late train to Glibtown.
I’m convinced DanO. is AddictionDerp. He’s deliberately trying to come off as somebody else, but the unhinged writing style and kneejerk defense of Team Blue gives it away.
There’s at 4 or 5 trolls for whom this is true, with only slight differences in their pathologies.
To be fair, it doesn’t talk all that much discipline to not say “Western Secular Caliphate”.
Lord, what a shit show. I’ve never had a lot of respect for Soave as a journalist, but he’s young and I feel bad blasting people in their 20s for saying or doing stupid shit, having been guilty of same. In his case, though, it’s just egregious. I mean, in summary: “WaPo says that someone said that Trump is a KGB spy, but then they said that it was actually legal anyway. Nevertheless, let’s just assume that the unsubstantiated claim of Trump doing something that is legally and ethically within his rights as POTUS is proof positive that he’s a threat to democracy, because I want to preen before my progressive acquaintances.”
Plus, the comments have really gone to hell.
I’m shocked they have more than 20 comments. But even with a mass-exodus of us, there will be new commenters trickling in. I think they’ll get back to their old numbers in a year or two. But the new commentariat won’t be libertarians.
Reporting from other reporting is lame and is 99% of all internet news.
Went to my lil sisters college graduation in Wooster OH. The president gave a speech where his first words were “I’m not going t get partisan” and then proceeded with every lefty talking point imaginable. It took every ounce of me to not throw my boxed water at his head
My wife went to college there
My son is learning bagpipes to try get a scholarship there. I hear their gender studies program is top notch
That’s a hell of a euphemism right there.
“not throw my boxed water at his head”
Never too late.
Too late now. I have a great arm but I can’t launch one 300 miles.
Bags of milk in Canada and boxes of water in Ohio? What a world.
Bag…of…milk? I just. I can’t. Do they put beer on plates?
The bag has a fake nipple attached.
I’m in.
Jay Inslee spoke at Wooster?
Amsterdam mayor opens brothel run by prostitutes: ‘It’s a whole new model’
Might be in Amsterdam this summer for a while, I could do a quality test worker run versus standard.
Umm… wasn’t the Archetypical Madame a former prostute (possibly still in the business herself)? I thought this was the classic brothel business model
Well yes but it was not equally owned by all the current workers.
Why should someone who just started have as much of a stake as people who’ve invested years in making the business work? There’s a career path, people!
Anyway in the red light there were not brothels but rooms for rent. Although the price was regulated by some sort of union or other.
You should do a Glib submission on it. Don’t forget the pics.
But the policy says no NSFW giffs
Put little black bars over the naughty bits.
Ahem it’s a pretty big black bar needed
Interracial pron?
I am pretty sure I have seen plenty of NSFW stuff posted here. Not many giffs though. I think people just post those to piss Ted off.
LINK to all the NSFW stuff you want. POST none of it to our servers unless you want the wrath of the admin. Nobody wants that. Even some of our… impulse control deficient contributors know better than to tempt the wrath of Her.
Use PNGs.
It’s like those co-op grocery stores. Gonna fail.
The ones where all the super-rich members send their nannies to work their required hours?
So you are saying it will work if they are using nannies to fill in.
If the internet has taught me anything, it’s that nannies are always on the receiving end of a “filling in”.
From cockholder to shareholder in one generation!
Prominent Democratic Feminist Camille Paglia Says Hillary Clinton ‘Exploits Feminism’
Me-yow!
Nice, but this will probably be ignored/dismissed, Ms. Paglia will be either be torn down or ignored.
I think she’s already left the feminist reservation on so many issues…but she still wants to be a feminist…if the word is so important then by all means claim it, especially if it annoys progs.
Is she a “Democratic feminist”? I’ve read some of her writings, and she’s always been very contrarian and independent. The Independent Women’s Forum often shares her writings.
Calling Paglia a feminist according to the modern incarnation is an insult to her as a woman and a scholar. While she claims to be a lefty (and I remain unconvinced that she actually is but current definitions), she is by far the most thoughtful, logical, cogent thinker on male/female social dynamics in academia today. She is brilliant and has balls made of wrought iron to not only put up with the shit that gets flung at her, but to go on scathing counterattacks. If you haven’t read some of your work, do yourself a favor and check it out.
She has also described certain positions she has Libertarian.
That was great! Thanks for the link. I loved her response about Kate Upton as it led me to this.
Damn.
Minnesoda definitely has NOTHING LEFT TO CUT!
A wonderful 8th grade level essay on the opportunity to turn climate change frowns upside down by turning it upside down into “climate resilience” opportunities!
This drivel was penned by Nissa Tupper who is a Climate and Health Program planner at the Minnesoda Dept. of Health.
On the radio today, the usual suspects were bemoaning the fact that once again the legislature can’t come to grips with the budget during the allotted time. As a tax payer, I sure wish they’d take extra time and put a stop to shit like having a Climate and Health Program.
Seriously. Words fail me.
how safe and walkable
Way to steal a base. Safe neighborhoods have some health evidence, although its hard to untangle from money. Walkable? Nope.
What the hell does “walkable” even mean? If you can’t walk through your neighborhood, how do you get to your house/apartment?
Monorail tramways
A palanquin with orphans for my bearers. It is the only proper method for a gentleman to get around.
Why do you subject yourself to MinnPost, Holiness?
It can’t be healthy. I understand the benefit of building derp-resistence (after all, we have the ST and MPR), but beware the abyss, man.
Brit Robson is actually a pretty good sports reporter and I like his takes on the T-woofs a lot. He was a gateway pundit. I thought I could handle it. Now I’m hooked on the hard stuff. Eric Black right into my veins for full derp-rush.
The top 5% of earners would be asked to pay more income tax under a Labour government, with those bringing in more than £80,000 subject to the 45p rate and those with salaries above £123,000 paying a new 50p rate.
Live Election 2017: Jeremy Corbyn launches Labour manifesto with plan to raise £48.6bn in tax – politics live
All the day’s campaign news live, as Labour and Plaid Cymru publish their official plans for post-8 June
Read more
Labour said the income tax levels would raise up to £6.4bn a year, as Jeremy Corbyn unveiled the party’s election manifesto (pdf) in Bradford, West Yorkshire, on Tuesday.
Overall, Labour said it would raise £48.6bn (pdf) from higher taxes, including placing levies on companies with excessive pay, raising corporation tax to 26%, cracking down on tax avoidance and ending corporate tax relief.
The money would be spent on a number of flagship pledges, including scrapping university tuition fees, at a cost of £11bn, ending the public sector pay cap, £5bn for free childcare and an extra £7.7bn of spending on health and social care.
The manifesto also commits to nationalising several industries, including the railways, Royal Mail, water companies and energy supply networks.
On immigration, Labour would take students out of net migration figures, and institute a system that could involve work permits or new visa regulations once free movement ended when the UK left the EU.
Speaking at Bradford University, Corbyn said he was following in the footsteps of its ex-chancellor, the former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson, who did “so much to expand university education and make it accessible to all”.
To carry out Labour’s “radical and responsible” plans, he said the party was simply asking “the better off and big corporations to pay a little bit more”.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/16/labour-proposes-45p-income-tax-above-80000
Yes simply asking to pay a bit more.
The top 5% of earners would be asked to pay more income tax under a Labour government
No, they would have more of their money confiscated at the point of a gun.
asked to pay more income
Say, old chap, could you spare a few bob for Old Blighty?
“Stand and deliver…don’t make me shoot you, I want this to stay voluntary!”
No, no, no, the taxman uses naught but a gentle nudge!
A few weeks ago they’re unedited draft of their manifesto was leaked. They caught a lot of shit for saying that they intend to do absolutely nothing about immigration beyond opening the door more widely. Now they say this? They’re just reacting to the fact that their suicide pact was made public and the public shit on it with +80% opposed to it.
Sigh. Leave it to a Canadian – again – to lead the charge.
Louisiana did the right thing. Let the people decide.
Removing symbols in an effort to erase history is just an act of deception. It’s part of the U.S. experience. There is not ‘good’ or ‘bad’ history; there’s just…history.
How bout charging 1 dollar for one hit of a sledgehammer to a monument you don’t like?
Is there some way I can prove to people that I’m not racist, I just think the MLK sculpture is garbage?
Are they ever going to finish carving it?
Make a sign that says so – and head down to the closest MLK boulevard with it.
They made him look like a Chinese guy.
They did use a chinese knockoff sculptor.
That sculptor certainly is no Rodin.
The chinaman is not the issue here.
*squints eyes*
So to our Pittsburgh affiliates: The Penguins snipping, chirping and arguing on the bench? Much ado about nothing?
I know Kessel comes with baggage so what’s going on?
I think it’s just that Kessel is an asshole. Down Goes Brown had a good tweet about it last night after the goal.
Kessel is a bitch. He’s been a bitch everywhere he played. Unfortunately he’s really fucking good.
Possibly the most punchable face in all of hockey, as well.
Well, you kinda have to be a bitch to play for the gophers.
– lifelong North Dakota hockey fan
And a face that would look more appropriate on, say, a chubby middle-aged roofer than a blazing-fast hockey sniper.
Somehow, his sister is really cute. Maybe she’s the mailman’s kid or something.
So will the Celtics take a couple of games off the Cavs? I mean I think at least one they could…
Maybe a game or two. I think we’re on a collision course for the Warriors and Cavs to meet. And both of them would like to close out their series as quickly as possible. The Cavs will have extra motivation now that it looks like Golden State will rip through a depleted Spurs team. They don’t want to have three more games while the Warriors are sitting there getting healed up and resting.
Yeah the Kawhi injury kinda ruined that series. That Zaza guy …
Local fun here in Michigan. Two highly visible lawyers duking it out over an alleged sexual assault. Fieger vs. Morse.
Trivia: Geoffrey Fieger’s brother was in The Knack
University of Michigan is in the news for catering to their special snowflakes.
Minority students feel ‘marginalized’ by historic building’s ‘imposing, masculine’ paneling
So, fuck off wasn’t the reply?
It’s not the paneling that is marginalizing, it’s the quiet nature of the building. Oh yeah, that makes way more sense.
Libraries are so TRIGGERING.
The punch line is this: She alleges that he maneuvered her to a more private area of the restaurant to take a selfie, then grabbed her boobs and asked if it made the picture better. She’s suing for $10 million.
Ignoring the fact that her story doesn’t make much sense – that some old dude she didn’t know approached her and told her he was famous and she’d want a picture with him and then convinced her to go to a back room where he grabbed her boob during a selfie shoot – $10 million is still a laugh-out-loud request if every word of the allegation is true.
Being a local in this case and knowing that while Morse margins toward the Ambulance chaser side of the equation, Fieger is an out and out shit bag (and has not one redeeming quality), I have no doubt he would concoct this entire incident.
Thanks, Sloopy. Ska Tuesday it is!
*pogos through office *
Shouldn’t that be skanking? *shrugs*
British ska isn’t real ska, but yeah, probably.
oh, please no.
Like you haven’t heard that a million times.
i dont run in circles where the relative realness of ska has ever been a matter of concern.
Then you are lucky. The only people more tiresome are the ‘that’s not punk’ crowd.
A 70-year-old Swedish woman is facing up to four years in prison for complaining on Facebook about migrants defecating in the streets.
Is there no point where the native swedes go “fuck this noise” and burn down the backwards, efette structure they’ve built?
Maybe all the Viking Swedes left a long time ago and only the sissies who didn’t want to go out in the North Atlantic in an open boat just to fight with other people are left?
A millennium ago the Norse were a culturally confident people. They were able to run roughshod over the dying Celtic communities and Christians who were demoralized over the fall of Rome, disease, Muslim invasion, etc…
Now they are raised to despise their own culture, race, and religion. Just pointing out that Third World barbarians from a failed country with a violent religion aren’t civilized is enough to get yourself tossed in jail.
Not until the Norks go “fuck this noise” and burn down the oversized prison that’s been built around them.
Seth Rich, slain DNC staffer, had contact with WikiLeaks, say multiple sources
This is just too good to be real right?
I don’t know.
I do know it was good enough to be my first morning link.
Well, I tried to read that “work” excretion. Couldn’t make it, though. I got to the part where he said “This time, it’s different!” and gave up.
That was right after he claimed the “official poverty rate” is some sort of hard-and-fast determination of one’s ability to survive.
But living wage man, living wage. It is in the name. Also do think about the children, wontcha?
Speaking at Bradford University, Corbyn said he was following in the footsteps of its ex-chancellor, the former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson
Because it worked so well last time.
“Robbery victim Seth Rich”
It sure is dangerous to know the Clintons.
Bernie sure knows it. Notice how he hasn’t uttered a peep about Seth Rich or how Clinton and the DNC really did hack his campaign.
Yes it is interesting how he never made a big deal about that isn’t it? He had just bought a new lake house though and perhaps wanted to live long enough to use it.
The people who paid for the monuments should decide whether to keep them up or take them down.
And if they’ve been dead for a century?
Whoever is paying for the maintenance.
It still annoys me that Atlanta hasn’t put up a Richard Jewell statue in Centennial Olympic Park.
They could probably even get CNN to pay for it.
In a decision that could have global consequences, an Austrian court ruled on Friday that Facebook must delete postings deemed to be hate speech.
Facebook Plans To Add 3,000 Workers To Monitor, Remove Violent Content
The Two-Way
Facebook Plans To Add 3,000 Workers To Monitor, Remove Violent Content
“[T]he Viennese appeals court ruled on Friday that Facebook must remove the postings against Greens leader Eva Glawischnig as well as any verbatim repostings, and said merely blocking them in Austria without deleting them for users abroad was not sufficient,” Reuters reports, adding that Facebook’s lawyers in Vienna declined to comment on the ruling, but that a court spokesman confirmed it.
The case was brought by Austria’s Green party after its leader, Eva Glawischnig, was insulted on Facebook by posts from someone who didn’t use their real name. According to the Austrian newspaper Die Presse, the posts called Glawischnig “miese Volksverräterin” and “korrupten Trampel,” which translate roughly as “lousy traitor” and “corrupt bumpkin.”
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/08/527398995/austrian-court-rules-facebook-must-delete-hate-speech
Job Creation success!
Just pull out of Australia and the EU, Facebook, they’re too much of a bother. Better yet, users, just leave Facebook, I promise your lives will be better for it. You will be more present, have more self confidence and be a better friend/brother/son/daughter/etc.
I read Austria as Australia. *facepalm*
Same diff. They’re both associated with drinking and transported prisoners.
Or what? Does Facebook have any assets inside that jurisdiction that can be seized? If not then GTFO. They simply won’t ever build an office in that region or allow any of their execs to travel there.
Wow, this is the first time I ever heard of an Austrian trying to censor anything!
“[T]he Viennese appeals court ruled on Friday that Facebook must remove the postings against Greens leader Eva Glawischnig as well as any verbatim repostings, and said merely blocking them in Austria without deleting them for users abroad was not sufficient,” Reuters reports
“We learned it from you, Amerika.”
“Facebook chooses not to serve Austria.”
If I owned it.
“The Government of Austria is requiring that Facebook not display information to the people of Austria”
If I owned it.
“Facebook acquires Austria”
If I owned it.
You know who else acquired Austria?
Attila?
Zuckerberg doesn’t have the balls, and since he’s a lefty probably agrees with Austria, anyway.
I think he publicly agrees and privately doesn’t give a shit. I think his initial response to the whole “fake news” thing was “it’s not really a problem.” After facing the internet’s wrath he quickly re-calibrated his vocabulary and public-facing thoughts to “we’re working on it.”
I understand that there’s no such thing as peak derp, that it is a myth. I can’t help but wonder one question, though. Is it possible for there to be a toxic level of derp such that the societal host can’t survive? Because I genuinely think we’re starting to reach that point. When you reach a certain level of derp, intelligence, common sense and rationality become things that are actively devalued. Doesn’t that create a death spiral of derp?
The movie Ass did not win best screenplay Oscar yet
True. The odd thing is that I think Idiocracy mis-estimated the source of the derp. By and large, the laboring classes aren’t particularly more stupid than they were a generation or two ago. Perhaps even less stupid. The real rise in derpitude seems to have come from the class of “knowledge workers” or “creative class”.
The artists. My brother is an artist, and he often invites me to his shows. When I go, I often overhear people cheering the idea of taking down monuments — “it’s very progressive there, its fantastic. They’re taking down all those racist monuments” — “isn’t it great that alex jones lost his children? fuck him.” — “I don’t believe in jobs, this is all really a societal construct” — “the real problem is money, we should get rid of money altogether, go back to bartering”
I just imagine that the room is filled with pigeons. It helps.
That sounds like a quote from Atlas Shrugged.
Some day a black hole of derp will descend over the universe, blotting out whatever beauty remains. But the universe is a big place, so it’s going to take a whole lot of derp.
Doesn’t that create a death spiral of derp?
The death spiral of derp requires disarmament of the non-derpy. Not likely to happen here, at least not any time soon.
I’d like to think that. But, twenty years ago I would have found it inconceivable that “liberal” college students would be demanding an end to cultural diffusion and that their demands would have broad cultural acceptance.
I don’t think it is very broad. It just seems that way because the people that are for it are very loud. I don’t see the world’s masses suddenly ceasing to go to yoga classes or refusing to eat Thai food in the name of fighting “cultural appropriation” any time soon.
I don’t think they have broad cultural acceptance. In their worlds – colleges, media, blue urban areas – there is plenty of acceptance, true, but there is a lot more to the world than those.
Reality exists and it can be hard on fuckheads. They’ll get theirs eventually.
I hope you’re right. But, just this year we had MTV (Viacom) pushing the notion that white people having Cinco de Mayo parties is unacceptable. I doubt they did it because they thought the sentiment was a fringe perspective.
Is it the dominant outlook? Not yet. And we may yet see it crawl back under the rock it came from. But, I think it’s fair to say that the portion of society that buys into this rubbish is fairly significant.
And there has been massive pushback by a lot of people on youtube. The MTV channel had to upload a video arguing that they’re not racists. I think the tide is turning in the other direction.
The Internet is an incredible megaphone, but having a loud voice is not the same thing as many voices. There are a lot of people who don’t give a shit about what they say, and no small number of people who are starting to question the wisdom of sending their adult children to expensive Maoist daycare.
“I can’t help but wonder one question, though. Is it possible for there to be a toxic level of derp such that the societal host can’t survive?”
Yes. See: Union, Soviet.
WaPo on the trail of a treasonous blabbermouth.
On Monday night, The Washington Post reported that President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador during a meeting at the White House. Specifically, he is said to have described the details of an Islamic State threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft. The information itself was reportedly provided by a close Middle Eastern ally.
Much of the controversy has to do with the fact that Trump allegedly provided the information to Russia, a U.S. adversary with which he and some of his associates have alleged ties. However, in doing so, he also set back U.S. counterterrorism efforts against the Islamic State as well as al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Much handwaving and what-iffery ensue.
All it lacks is an outright, “Obama never would have done that.”
This was an anonymous source, was it not? And what I’m not getting, is who are the WaPo or NYT to say what classified information should or should not be passed on to the Russians or others? Owing to it’s classified nature, I’m not sure that anyone outside of the top administration circle is much of an authority on what any piece of intel’s value is or the nature of it’s value. The press is acting like they know what this intelligence is, they know why it’s valuable, to whom it’s valuable and to whom exactly the revelation of the intel would make vulnerable. All they know is, Trump gave the Russians intel and they don’t like the Russians because the Russians hakked teh electionz. Never mind that Obama was occasionally giving intel to the Iranians since they were operating in Iraq and Syria too.
Trump allegedly provided the information to Russia, a U.S. adversary with which he and some of his associates have alleged ties.
So WaPo is ignoring their fight with ISIS? Will they also revise their feelings about FDR “colluding” with those evil Soviets during WWII?
This is the same Washington Post that gave Mitt Romney two Pinnochios for saying that Russia was a geopolitical foe in 2012.
Oh that is rich. So rich and filling, I can only take a few bites at a time because it’s so rich.
Dude, the 1980s stopped calling already. Give it up.
Here’s the thing that strikes me.
Numerous Russian citizens were killed when an ISIS ally blew up a Russian jetliner over the Sinai a couple of years back. They’re not sure how the bomb was smuggled into the plane – although the perpetrators claim they slipped a soda can full of high explosive into the drinks service.
A year or so later, a North African airliner had a laptop in carry on baggage detonate, which blew a hole in the side of the aircraft and blew the bomber out into the great beyond. Fortunately, nobody else died and the plane landed safely.
I can see the sharing of info to be intended to improve Russian and U.S. relations and to save the lives of Russian citizens. Both of them are not dishonorable motives and in fact are in the best interests of the U.S.
The laptop and tablet ban is based on info shared with the brits. There is no question that Russia is an enemy of ISIS (far more so than the U.S. which keeps accidentally-on purpose giving support to it as part of its pro-Saudi policies). Thus, this seems like hysterical pants-shitting to distract from Hillary’s mishandling of information where the U.S. and Russia were antagonists, such as what sorts of assistance the U.S was giving to Ukraine when Russia started threatening its territorial integrity, which allowed the Russians to annex Crimea and destabilize the Ukraine.
If the statues in question are “public property”, the local population should have the ability to add or remove such a statue. If 49% or 10% of the population doesn’t like that, they can go suck a dick.
That said, I’m no fan of Robert E Lee, but nor am I under the delusion that he rode into battle on a slave powered palanquin. He was a general in an armed force that fought for independence from the United States since the federal government would not allow peaceful secession, and he/they lost. It’s understandable that people want to honor him and it’s understandable that people want to forget about him. Now since it’s largely an SJW push to have his statues removed, I’m going to assume petty and dishonest motives.
I think Lee is a particularly special case. In addition to his role as a heroic general, even in opposition to the U.S., there’s his whole role in the post-Civil War reconciliation to consider. To blot that out in the name of damning slavery is especially dishonest.
Secession was mostly about slavery, but the Civil War itself was about secession and nothing more. People don’t realize that because they’re inculcated with the progressive (cough cough Marxist cough cough) telling of history. He fought for slavery as much as George Washington did, both of them fought for the independence of a polity in which slavery was legal. Mark my words, in ten to fifteen years, they will be agitating to purge George Washington and Thomas Jefferson memorials too.
Examiner: All right, here’s your last question. What was the cause of the Civil War?
Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter…
Examiner: Wait, wait… just say slavery.
Apu: Slavery it is, sir.
Supposedly based on a true story, one of the writer’s wife was a history prof who when getting her US citizenship tried to give a detailed answer on the civil war.
That was my wife on her citizenship test too. That exact same question came up in her test too. She did practice tests with me and I must say it was painful, I had a strong urge to to answer the questions accurately
but it turns out the only acceptable answers are the ones that would be taught by a middle school civics teacher so you know…uhh… lies.
Mark my words, in
ten to fifteen yearssix to twelve months, they will be agitating to purge George Washington and Thomas Jefferson memorials too.FTFY
I should have said “within fifteen years”. Robert E Lee is just low hanging fruit. Once they’re done with him, I have no doubt in my mind that they’ll set about going after the founders. Maybe in a few generations the founding fathers of the US will be as reviled as Jefferson Davis.
I do think there is an important distinction between:
Fighting for independence in which parts of your new state will have slavery, but all (non-slaves) will enjoy the benefits of the revolution’s main objective
and
Fighting for independence where maintaining slavery is the main objective.
I think this can be seen in Thomas Jefferson making overtures towards manumission of slaves leading up to the Declaration of Independence as well as blaming King George for burdening the colonies with slavery (a proto-white man’s burden, if you will). That’s in stark contrast to the Confederacy declaring the election of Lincoln (and his presumed anti-slavery administration) and the ability to maintain slavery as the impetus for secession.
Whether or not they should have been able to secede legally is an entirely different question than whether or not they fought for independence as a way to maintain slavery. We also shouldn’t fall into the trap of saying since the Union did not set out to fight the war to end slavery (accurate), that somehow changes the Confederacy’s intentions. The North didn’t want to end slavery, necessarily, but the South damn sure wanted to keep it
I don’t understand why it’s so hard for many people to admit that both sides were assholes. The secessionists in the South were intentionally trying to start a war, thinking they could win it easily and/or the North would be unwilling to engage in a protracted battle. In some ways, they remind me of the Clinton dead-enders today. You lost an election, get the fuck over it.
But Lincoln’s handling of the war was unconstitutional and he turned it into a moral crusade in order to justify continuing to wage it. Granted, Buchanan handed him a fucked-up situation, but he did little to unfuck it. He too seems to have believed at the start that the war would be over quickly, albeit in the North’s favor.
And the whole idea of waging a war for the preservation of slavery or for its eradication ought to strike peace-abiding people as dangerous and foolhardy. It sets bad precedent, even if it has the noblest of intentions (post hoc, anyway). The slavers were evil, but it should not be the job of the United States to right the world’s wrongs.
I don’t understand why it’s so hard to think someone can be arguing that the Civil War was a moral catastrophe that Lincoln was wrong to wage, and not simultaneously be defending the slavery or those who wanted to perpetuate it. Lincoln’s war propaganda is still so effective there can’t even be a rational conversation about the topic to this day.
The historical record does not show that war is the best means of ending slavery. In fact it was the rarest of methods. The best means was to stop lending the institution government support with conscription to slave catching militias and labor and economic policies that solidified it’s place in the economy. Industrialization and the development of labor saving technology made it obsolete, much like how the economic model of slavery made cannibalism obsolete way back. I don’t recall the Sumerians waging a war to end cannibalism, it just happened naturally as civilization developed superior modes of human interaction.
Was this meant to be a response to me?
It seemed like the first sentence of the first paragraph of your preceding post was an indirect criticism of my argument. I apologize if I misread that.
Ok. No, I was just commenting in general.
Except that slavery was just as legal in the USA as it was in the CSA. It was in the states themselves that they differed.
I wasn’t disputing at all that the CSA was seceding to preserve slavery. Though if the CSA were seceding so that they could freely build monuments to diversity, have gay pride parades and transgender outhouses the Union still would have waged a devastating war against them and in neither case would the Union have had the moral high ground.
The part I disagreed with was:
Intentions are not more important than actions, but to completely dismiss them is wrongheaded imo. That’s liking saying Henry Clay and some random modern David Duke type are the same thing because both advocate for the relocation of African Americans to Africa. Ignoring the historical context and, yes, intent is foolish.
I also think this is a little misguided, considering the majority of governmental aid going to slave catchers was at the local level. Locations which decided it was in their best interest to start a full fledged war to maintain slavery. So, the idea that the best way to end slavery was to let the people willing to die and sacrifice hundreds of thousands of their countrymen deal with it doesn’t pass muster with me.
Two more things to conclude with: 1) all of this, of course, misses the point that the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter. Unless we are to take every declaration of secession as binding and legitimate prima facie, the Confederacy used force against a federal outpost. Defending the nation against armed attack is well within the bounds of the federal government. That alone gave the Union a higher justification than the Confederacy. 2) I do not grant the North any moral superiority, but that doesn’t automatically raise the Confederacy’s moral justification. The memorials are there to embiggen people who broke away from the United States in order to preserve slavery. To get into the legalities of secession or whether the North was morally superior is to miss the point that honoring those men using public funds and land explicitly gives them a place of honor. This isn’t a memorial exclusively for soldiers that died during the Civil War. This is about post-bellum deifying of the leadership of a government who’s main objective was to continue the practice of enslaving humans.
Unless we are to take every declaration of secession as binding and legitimate prima facie,
Seems like a state has the right/authority to secede under the Tenth Amendment. You might need to specify what state action counts as a legitimate exercise of this authority, but I don’t see anything in the Constitution prohibiting it, which leaves it in the state’s reserved powers under the Tenth.
ugh HTML fail
Even if that’s true (I’m honestly not making an argument either way), that didn’t give them the legal authority to fire on Federal property, even if it was within the boundaries of the seceding state. If Kentucky legally seceded from the Union today, we can’t justifiably send in the state militia to Fort Knox and starting shooting federal soldiers. That’s an act of war and would require action from the federal government under any libertarian/constitutional framework.
And again, that sort of misses the point that people aren’t upset because the men depicted in the statues didn’t have a legal justification for exiting the union. It’s that they 1) left in order to maintain their ability to enslave people and 2) that they started a war that killed hundreds of thousands of men and wrecked a nation in order to secure that ability.
You can’t just say, “O yeah, slavery was bad, but the Confederacy had a Constitutional right to secede, therefore, honoring the leaders of the Confederacy is fine.” That completely ignores the primacy of slavery in the discussion as well as the fact that the war was initiated by those same men. I’m just trying to counter the argument that just because the Confederacy may have had a legal right to do what they did, doesn’t change the despicable nature of the reasons they did so. Which is why honoring them is an issue.
It’s not like they bombarded a post office. Ft Sumpter wasn’t a national park, it was a military garrison occupied by a foreign power from where the CSA was sitting. The occupying soldiers refused to vacate, one could reasonably argue THAT is an act of war. You keep coming back to this “the south launched a massive war” trope. They didn’t. The CSA declared independence and then had the temerity to shoot at occupying soldiers. The “killing of hundreds of thousands of men” was entirely Lincoln’s doing. He invaded the South and the majority of conflicts took place in the South which I’m sure the southerners would have been perfectly willing to forgo. Do you literally think the South declared independence because they wanted to go to war with the North? They absolutely did not want war, nor did they want to be in the Union or have union military units violating their newfound sovereignty.
I never said anything about the righteousness of honoring Robert E Lee or Jefferson Davis, so let me just ask you politely to please put that strawman away already.
The whole debate is about whether it is proper for governments to honor men like Jefferson Davis with, O, something like massive statutes on public land. The original story that started the conversation is about removing said statues. The original link said:
I was stating my opinion that 1) the statues were erected to honor the leaders and cause of a secessionist movement based almost entirely on the right to maintain slavery, which makes them improper. And 2) your arguments about the relative merits of the secession of the Confederacy and the Colonies was off base due to the intentions of those two actions. Reducing them to simple questions of legal authority doesn’t answer the question of moral authority. The Confederacy could have been legally right and still morally reprehensible, thus making honoring the cause in an official government capacity improper.
I also do not agree with your assessment of Fort Sumter. It was built by Federal troops and money at a time when South Carolina was a member of the Union. Seceding did not give South Carolina rightful ownership of that property. They owed the Union just compensation, at the very least. Again, if Kentucky could legally secede today, would they get to keep all of the gold in Fort Knox? Which brings us to the issue of Lincoln invading the South after Fort Sumter. The Confederacy firing on federal property is just cause for war. Period. If Mexico bombed El Paso, the US is under no moral or legal obligation to not pursue that war into Mexican territory. It would also mean, to most people, that the instigators would be liable for the carnage that followed. Maybe not in individual cases of massacres and such, but the totality of the conflict has to be pinned on the aggressor. You seem to think that was Lincoln, and I think it was the Confederacy
Just to further explain my position, this is wholly irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if the Confederacy wanted war. They committed an act that justified military action against them. You don’t get to fire on another nation’s military and act like that isn’t cause for war. That’s the equivalent of kids roughhousing and one getting in a cheap shot then trying to say he was just playing when the other kid starts beating his ass for real. You don’t get to do that. You fire on another nation’s military, you go to war. Simple as that. Whether they “wanted” to or not doesn’t matter; they did something that everyone knew would lead to it
The fact that the thread started with a post about the statues and that I support secession and the position that Lincoln was wrong to launch a war, does not mean I was arguing in favor of said statues. Yet you are using arguments that are clearly framed as a response to my supposed support for these statues. Please don’t use the OP as grounds to put words in mouth and slay arguments I didn’t make. Try using them on someone who actually argued in favor of the memorials.
Now if let’s say, a Russian owned complex in New England were confiscated by the US government and the Russians at the complex refused to vacate, then the US storms the place and removes them by force, does the Russian Federation have a casus belli, nay, an obligation to go to war? Like it or not, the sole guarantor of property rights within a sovereign territory is the sovereign (and I lean towards not liking it). The US government’s rights to any and all property in a foreign country is subject to that foreign country’s sovereign power to recognize and guarantee it. Not to mention, citing property rights over Ft Sumpter is an exceedingly weak argument to make since virtually all government property rests on the theft of private property, be it taxation or eminent domain. There is no principle to stand on in regards to property rights.
Your El Paso example is not an apt one.
If Germany evicted the US military from bases in Germany and the US refused to vacate, would the US not be wrong in doing so? Would the Germans not have justification to remove them by force? If the Sudanese evict the US from their embassy, does the US have the right to invade Sudan? If Venezuela nationalizes a US car plant, is that a justification to invade?
There’s no way to apply your standard without it being a double standard.
And it’s worth mentioning that the first Battle of Ft Sumpter was nearly bloodless and the entire garrison was allowed to leave. They were not taken as prisoners of war. That’s hardly a provocation for which the only appropriate response is a years long blood-bath that killed hundred of thousands. That outcome was entirely Lincoln’s call and the idea that he didn’t have any alternative to that course of action would be laughable if it wasn’t such a damn tragedy.
Often they are not. I believe in the case of the C-ville statues, they (and the land of the parks themselves) were private gifts made with strings attached, which barred the city from ever using those parcels of land for any other purposes. Arguably, removing the statues would violate the ‘no development’ clauses. Plus the state of virgina has a 1950s law barring localities from interfering with ‘war memorials’. Rulings in VA on whether this applies to these private gifts or to monuments placed prior to the ruling have been mixed. the State Supreme court has yet to settle the issue.
Yeah but the people who passed that law were arguably racist so we’re allowed to ignore it because feelings.
My point was simply that your sentence =
… has a lot of qualifying problems.
1) they’re not always 100% public-property; often the land and statues/monuments are private gifts which are only given public-designation on agreement of specific conditions, among which are an agreement never to re-purpose said property. Many argue that the state can’t/shouldn’t be held to these sorts of contracts in perpetuity, and that’s all well and good, but its still a matter for courts to sort out.
2) state and federal law often overrides local control regarding monuments; and maybe it should? It can even be an international concern = e.g. Locals near Auschwitz would have razed the camp if given their druthers, as they saw it as a stain on their reputation and nothing but a magnet for grief-mongering jews. It was probably only prevented from falling into disrepair by international pressure.
basically, i don’t think its an issue that can be easily settled with assertions of general rules like your statement.
1) I’m not arguing that any laws should necessarily be ignored, violated or repealed. I’m saying that ideally, local populations should have a say into what their taxes are supporting. I understand that it’s not necessarily a case of black and white to make that a reality.
2) That would depend on the monument. A (hypothetical) federal memorial to William T Sherman in Savannah Georgia might rub some people the wrong way since he basically raped and pillaged the fuck out of the place. Just like the memorial of the unknown rapist in Vienna, (Soviet war memorial) rightly rankles feathers in Austria. That’s not to say the people of those places have an unqualified right to tear it down without any official say so, but they are at the very least, a relevant party to any such discussions who should have some say, in some fashion. It’s hard to speak in absolutes about generalities, like memorials everywhere. A case by case basis would be most appropriate.
Damn you, you got me to go to fucking Salon! I couldn’t finish that whole thing, it was too laughable. Yup, a FICTIONAL MOVIE is proof that a for-profit space exploration enterprise will end badly. Yup, that’s right Salon. *facepalm*
I could only bring myself to skim a few paragraphs. I thought the butt-hurt was based on anyone even depicting free-enterprise in space. What movie goers really want to see is bureaucrats exploring the galaxy and running nationalized space corporations without incident.
Get rid of “Without Incident” and you just described the “Next Generation” era of Star Trek. (aka “Communists In Spaaace!“)
That’s why I always rooted for the Ferengi.
+1 “If you don’t need money, then you certainly don’t need mine”
This is still one of my favorite Star Trek exchanges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5J_qn93Nkc
Mine too, for a moment it almost seemed like they got what economics was about about.
DS9 was one hell of a deconstruction of all the TNG hippy bullshit. If Roddenberry had still been alive, he would have absolutely flipped his shit.
Though I am reminded of the complete lack of understanding the writers showed with regards to how a greed-centric system would regard science or succession.
The pariah scienist would not have been ignored because of the fact he was a scientist, as science produces new products, improves existing ones, produces cheaper ways of producing existing ones, opens up whole markets not previously accessable – ie things that would appeal greatly to the culture as described. Same thing with regards to the depiction of attitudes towards education and the understanding of other cultures.
Understanding other cultures and advancing education allows for better marketing, exploitation of opportunities not immediately apparent, the development of new products for moving to other markets, all profitable ventures and not something that would be shunned in a profit-centric society. It’s almost as if the writers didn’t understand how business works.
The ability of the head of their society to simply declare a successor was also vastly out of character, as it always seemed to be something that would be put up for auction. The one most able to afford it would be the most savvy and most liable to be able to lead them down a profitable path. The ability to put an idiot savant mechanic on the throne at a whime just did not seem like it would fit.
I agree with that. But the Ferengi were never meant to be anything but space money-changers. The fun thing is, despite interacting with a post-scarcity society the FCA manager to still have some version of crony-capitalism for some time.
I am a Huge fan of DS9 for this reason. Watching all the carefully crafted utopian ideas that made up the basis of TNG get pulled apart was very much fun from a libertarian perspective.
I know you were being sarcastic, but I actually think a movie about space entrepreneurs would be pretty fun to watch.
Maybe a movie or HBO version of John Ringo’s Live Free or Die?
That would be fun!
It’s not just the money…
Couldn’t get past the lede.
Is it possible for there to be a toxic level of derp such that the societal host can’t survive? Because I genuinely think we’re starting to reach that point.
Jamie Dimon said something in his letter to shareholders about the troubling lack of understanding of economics and capitalism among Americans, these days. That’s the threat, in my view.
A lot of people are explicitly outraged by the notion of privately owned profit-seeking enterprises.
Just studying business and celebrating for-profit-enterprise has a rebellious feel to it these days.
Jamie Dimon said something in his letter to shareholders about the troubling lack of understanding of economics and capitalism among Americans, these days.
This from a guy whose bank had to take a 12 billion dollar bailout from American taxpayers.
There were some companies that had to take bailout money to stay solvent. Others that had to take the money because the Feds insisted they take the money or else.
BB&T, for one.
Dimon claims they only took TARP funds because the treasury secretary asked them to do so. They nevertheless lost their asses along with every other major bank during the housing crisis, and had to pay hundreds of millions to settle fraud charges involving their prop trading, which they shut down and spun off into their asset management division. I’m not unsympathetic to his sentiment, but he’s a pretty fucking bad messenger.
Actually, they didn’t. They were in good shape compared to most banks, and probably would have been a big beneficiary if the larger insolvent banks had been allowed to go into bankruptcy. The government essentially forced them to take the bailout, which they repaid at the earliest allowed time, in full, with interest.
Dimon has also openly admitted that heavy regulations often benefit large banks like Chase, because they have the resources to deal with them, while smaller competitors do not. That’s not a conversation most CEO’s are willing to have in public.
A lot of people are explicitly outraged by the notion of privately owned profit-seeking enterprises.
Meanwhile, they live under corrupt, overbearing governments that routinely demonstrate the problems with “public” ownership and the lack of profit motive. Their outrage is only matched by their ignorance and head-in-ass perspective.
The Clap and the Clap Back: How Twitter Erased Black Culture From an Emoji
Clapping hand emojis have entered the Pumpkin Spice Latte Danger Zone: basic, banal and stripped of their Blackness. Everyone from culture vultures (see: Khloé Kardashian) to keyboard cowboys (everyone with a data plan) has colonized the expression, ignoring its Black roots, rather than deferring to Black people about its usage.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-clap-and-the-clap-back-how-twitter-erased-black-culture-from-an-emoji?utm_source=mbtwitter
This has got to be trolling. But well done.
Black people are popular culture
Wow. Just. Wow.
They’re very musical people, aren’t they?
https://youtu.be/XdY7GNqgOOw
How did the culture (not to be confused with The Culture) get to this point? It’s really simple: everyone, including Black people, is erroneously taught that Black genius is more or less, public property with no clear “ownership.”
Wait, did vice just acknowledge that property rights are the only way to avoid devaluation and the race to the bottom? Holy shit.
Doubtful. I’m sure it’s also problematic when “Black genius” gets monetized.
Wasn’t Motherboard supposed to be about tech?
Social justice is a matter that should be included in all fields.
To the exclusion of actual competence in those fields, no less. Soon, we’ll all know how to avoid unconscious trans-species inter-gender culturally appropriating cisnormative heteropatriarchical bias but won’t have a damn clue how to accomplish a goddamn thing of any value.
For clarity, in context of my earlier comments, the above is intentional hyperbole not an actual prediction about what will happen.
First slavery, then Jim Crow, now this!
Seriously, can you imagine these SJWs plotting an escape from slavery, challenging Bull Connor, or otherwise constructively resisting actual racial oppression?
Of course not. They’re activist LARPers. They are incapable of the level of determination and commitment required to accomplish something that significant. They just want the happyfeelz from saying all the right goodthink things so they can go back to enjoying some artisanal kale paid for by their trust fund.
These people don’t eat kale. They don’t have the discipline to eat kale.
Chanel’s $2,000 boomerang criticised for ‘humiliating’ Indigenous Australian culture
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/may/16/chanels-2000-boomerang-criticised-for-humiliating-indigenous-australian-culture
The cultural appropriation retardedness does not end. Not to mention that boomerangs were not unique to Australia.
But does it actually return to you during flight?
My orphan boomerang-bearer takes the boomerang out to the target, whacks the target with it, and comes back. So far, my orphans have not successfully taken flight for more than a few yards.
See how machine learning is helping us tackle gender bias in movies.
Right on the front page of Google this morning.
Man, I’m starting to understand how Jonestown happened. Mass delusion is a hell of a drug.
Hard pass.
I just noticed that. How the mighty have fallen. Now that Google has gone full cult devotion, how long do you suppose until they start tanking their business in pursuit of the cult vision of utopia? You’re either part of the suicide pact or you’re the opposition.
So I’m watching Morning Joe McCarthy and it’s Russia this and Russia that and I’m thinking to myself, don’t we have relatively normalized relations with Russia? Can’t I get on a plane and fly to Moscow? St. Petersburg? Volgograd?
C’mon. The Red Menace is alive and well again for some reason.
How else can you possibly explain Hillary’s loss?
Black people are popular culture
Minstrel shows are okay, again?
What do you think Beyonce is?
I’ll derp this derp so no else has to derp it.
In true progressive fashion, the author claims to seek out whether or not government welfare is ethical or moral, then utterly fails to factor in the initiation of aggression into the moral calculus. Then you have gems like the following:
So not only do corporate taxes not create a disincentive to invest or an incentive for companies to relocate, but corporate taxes CAN’T POSSIBLY do that! As evidence the author cites the state of manufacturing before Reagan tax cuts and that it increased domestic production of goods “but not by much”.
Then he expounds on the sensibleness of the ever-retarded “labor theory of value” after saying that the welfare state enables us to “love our neighbors” and “be our brothers’ keeper”. Plus there’s the moral problem of promoting hardword and “full employment” because that’s just totally like promoting slavery in the 1850’s. Then he explains that markets don’t allocate resources rationally (as opposed to…. what?) and that in trying to exel at one’s work you’re being a sexist. So you got it? It’s not only racist to promote a strong work ethic, but it’s sexist too! Oh and did I mention that genders are created by the labor market?!?!?
That’s it. I give you a very accurate derpnalysis so you won’t need to derpen your eyes by gazing into this bottomless pit of derp.
Whenever they talk about Reagan and the market-driven policies many states and municipalities adopted around the same time, they act like there was an unbroken line of prosperity from 1950 until 1980. In reality, the trends that they blame on Reagan were already well established by the time he took office. His tenure can basically be described as “saving the American welfare state from the weight of its own impending collapse” but they frame him as the man who murdered greatness. Thatcher gets it even worse. Without her, Britain today would be on par with Greece. Instead, she and the Tories made necessary reforms that allowed Britain to remain an economic power and a social welfare state. I mean FFS she didn’t even abolish the NHS.
And lest we forget that she (Thatcher) didn’t just bend over and let the Falklands be seized by a foreign power as the left was pushing for.
Is that a common gripe among the British left? I thought most Brits agreed with the defense of the islands.
Many of them, with notable exceptions, viewed the Falklands War as a gamble to preserve a colonial empire.
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/keyword/Historic_events/Falklands-Malvinas_war_1982/24758/03-05-2002/falklandsmalvinas-1982-thatchers-war-of-saving-face
With exception of some prominent Labour MPs like Foot, others were calling for a negotiated settlement to Argentina’s invasion. Post-war, many in the Labour Party and Socialist Party were lamenting the outcome of the Falklands War because it led to a rise in “false” patriotism.
Jeremy Corbyn 2014: “[The UK] haven’t fought a just war since 1945.” (in refernce to the Falklands War)
Jeremy Corbyn 2016: calls for a power sharing agreement with Argentina (a la Andorra).
Ah. I guess the Argentinian military junta were just swell guys, then.
Considering the Falkland natives were overwhelmingly pro British and of British descent, this sounds absurd.
To left, who understand human nature and human society sooooo well, factors like culture and kinship are irrelevant to questions of sovereignty and community.
You can’t just go around settling empty rocks in the middle of the sea that someone else drew a line around on a map!
Not to mention that corporate taxes are just another hidden tax on consumers just like printing money is. Which is why the government loves both of those tactics so much. So many useful idiots come with them as well.
Detroit police hold military ‘drill off’ competition.
Uh. Hmm.
My high school jrotc competitive drill team would have kicked both their asses
I tried posting this last night, but Zardoz just wasn’t having it. Here’s hoping he/she/it is napping late into this morning.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Peak Millennial.”
Today in Hate
A swastika was drawn on the Battle Ridge Trailhead in Bridger Canyon.
Several people called the Ranger’s office this morning complaining about the swastika.
The Gallatin Custer Forest Service said this is an isolated case. There is no investigation, but forest service law enforcement has been notified.
This is the second recent Anti-Semitic incident in the Gallatin Valley area.
It’s the holocaust, all over again.
99.99% chance of being hoax.
In other news, people seeking attention find ways to get it.
Fifty bucks says the perpetrator is a member of some “oppressed” minority.
And the usual media figures will gush about how brave it was to start a national conversation on anti-semitism in Trump’s
AmericaAmerikkka.That or some edgelord twerp hoping to get a rise out of people. And the hysterical ninnies will indulge him.
The edglords annoy me about as much as the SJWs nowadays.
Though the edgelords will usually grow out of it. The SJWs never will.
Edgelord? Is this different from a shitlord or a synonym?
Not quite the same, “shitlord” is usually used ironically, while an “edgelord” is somebody actually trying to fuck with people by being edgy and provocative.
But still pejorative. Edgelord insinuates immature and ineffective. Think of preteens on Xbox Live.
I’d almost take that bet given the strong possibility it was a 12 year old kid
You know what would have been hilarious? If the swastikas were actually ancient native paintings.
Inconceivable!
Better hope it’s on the national historical registry, then.
Can’t you just imagine some derpy, ignorant SJW out for a hike to enjoy nature, sees ancient native swastikas, then goes crying to the park ranger about “racist graffiti”?
They would deface it, not report it. I was hiking with a ranger at Zion and he told me that they don’t publicize the location of the vast majority of the paintings as the ‘nature-lovers’ fuck them up.
As a wise old Swede once told me: “Just remember, people are shit.”
Even funnier if Dan Snyder then decided to work one of them into the Redskins logo.
heh….reminds me of a Onion story (back when it was still funny) about Georgia adding a swastika and a middle finger to the Confederate battle flag on the Georgia state flag.
I remember biker movies from the 60s / 70s and they often wore German helments and iron crosses, along with the odd swastika.
or even helmets!
Umpf, Mein Kampf!
“We’re the Nazis from Natchez!”
They’re not as bad as the Illinois Nazis. I hate Illinois Nazis!
This is the second recent Anti-Semitic incident in the Gallatin Valley area.
Last week, leaflets depicting a fictitious rabbi calling for white genocide were left in several Bozeman neighborhoods.
That doesn’t sound Anti-Semitic.
Supreme Court declines to hear burping case, appeals court decision upheld: qualified immunity affirmed for officer who arrested burping teen.
“Criminalizing ‘everyday acts of misbehavior’ pushes kids out of school and teaches them that there is no limit to the power of the state to arrest them, the mother argued.” Smart woman.
Calling it “qualified” immunity is such a scam at this point. It’s only “qualified” in the sense that you have to be a cop to get it.
It’s basically become the “Costanza defense” every time. Except that it actually works.
What’s the constitutional basis for “qualified immunity”, anyways?
I believe it went something like:
“Fuck you, that’s why.”
Oh, that one’s easy. It’s in the FYTW clause.
Essentially, because governing is hard. Or more succinctly, FYTY.
Holy. Fuck.
They really do think they are a better class of person.
I actually read it as the opposite. They can’t be expected to uphold the same laws they subject us to, because laws are too hard for them but apparently not for us. Never mind the fact that most of them take an explicit oath to uphold said laws which they probably should already know before taking the fucking oath.
Hmm, fair point. They think they’re entitled to better treatment.
The soft bigotry of low expectations.
They can’t be expected to uphold the same laws they subject us to, because laws are too hard for them but apparently not for us.
Yeah, apparently “ignorance of the law is no excuse” only applies to the hoi polloi; it’s a huge excuse for a public official.
I mean seriously, it’s not even difficult to illustrate how perverted their logic is:
I’ll give that an amen!
Miss USA Clarifies Health Care Answer After Receiving Backlash
Oh for crying out loud, don’t kowtow to them!!! Why do people grovel before leftist retards from Twitter? I’ll never understand that.
“Worldwide”. WorldfuckenWide.
They should just stick to asking for world peas and be done with it.
As my dear late Pappy would say, “Eat every bean and pee on your plate.” Neatly summarizes positive rights.
Doesn’t saying something different than what you said before constitute not “own[ing] what [you] said”?
Joke’s on her-that groveling is seen as an admission of wrongdoing and won’t buy her shit.
Haha, like this will satiate the grievance brigade. They’ll hate you forever for leaving the plantation even once, Miss USA. You should have continued to think for yourself.
Now everyone hates her including the people that were saying attagirl yesterday.
Great link sir.
You know who else had a suicide pact…
Seth Rich?
These guys?
Dr. Kevorkian?
Wilhelm II and Franz Joseph?
BLACKHAWKS fans?
Couldn’t disagree more.
Yes it is absolutely true about the Left’s idiocy and yet it engages in much the same idiocy as well using much the same bullshit arguments that Tulpa used to use to claim BO was doing a good job…
–“unemployment is down, illegal border crossings are down, the stock market is just fine, and the rescue of our medical care has begun.”–
That could literally have been a Tulpa quote circa 2010.
To the extent that any of that is true is has absolutely nothing to do with Trump and a lot of it is likely an illusion created by approaching the top of another economic bubble and don’t even get me started on the abomination the AHCA is, while it’s current form only makes it about equal to Obamacare in the initial attempt to pass it somehow the Republicans managed to stumble on a plan that was actually worse than Obamacare.
–“Yet the more they double- and triple-down on their strategy and tactics, the more the American people realize how thoroughly demented are the media and their Democrat lapdogs”–
To an extend this is true, especially in flyover country but just as much as people are not buying the lefts bs on Trump they also are not buying the rights either. The reality that most people recognize is that to this point Trump has been an abysmal president, sure they don’t buy the whole Russia narrative and pretty easily reject the breathless Trump is literally hitler screeds, they do however recognize that he has had more bad ideas than good, has little to no idea of what he is doing, and has little to no respect for the Constitution.
It is a thoroughly open question whether Trump is more damaging to the right or left because the bulk of the country ain’t buying either of their shit
To the extent that any of that is true is has absolutely nothing to do with Trump
I would say the reduction in border crossings has something to do with Trump. The rest? Not really, no.
Given that the decline began in 2007 it is hard to credit the changes all to him and given that to this point absolutely nothing has happened wrt border enforcement it is likely that the decline owes as much to the hyperbolic reporting of Trump being a monster as anything Trump can actually claim credit for himself.
Illegal crossings declined in 2007, but I was under the impression there was a rather abrupt further reduction since Trump was elected.
I don’t actually know who this Peter Daou character is, but it doesn’t matter anyway.
DECADES!!!!!
Hey, the eighties called… they want their decades of life-risking work by their intel community (and allies) back.
The 80’s are busy tonight.
Would you say that there’s something…in the air?
They are going to Wang Chung tonight.
It will be lonely without them
I hate you. Now I’m going to be stuck on YouTube for the next two hours watching Sam videos.
He was so good, though.
RIP.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Sure was.
There’s a hell of a lot worse things to be doing. Like work.
For the youngsters and those who live in caves, here’s his most famous bit Chock-full of 80’s goodness
Um the intel leakers have been obama sychophants
The contents of meeting have been disputed by 4 people in meeting on record
And finally if so sensitive why leak to wapo?
BECUZ DRUMPF1!!!1!
Once again, the only apparent crime was committed by whoever leaked, and the leak itself contains exactly zero indication that anyone else broke a law.
Wait, the GOP are sycophants for Joe Biden?
Or are we not supposed to talk about his big mouth?
No, he’s funny, and left-wing, so that’s totally different.
Cuz, you know, they’re totally related and everything.