Welcome to my latest musings! This is where I write about random crap and let y’all sort it out.
I love Wheel of Fortune. It may make me seem like an old geezer or something, but I love that show. I’m also unnaturally good at solving the puzzles. It irritates people when they watch it with me.- I’ve been thinking about writing a short story about a transport spaceship in the near future that transports pure water from Europa to bases located in the asteroid belt. The spaceship is a converted multi-generational colony ship originally destined for an exoplanet, but didn’t make it out of the solar system and is now run by the second generation as a transport. The big plot arc would be uncovering a conspiracy having to do with the original mission of the ship and some of the Earth governments. We’ll see if I ever get the free time to start on it.
- Is anything going to actually come of the Seth Rich stuff, or was Kim Dotcom just bullshitting us?
- Occasionally I’m struck by how most environmentalists are motivated by guilt. Many have the most environmentally destructive lifestyles. In comparison, many non-acolytes (including so-called conservationists) live in harmony with nature. For example, I have more trees in my yard than your average city park. Wildlife is constantly milling about in my backyard. The hipster urbanite can’t even fathom such a lifestyle, but instead stays insulated in their urban jungle, so they have to assuage their guilt by nagging everybody else.
- Being a desk jockey sucks. I’ve worked for 10 years in one desk job or another, and I’ve never liked it. I come from farming stock, and my body just isn’t happy unless I’m doing something active. It’s too bad that I’m really good at this desk jockey stuff.
- How many of the crises du jour in today’s media climate are curated attention seeking? When you strip the political manipulation out of it, most of the national news cycle is centered on boring questions like “man calls opponent a loser, is he Hitler?” and “little girl scrapes knee, should busybodies mandate kneepads?”
How many of the crises du jour in today’s media climate are curated attention seeking?
I’m gonna go with virtually all of them.
Always remember, their real job is to generate advertising revenue.
Someone is beginning to make the case for public funded news…..
What, like NPR’s morning edition?
As long as it somehow benefits Democrats…
Second!
Saying “I’m really good at Wheel of Fortune” is a lot like saying “I’m not good at a lot of things”.
Just sayin…
“or was Kim Dotcom just bullshitting us?”
How dare you accuse that adorable fat bastard of being a liar! Sean Hannity conveniently believes him this one time. Doesn’t that count for anything? Eh…probably not
Yeah, his very presence hurts the credibility of the whole thing (which was already not the most credible thing ever). I had it at 50 / 50 before Kim showed up.
In my opinion, Hannity ruined it.
You might be right. I never saw his ‘work’ on the issue, and don’t really pay much attention to Fox (other than watching some Tucker interview clips on YT).
Huh, I had it at 5/95 against until the Media Matters launched an attack campaign on it. That moved it up to about 35/65 in my mind. Fat boy didn’t really move the meter in either direction in my Bayesian analysis.
For me, the big question is whether “they- have the juice to intimidate enough people to keep this in the tinfoil realm.
Remember that if they were involved that it could kill their legacy and land them in jail. Also damage the chances of their heir.
It does always suprise me what stories the media unilaterally decides are legitimate and which are not. IRS corruption= not legitimate. Russia conspiracy fever dream= totally legitimate despite the absolute lack of evidence
And despite Hillary’s own commissioned book about her campaign describing how her campaign staff spent the day after the election concocting the entire story out of nothing in order to deflect blame for blowing the election to the Orange Menace.
Speaking of desk jobs – I was crippled for two weeks because of a lower back issue. I dont remember picking up anything unusually heavy or injuring myself. So I assumed its related to sitting in a chair, goldbricking, and reading glib comments all day (I certainly don’t comment much/at all). What’s worked for you desk jockeys to avoid and/or recover from this crap?
Heroin.
I’m going to have to second that comment. Heroin is probably your best bet
And don’t forget to take laxatives. Opioid induced constipation is no joke.
But it might be good for some laughs.
That’s a semi-myth for most people. You aren’t as regular but regular enough.
I know you think I’m going to suggest meth, but I’m going to suggest meth.
I’m a child of the ’70s.
Cocaine.
Tussin.
/high school RBS
Deadlifting. Seriously. The average person’s back is so unbelievable weak that anything can mess it up. Deadlifting will turn your lower back into steel.
So much this. Lifting in general basically made me invincible to the ailments of the modern office. Other than having to be there in the first place.
Except bench press. Consider leaving that out for awhile as office people are likely to have too tight pecs anyway.
Balance your benching with overhead pressing to fix the chest and shoulders. Thus spake Rippetoe.
Amen.
I remember putting Starting Strength on my amazon list after reading a thread at the old place. Is that still the standard?
Absolutely. Read the holy book and do the program. It will make you a beast.
It won’t hurt. If you don’t care to pay for all of the science and stuff, I think Stronglifts is a very similar program.
I was going to ask about that. I started going to the gym in May, but am intimidated by free weights.
That’s what I started on a few weeks back. Started with basically the bar (even though I’m pretty sure I was stronger than that in most exercises), and it seems good so far.
Unreconstructed: do you have a partner to spot you? Do you feel like you need one? This is not a pickup line, btw.
Pay for a few sessions with a trainer that knows what he/she is doing. Have them help you with form and you’ll be much more confident on your own.
I don’t as of now. Doing all but bench in the power rack at the gym, and since i started so low, my bench isn’t heavy enough to need a spotter yet. And I ain’t driving to Florida to work out, no matter how sexy you are.
Pay for a few sessions with a trainer that knows what he/she is doing. Have them help you with form and you’ll be much more confident on your own.
This is good advice. I think I’ll take it and start free weights after my summer trip.
It’s still quite good. Brett’s recommendation is also good and potentially better if you don’t want to fuck around with teaching yourself how to power clean. He also has a good book on programming once you put in your time with the basic program. (Starting Strength and Stronglifts are really intended to get you through the noob gains phase, ~6 months of consistent lifting).
I’d also consider looking at Wendler’s stuff. I like 5-3-1.
Wendler’s new book is great. He has a very solid “beginner” program in it that is more well rounded than SS.
Started a program involving overhead presses recently. It was…enlightening, to say the least, in terms of how freaking weak my shoulders are. Sad!
Stay with it! I never would have thought that lifting 100 lbs directly overhead would be a.) possible and b.) fairly easy to build up to. I’ve never been an upper body kind of guy so I definitely didn’t start off terribly strong.
No joke. Several years ago when I started the program I was a typical gym bro douchebag. I mainly benched, rowed, and did leg press (smdh). The first time I tried overhead pressing I failed on a set of 5 at 95 lbs. I was stunned. My current PR for overhead is 3 sets of 5 at 177.5 (which is still too low). It changes everything.
Yeah, I’m nowhere near that. I got past 5×5 with the bar only, then the second workout (with 5 lbs. added) killed me. Partially due to an old shoulder injury – massively torn left rotator cuff. I have to work to keep the bar from getting sideways on me due to the imbalance.
torn rotator cuff is a bitch. You’ll definitely wanna work up slowly. Make sure you squeeze the shit out of the bar. I always like the cue to try and leave fingerprints in the steel. The more you squeeze the more you recruit your forearms to help stabilize the bar.
I hadn’t heard that particular advice. I did notice on my last attempt at 50 lbs. that moving my grip in about -> <- that much made a huge difference.
I screwed up mu shoulders play rugby and can’t do heavy benchpresses. Now the overhead press is my go-to shoulder exercise after reading Rippetoe.
Was very excited a few weeks ago when I got to sets of 5 at 135 (a big-boy plate on either side). Now, according to Saint Rip, I have to start putting more weight on.
Awesome. Don’t give up on bench just yet though. A ton of shoulder problems in bench come from grip distance and form. Now that you’ve developed your shoulders with overhead, you could probably play around some with form on the bench and find a comfortable position.
I have some shoulder problems that I thought would keep me from benching but I’ve figured out how to work around them. I still can’t low bar squat (I know I know, I’m a high bar heretic) or do dips though without my right shoulder exploding.
Some days my shoulders are good and I’m low-bar squatting like a champ. Some days they have no interest and I end up doing a few high-bar then move on to other stuff.
I think it’s more: Loosen your chest muscles out while also doing Barbell Rows to build up your back. That’s your push pull pair for bench. Just like it’s pull ups and overhead press as a pair.
Rows are an accessory lift. By all means do them. But you work your back with deadlifts and pullups.
I developed absolutely horrendous lower back pain a couple years ago. I’m a web developer, and I sit at a desk for twelve hours a day. I have a terrible habit of sitting perched forward with my legs tucked back under the chair. Well, shocking, that apparently isn’t good for your back, and I wound up with the same weird ligament strain where the pelvis meets the spine that pregnant ladies get, which is painful and embarrassing when you describe it. It was so bad I couldn’t stand upright. Went to a doctor and got a ton of drugs, and eventually it subsided. It’s never gone away.
What seems to have helped me is a.) not sitting like a dumbass, and b.) kettlebell swings. It strengthens your entire core, but it’s particularly good for your back, and your position at the apex of the swing is basically the opposite of sitting, so it stretches all that out.
^THIS^
And maybe some reverse situps.
Stand downs?
*narrows gaze*
We need to muscle over here?
Fuck.
We need *some* muscle over here?
It’s for your own safety.
(The stand downs)
You can get some immediate relief by loosening up the lower back with cat stretches.
They look ridiculous but they work wonders for lower back pain. Do them early in the morning to get the blood flowing to that area. I do about 50 reps.
Totally unrelated, but it was in the list of videos up next
https://youtu.be/I1i1bYJ6VNc
It’s the same people who mess with the tigers in the tiger cage at the zoo.
*Gets irritated by unrealistically ripped muscle guy – starts watching yoga chicks from the side panel – migrates to bunk*
I had a David bowie high on coke video on the side bar. Was possibly one of the worst interviews I’ve ever seen dick cavett do.
I also recommend getting a dip / pull-up station. They’re only $100 or so – I’ve had some great strength gains doing dips and pull-ups.
That and the big 3 – Squats, Bench-Presses, and Deadlifts.
My garage is my workout room – two benches and the dip station. I would like to try and fit a cable machine in there next.
I have bulging discs in the lumbar region and have had episodes where I am immobilized for several days. After my chiropractor got me back to normal after the last one, I’ve been doing stretches and core exercises. Planking is supposed to be the best exercise but I also do other core exercises like bridging. There are a few good stretches, and if you’re not very flexible work on your hamstrings some too.
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WordPress destroyed my spacing. That’s supposed to be five words.
BZZZZT!
Survey says! Bzzt.
I can’t handle anything more potent than hydrocodone. I don’t find being nauseous and itchy all that fun.
What’s worked for you desk jockeys to avoid and/or recover from this crap?
I have found over the long years, that most of my back troubles seem to be belly-related, as in not doing enough strengthening exercises.
*I favor a modified crunch/ leg lifts
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It’s not “Fuck off, Slaver”.
I’m stumped.
because fuck you that’s why?
Take a screenshot of what you’re trying to do, and post that. Those are called gifscis, a portmanteau of gif (though can also be jpg) and ASCII.
Don’t ask me how to post pics. Magic edit faerie, please help.
This is OSU cool.
Literally me, too
For example, I have more trees in my yard than your average city park. Wildlife is constantly milling about in my backyard. The hipster urbanite can’t even fathom such a lifestyle
To those hipster urbanites, they consider you as part of the “asphalt horror that is suburban sprawl’. They think that the only cool place to live is in an apartment in a hip or upscale part of the big city (which, of course, has far more asphalt and concrete than the typical suburb). I’m always baffled by smug city people thinking the suburbs are like everyone living in a shopping mall. No, that’s where some people shop — our houses are out of sight behind all the trees and foliage, assholes.
p.s. does html tags not work via Chrome on this site? I can’t even get a simple italics to take hold. The > and <, etc tags disappear when I post, but no effects.
You know, if there was a preview button, I could sort this out. Maybe I need to go on IE?
em not i
strong not b
HTML 5 baby!
does this work?
Fuckin’ A! Thanks AlexinCT!
And also thanks thepasswordispassword!
Nutpunch of the day:
Las Vegas police officer is actually being prosecuted for choking a man to death. So what does the union do? Why, in addition to paying all his defense bills, they’ve raised $30,000 for the hero!
(Stupid single link requirement)
Meanwhile, cops are also very sad that they’re being scrutinized for what they do and might actually face punishment when they kill someone. The horror! The absolute horror!
WTF is it with cops choking people to death in public?
My girlfriends cousin had to quit the henderson police force because he called them on their bullshit and they bullied him out of the force.
Here’s a little lifehack from your friends at the Jersey City PD: when you come across a man engulfed in flames, the best thing you can do for him is to kick him in the face.
I had to last minute redo my school schedule last semester and I ended up getting stuck with Environmental Sociology. It was community college but it was 100℅ indoctrination. The books were pretty revealing, they essentially admit that they believe we are doomed no matter what and it isn’t worth trying to hard it’s mostly about washing of the original sin of being in an industrial country and paying religous like honor and sacrifice to nature. They admit in one book their is no hole in the ozone layer but it’s a justified lie to scare people into interest.
“Environmental Sociology”
Say what?
It’s what you and I would call “bullshit”.
I am fluent in a lot of languages, but derp speak is not one of them. Thanks for confirming however that my suspicions were right sir.
Assignments were reading books, making comments on newspaper articles related to his activism, writing about going outside and observing nature. The most shameless of all the assignments,a reoccurring assignment was we had to provide feedback on letters he wrote to newspapers and transcripts of his testimony to state and city officials. The glass began with an email saying that you had to believe in climate change to pass the class and if you don’t you should take a different class. I needed the credit and all the other classes were full , so I fake progged my way through the class.
And you actually passed? You’re a better person than I.
It’s not the worse class I have had to take. I took but didn’t finish Leisure and Liberal arts by this guy. The class was about how the world lost its way because of the Protestant work ethic and that the meaning of life can be found by studying the movie Groundhog Day. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Kline_Hunnicutt
*facepalm*
There is a ‘hole’ in the ozone, but we didn’t put it there.
Is anything going to actually come of the Seth Rich stuff, or was Kim Dotcom just bullshitting us?
No and yes.
So the heating coil in our dishwasher warped and burned a three-inch gash in the basin. I’m looking at potential fixes, and one suggestion is plumber’s putty. Anyone faced something similar?
My wife doesn’t have heating coils or basins. I’m afraid I can’t help you.
Damn you BG!.
But seriously, that place is gonna get hot, not sure that putty would hold up for very long. Would likely require some more extensive fabrication.
A new dishwasher?
And why does your wife have a heating coil in the first place.
Duct tape? j/k
JB Weld?
This is a very good explanation of what’s wrong with the modern “prestige” media. They really serve little/no value in terms of promoting the public interest. They mostly just excel at finding trivial tabloid news, and tarting it up to seem important to ‘smart’ people. Or they simply use tabloid methods with ostensibly ‘real news’ sources; where they’re effectively gossip columns surrounding the halls of power = reporting “he said/she said” stories which may have little impact on practical issues in the lives of voters but which satisfy a tribal voyeurism which desires to see cultural enemies brought down.
You literally read almost nothing about *facts* in places where real things are happening.
How much do you know about the US contribution to the current fighting in Mosul, Raqqa, for instance?
What is the state of public finances in US municipalities that have long-faced major pension crises?
What happened to all those 1000s of people that Erdogan arrested in the wake of his coup-attempt?
yadda yadda yadda
when they do report on real-world events, its usually because they *have* to; very rarely is there any bother to follow up with what happens to those subjects beyond the first hot-take. and if they do, its usually when someone else does the labor of reporting, which they (the ‘prestige media’) simply piggy back on.
a quick google for updates on fighing in Raqqa – and i noticed that most of the reporting is being done by UK media sources. Probably the same 1-2 stringers.
fuck, that’s twice today.
On a serious note, I suspect plumber’s putty would work. It’s what seals the drain to your sink, so it should handle the heat and be water tight, and before it dries it’s malleable, so shaping it to fill the gap should be reasonably easy.
Clear Silicone caulk, like you use for showers and windows. Waterproof, food safe once it cures. Good up to 300° F, and may be available in a more heat resistant formula.
Next time spend the extra money for a steel tub dishwasher, you won’t regret it.
Easy fix for dishwasher. Look under your sink. See the little copper or plastic pipe attached to the cold water valve? Turn the handle on the valve to off. Pull your dishwasher out of the cabinet and disconnect the other end of that little line from the back of the dishwasher. Disconnect the drain hose also. Put the dishwasher on the curb for the garbage collectors. It is a huge waste of energy and doesnt wash anything anyway. Build shelves in the space the dishwasher used to waste.
CBS News just stated that the Trump/Russia investigation just keeps getting bigger.
“It started out as just this one thing and has just kept spiraling into something larger” said Scottt Pelly. (or his pencil-necked guest. Doesn’t matter since they were in total agreement)
Really? Bigger? Just because you people keep adding third-rate mineral oil to the fog farting machine that keeps spewing this shit doesn’t mean you’ve produced a single piece of evidence of anything you creepoid tonguers of cadaverous rectums.
Even though Comey said he wasn’t under investigation, it still will never end.
At this point they’ve invested too much in this fevered dreamed conspiracy. They’ll have to admit that they’ve done a lot of sloppy work over the past five months and that most of them are just partisan hacks. The American people are right not to trust them
It’s about disrupting his (frankly anyone’s) ability to govern and to feed red meat to the masses which would certainly implode if they were to realize they are stuck with Trump for the next 4 years, and likely with the left going derp double down, even longer. The alternative is to admit they are stupid, their ideology is defective and dangerous, and that the ruling class is a bunch of inept and corrupt douches that led to a blowhard like trump.
I had a talk with a relative who, despite being the typical obnoxious Canadian lefty, almost got why Trump was elected when I spoke to him in December. By March he was talking about how there’s got to be some kind of connection to the Russian. I asked him what could that connection be or what evidence do you have to support that, and he said nothing, but there’s definitely some kind of connection to the Russians that they’ll eventually find.
Reality doesn’t matter, the narrative has been set. It’s like arguing with 9/11 Truthers, they have a pre-determined view that is not going to change.
Jesus these people are stupid. What kind of 8D chess is Russia playing? So they use their evil genius to The Donald elected in order to lose their natural gas business in Europe?
E
SMDH
There would at least be an argument to be made that Russia could have been behind the DNC leak in order to expose Clinton and delegitimize her Presidency early on. But that’s the key thing there, the Clinton Presidency, i.e. they expected her to win and were trying to damage her political power early on to reel her in. That’s at least a move that benefits them. There’s no logic or reason to some big nefarious plot between Trump and Putin.
And, hilariously, their gambit paid off in spades by giving us a thoroughly delegitimized Trump presidency… mostly because Dems are dancing to Putin’s tune.
And bomb their ally in Syria, while isolating their client in Iran. The whole conspiracy doesn’t correspond with reality
Exactly. What on earth does Russia get out of this deal?
The Donald isn’t that good of a negotiator.
The media would get at least some small shred of credibilty back if they would just STOP FUCKING LYING.
But the insist on pouring more gasoline on their own roaring dumpster fire.
And they’re completely ignoring that the president can start or stop any DOJ investigation he wants. Trump might not have known that at the time of his ill-considered dinner with Comey so maybe he did want it stopped and thought Comey would go along. And that, perhaps, looks bad. But it doesn’t matter since he has the power no amount of hinting around or even implications of promises or threats would constitute obstruction.
That takes me back to many hours spent in the great Tenth Street Russian Turkish Baths.
I didn’t vote for Trump and I don’t recall saying anything positive about him during the campaign so it’s weird and off-putting to find myself on his side.
I still think he is a conman and cronyist who doesn’t give a shit about anything other than Trump Inc. and all his political positions are therefore insincere, but damn does he not get the left riled up and thus they expose themselves for who they really are and are now even more quickly on a path to self-destruction. And that’s something I support so there I am lined up with the Trumpsters of the world.
Strange bedfellows, indeed.
I’m long past the point where I’m openly rooting for the guy just because I enjoy watching the Left go utterly bonkers.
I’m pretty much where you are. Voted for Gary despite my disappointment in him and my hatred of Weld, but I am taking misanthropic delight in the agonies of the left.
Is anything going to actually come of the Seth Rich stuff,
Nah. The DC police will make sure the investigation goes nowhere. There may be nowhere for it to go, that it really was the vanishingly rare random, motiveless murder. But, regardless, it will go nowhere.
Ask Vince Foster if he ever got justice 🙂
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-welch-comey-testimony-trump-20170608-story.html
I’m throwing this out there. It’s written by a certain editor of a certain publication of which we are all aware. It’s a good article.
Well if we’re to take Comey at his word that Trump was dancing on the edge of obstruction of justice, why didn’t he tell Trump at the time? If I hired an accountant and I wanted to move some money around in a way that was illegal, unbeknownst to my ignorant self, and then the accountant files a complaint about me to the IRS instead of telling me the error of my ways, then I guess I’d hired the wrong accountant and I have every reason to fire him and probably slash his tires for my trouble.
The hipster urbanite can’t even fathom such a lifestyle, but instead stays insulated in their urban jungle, so they have to assuage their guilt by nagging everybody else.
I wonder why conservationism, and later environmentalism, only emerged following rapid urbanization.
Because once people are well fed they have time to worry about other stuff?
I was going more for ‘urbanites romanticize the fuck out of nature, but throw them out into say, my neck of the woods and they start whining about mosquitos’.
The old South Park rain forest episode is particularly illustrative.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Its easy to romanticize nature from a safe distance; putting down cows that were half-eaten (from the back end) by coyotes after delivering a calf gives you a different take on nature – less “fluffy bunny”, more “red in tooth and claw”. Its also easy to lose perspective on just how much completely undeveloped land there is, and how much wildlife adapts to suburban and exurban environments.
Deer parasites are, in my experience, a great way to de-romanticize the wilderness. Some city type sees a maggots crawl out of a deer’s nose and suddenly the natural world is a harsh and horrific place.
Watching The Revenant was a handy reminder. I started out marveling at the natural beauty, but it doesn’t take long before you realize how brutal and unforgiving nature is.
Consider that stolen. Also on an unrelated note, if you need someone to proof-read your uncopyrighted first draft, keep me in mind!