Happy Thursday. And Happy Birthday to my younger son. I’m really going to miss the high-stakes charades when he starts talking.
Does a bear shit in your car? Only when he steals it first. Griz needs to have a talk with some of his fellows about car theft etiquette.
Does everything have to be a criminal case? I mean, do we need to give these two idiots felonies, or could the neighborhood just share the information that they aren’t safe babysitters and let their parents deal with them? What the two teens did was stupid and dangerous, but it is weird how people who aren’t mature enough to sign contracts or get tattoos or buy cigarettes are suddenly required to have all of the adult tools when they do something dangerous out of ignorance, not malice. While ignorance should be no defense against actual harm, I don’t think this rises to that standard.
I checked the timeline again, and I’m pretty sure the WWII bomb was on the premises before the nuclear plant was built at Fukishima.
I hope the members of the Eighth Circuit get beaten by public officials on the courthouse steps and can’t produce evidence to prove it. In a free speech ruling that contradicts six other federal circuit courts, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a district court ruling that says Americans do not have a first amendment right to videotape the police, or any public official, in public.
In the good news department, there may be Earth analogues only 12 light years away. Hopefully, there are two. We’ll set up Libertopia on one and Commietopia on the other and see who’s resorted to cannibalism in the first century.
And in the interest of preventing a schism we are featuring this, uh, “local news” story about a man acquitted of assaulting police officers by absorbing their blows with his body. We don’t think this person is related to any of our commenters, but Pope Jimbo sent it, and we don’t want him to release those tapes of the last meetup.
Sloopy and I were talking about Matt Damon’s best work as an actor.
Comments
503 responses to “Thursday Afternoon Links”
Not first?
Nah uh, doesn’t count. You didn’t comment on the links or something.
I could have talked about myself — and be first.
Did you poop in someone’s car?
The police are still looking for the man who did this.
Relevant.
<— Looks innocently skyward
You really need to work on your self-esteem.
Watch the pen movements of the prog journalist, whose bubble is so opaque that the New York Times is a center-right publication.
I saw this before and I didn’t understand their rating system. I guess they voted the NYT center-right because they’ve never read the WSJ (because that would ‘literally be violence’).
They only mentioned the NYT’s editorial page.
Because the WSJ editorial page is triggering
On Ben Shapiro, they write “an aging College Republican with an endless list of grievances.”
Proggie lack of self-awareness #?
I wondered if they thought he was still in college or something.
Well, I skimmed the rest of the site: are they actually progs or equal-opportunity?
The one bashing of a leftist that I see on their page is for Eichenwald, but that’s likely because he makes it too easy for the right to beat up the left. It’s then erased by saying that the left’s hate for Sarsour is because of ISLAMOPHOBIC BIGOTS!
Let’s be fair, maybe they lack self-awareness because they still think that they’ve been in HS for 10 years. Be gentle.
wow.
“However, the energy not spent calling for nuclear strikes on Iran is instead devoted to berating a fallen society for rejecting traditional Catholic values.”
There description of the American Conservative is spot on. And I don’t see anything wrong with it
*Their
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/10/aha-manafort-told-feds-donald-jrs-meeting-russian-lawyer/
8 dimensional hungry, hungry, hippos at work. Paul Manafort ratted out Trump Jr.’s meeting with the Russian lawyer to the Feds. Either Manafort did something sleazy and he’s covering his ass or…no that’s probably it.
Do you think there are people who honestly believe all of this will eventually end up with Hillary being declared president?
Yes, there are dumb people in this world
Wait, she’s not?
Didn’t Manafort attend that meeting? If so, it would make sense for him to disclose.
Fine, how bout this: Our country is no longer run by rule of law as courts and judges can make up whatever the fuck they want on the stop and say FYTW.
the cops protect them so they protect the cops.
Speaking of protecting cops, and to corpse fuck this thread: Texas has decided that assaulting an officer will now be considered a hate crime.
well, one won’t have a law against eating human flesh. Fucking anarchists.
Hey as long as the corpses weren’t procured via murder, and the deceased’s inheritors are cool with it, and you don’t mind a little kuru….
no murder, no problem!
Don’t eat the brain and you’re fine.
“Just gonna get a little kuru, Stan. Tell Mom it’s ok.”
Don’t eat the brain and spinal tissue and you’ll be fine.
Hilarious that Florida Man and SugarFree are the voices of reason on cannibalism. xD
We think about the future. We plan ahead.
All we need is someone from the Eastern CA/Western NV area and we’d have the American Cannibalism Trifecta
Cannibalism is not the last resort, it’s the first.
White meat or dark meat? Don’t be a racist…
Fun fact: The only dark meat on a human is the calf muscle.
They’re not chicken legs! Its hard to put on muscle there!
An Irish economist wrote a book called “Eating People is Wrong”. Cormac o Grada. I think it was his Streisand is about famines. Well done, but horrifying.
Thesis, fuckin autocorrect
That is, ironically, quite metal.
Bravo, auto-correct, you devious bastard.
“People who eat people are the unluckiest people in the world.”
What about space roadz?
Did you see any roads in Firefly?
Not sure, I was a little distracted by Inara.
Pffft. Kaylee all the way.
I bet you are a Ginger fan boi too
Drinking already?
Besides, the answer to the Ginger/Mary Ann conundrum is clearly ‘threesome’.
“Embrace the healing power of ‘and’,” amirite?
Jeeze. I’m guessing none of you have ever been with a warrior woman.
No love for Zoe. Way harsh.
She’s married. Already taken.
And bad luck.
Spoiler: she’s a widow.
Hence the bad luck designator 😉
Watch James Franco’s befuddling interview with a Princeton philosophy professor on the topic of abortion. See, the moral status of a fetus is contingent on whether or not it “has a future”:
I don’t know, man. Maybe stick with “my body, my choice.”
A dumber argument in defense of abortion has never been made
What about “My body, my choice”?
Still a better argument than “in hindsight, you’re a human”
I don’t understand. Who said that?
That’s the woman’s argument. She’s a Princeton philosophy professor and she argues that your humanity is defined by whether or not you have a future. Ergo, if you are aborted you had no humanity, because you had no future. If you watch the video, she gets stumped by…James Franco.
Sounds like Princeton is definitely worth the 240,000 for a 4-year degree.
James Franco should have smiled and taken off his clothes instead. That would have been smarter.
Does anyone remember the old sketch on “In Living Colour” where Damon Wayans is a prison inmate and gives these talks using big complex words and phrases, but uses them incorrectly and thus sounds like a a doofus? This feels similar to me.
You mean Oswald Bates?
I believe, as the would say, YYYAASSSS!!!!!
Frustrated with Trump, McCain promotes his own Afghan plan
“Old man with half a brain insists everyone else doing things wrong, insists a few whacks with this hammer is all problem needs”
Other ‘plans’ with the letter “d” were also said to be involved.
(…………..)
Why not just delete them?
You know, every so often he says something and it takes me back to the time he spoke to a number of us while I was in high school. I kind of regret not throwing something heavy at him when I had the chance.
I thought the above expression “less constrained” should have been linked to this
i mean, we’re totally fighting with handcuffs on
So we’re only up to Plan D now?
Launch attack plan R.
Plan Nine, the resurrection of the dead
Other ‘plans’ with the letter “d” were also said to be involved.
You know who else had a plan for their D?
Chelsea Manning?
Pat Riley?
Tenacious?
HARMAN: Another thing that you were bringing up was the idea that, in my view, in aborting we’re taking away the moral status that the fetus would have had moral status, but by aborting we take it away, and I think that’s the wrong way to look at it.
see, it’s all how you look at it. you neanderthals are just seeing abortion wrong.
This is all starting to remind me of gun control. The more people twist themselves into knots to try to justify depriving someone of natural rights, it pushes me further toward absolutism.
if we know that a woman is planning to get an abortion, and we know that abortion is available to her, then we know that fetus is going to die—that it’s not the kind of thing like the fetuses that became us. It’s not something with moral status, in my view.
C’mon, tell me that’s not peak derp. He’s basically saying that if a woman wants to abort a fetus, that’s OK because the fetus will never be a person, because the woman wants to abort it, which is OK because the fetus will never be a person, etc. ad nauseum.
She’s a Princeton philosophy professor and she argues that your humanity is defined by whether or not you have a future.
So, if I want to kill someone, they won’t have a future, because I want to kill them, which is OK because they won’t have a future because I want to kill them?
No point my wading in when she’s already destroying her own position.
Apparently, some if not all states ask a woman for the father’s name if she’s asking for government cheese for her kid. The state has an obvious financial incentive to do so since collecting child support payments from the father (or any warm body nearby) will theoretically reduce the cost to taxpayers of supporting the kid. Stories pop up with some regularity about what happens when the woman names the wrong man (accidentally or intentionally) or when the state decides that some random guy is the father.
To comply with the limitations on links, I’ll just give some names and descriptions of some of these cases that have stuck in my head.
1. Nick Olivas: Arizona man who was 14 when he had sex with a 20-year-old woman. She got pregnant (unbeknownst to him). Under Arizona law, he was the victim of statutory rape and could not consent to sex. However, when she asked for government money and named him, the state ordered him to pay. He made it worse by not responding to notices, but still. This article about him also talks about similar Kansas and California situations where the response of the states was the same: fuck you, pay me.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/02/statutory-rape-victim-child-support/14953965/
2. Tony Pierce: California man who was mistakenly named the father. The old site covered this one back in 2004 in the article, “Injustice by Default.” California’s response to the error: fuck you, pay me.
3. From earlier this year, an Oklahoma man identified only as Thomas was ordered to pay child support for a kid that DNA showed wasn’t his. His problem was that he waited 3 years to test the kid, and the state only permits a challenge within 2 years of birth.
4. William Marotta: Kansas man who donated his goo to a lesbian couple. One of the woman successfully used it to conceive. She later asked for government money and named him as the father. Because he hadn’t gone through the government-approved channels to donate goo, the state decided he was on the hook for child support.
These are all cases, though, where the state had some idea (or thought it did) of who the father was.
My question is how long it will be before the state starts doing a DNA test of every child where the mother claims to not know who the father is, and then comparing that information to CODIS (national database of DNA samples collected from arrested/convicted individuals) and information subpoenaed from insurance companies and companies like 23andMe. Why let those deadbeat dads and their sweet, sweet lucre go unclaimed just because the mother didn’t provide the name?
Also, there is going to be some serious hilarity when they start using CODIS for comparing DNA. Idiocracy is going to look optimistic. It wouldn’t surprise me either if there is a high frequency of the real dad’s DNA being in CODIS in cases where the “father” does a paternity test and discovers it’s not his kid.
From this site: a person who was never asked if he wanted anything to do with a kid and was told by the court that he would be paying whether he wanted to or not but that if the woman chose, she would have been free to rid herself of all obligations any time she wanted up until a couple months before giving birth.
A man’s orgasm is a powerful thing: once it happens, he no longer has any say about what happens and is transformed into an ambulatory wallet.
Way to other cripples with bastard kids, shitlord.
I larfed
ambulatory wallet
That’s my ex wife’s nickname for me. Also “remote ATM.”
silver lining: organ donors!
Does anyone here think that the government should enforce child support at all?
I don’t see any “libertarian case” for the institution of mandatory child support. I think that in a perfect world, marriage would be a private contract between individuals that is enforceable in court, and that contract would have to stipulate any alimony or child support that would be paid in the event of a divorce. If the woman wants to be paid child support if they split, she should have it written into the contract.
If a woman gets pregnant when she’s not married, I don’t see how she has any claim to the man’s money. It’s common knowledge that sex causes babies, and there are tons of options for mitigating the baby issue – making the guy put on a condom, using an IUD, getting one of those contraceptive shots, getting on the pill, or giving the baby up for adoption.
Women already have a bit more power when it comes to accidental babies; they can completely override the father’s wishes and have the child adopted out or aborted. “My body, my choice” seems to imply some kind of responsibility that goes along with it.
I don’t see any “libertarian case” for the institution of mandatory child support.
Implied contract? You agree to bang the broad, you get to take the consequences, including the kid.
Of course, this will never fly because it can be used to undercut the right to an abortion.
The argument would go: pregnancy and childbirth are a known risk/consequence of sex that you willingly take on when you have sex. Having willingly taken on this risk and the consequence, it isn’t just “your body, your choice”, its “your choices, your responsibilities”. And if contractual responsibility for the child is irrevocably imposed on the man, why wouldn’t it be irrevocably imposed on the woman?
You could also argue that, consist with ordinary contract law, the man should be allowed to declare an anticipatory breach while the woman is pregnant (saying he won’t pay child support) and mitigate any damages for breaching the contract, such as by offering to pay for an abortion, or by requiring the woman to have an abortion.
The basis for child support, though, is that it is for the benefit of the child. Since the child doesn’t care who pays, this basis would also be consistent with randomly assigning child support responsibilities to people in general. When your principled justification for something easily allows absurd results, though, maybe its time to revisit the underlying principle.
There should be a good welfare joke here, but it’s too late in the day for me to formulate it.
I will happily volunteer to be on the first flight off this rock to colonize another planet.
Thanks to the 8th circuit, they can jail the person who made the video instead.
So I guess I’ll take the video cameras off my building since I might accidentally record a police car driving past or a mailman delivering the mail.
The other tasty detail was that the officers turned their body cameras off until after the beating.
So when his civil suit comes to trial, the status of the body cams can be used to show the mens rea of the government thugs. They intended to administer a beating when they left the stands.
Also, the government used the fact that he was criminally charged as part of their defense against the civil suit. Of course, based on the facts of the criminal case, it looks like he was charged because of his complaint. So maybe he should look to up that $75k number.
The bad news is that one of them is made entirely of “New Jersey”.
We’d explain how they determined that, but its very very complex science which involves a previously undiscovered exit on the turnpike.
Exit 9 3/4?
They’re considering just calling it the “Bon Jovi Rest Stop”
Can you imagine Diagon Alley in Jersey? Dodge the guidos, move around the dead body, step over the pile of hobo shit, and touch your wand to a brick on the right dilapidated shithole
“Oh, my God. Get in the ship, sweetie. Get in the goddamn ship!! Everything’s on a cob!! The whole planet’s on a cob!! Go, go, go!!”
Love that show… but I still don’t understand why you’d choose this over that… I mean, they hunt the only pig to extinction and make a single pan of bacon out of it.
If you had pigs on a cob, imagine all the bacon…
The creators explain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCnq7cM7aLg
Yeah I remember on their commentary tracks they were complaining about how ‘Millennials’ constantly ask them about the cobs and they always have the same response.
“On that planet, The Holocaust was on a cob. Think about that.”
We’ll set up Libertopia on one and Commietopia on the other and see who’s resorted to cannibalism in the first century.
see also: Salt by Adam Roberts.
Matt Damon‘s best work.
And that lead me to this
Still occasionally some good stuff over there.
That was absolutely…awesome. Thanks.
We’ll set up Libertopia on one and Commietopia on the other and see who’s resorted to cannibalism in the first century.
Consensual cannibalism?
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the Juan.
So…
Mexicans, pot, and butt sex?Because we ran out?
NPR declares that they know better than the NFL and the only reason Colin Kapernick doesn’t have a team is racism. Plus all his friends say so:
The only reason he was any good is Dom Capers.
Wonder what NPR’s position on Michael Vick?
*head explodes*
Or Joe Mixon.
Nothing says “racism” like teams made up of 70% minorities.
Yeah but that’s just because they’re all Uncle Toms who aren’t woke and praise Castro like Kapernick.
narrative uber alles.
God, you would call a plantation “not racist” because majority of people living on it were black!
/prog in my head
I believe medieval Europe had a good medical solution to that problem. I’ll get my tools.
It’s leaches right?
“Nothing says “racism” like teams made up of 70% minorities.”
just sprinkle in some C.T.E.
How many NPR contributors or listeners have actually sat through a full football game?
I think many, though they would make sure to tell you that they are speaking of “real” football.
Does the superbowl count?
“I watch for the commercials”
Curse your nimble fingers!
Though it was you who played the viola, no…?
Yeah, in school. Obviously I wasn’t any good.
No, because they are watching the funny commercials and the halftime show featuring Beyoncé.
Yeppers. Here’s his QB rating from 2015. BTW, you’ll need to scroll down, if you didn’t know that already.
He’s been on a decline, and ignoring a few standout games, he returns to the lower middle of starters. That was 3 years ago.
Two years ago, Doom. The ‘2017’ season hasn’t started yet. I missed him on the 2016 list first time I checked, but he’s there, and his pass numbers are still shit.
I don’t care if he wants to kneel during the SSB; I simply vehemently disagree with the idea that the only reason no one wants him is politics. Muhammad Ali’s politics were FAR more radical than his, but people still paid to see him, because he was good. The same cannot be said about CK.
Also, robc, why aren’t you here giving me shit about Tebow? We’re talking about another running QB who can’t pass.
BTW, re-watched LOTR over the weekend, and was glad there was no Tom Bombadil.
I need to be more positive. It looks like the homeless problem in Seattle may be taking care of itself.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/drug-use-deaths-hit-record-high-in-king-county/
Don’t worry, Seattle city council is working hard trying to replenish those ranks.
And then there’s this:
Congrats!
In other news, the fishermen around Seattle have stopped using worms and have started baiting their hooks with Cheetos.
Sloopy and I were talking about Matt Damon’s best work as an actor.
Here is my vote.
My vote
https://twitter.com/MikeMadden/status/895741591318663169
MAGA
Me to some friends earlier today: “I’m just going to assume from now on that anything with just a Twitter link is actually idiots doing free advertising for people they hate”
This is a good one. Journey is going to break-up over Trump. He’s making American great again. Without Steve Perry, they’re just a cover band
With him they were just a shitty band.
Don’t Stop Believing, Tundra…
I guess there were no redeeming qualities to Journey
Steve Perry started touring with another band; his ability to sing those songs was extinct.
The Philippino guy that they discovered on youtube is much much better.
I work with that guy’s sister. At least that’s what she claims.
I’m just going to assume from now on that anything with just a Twitter link is idiots.
OMG! People may rent their extra rooms to Super Bowl tourists in an unregulated market!!!
St. Paul and Minneapolis are trying to get their hooks into AirBnB before the Super Bowl gets here.
Maybe the answer is that no one should have to be licensed or inspected or subject to caps? I really hope the Biladeaus don’t try to take advantage of the poor tourists coming to see the SB by raising their rates that week. That would be gouging and wrong and I’m sure there is a law against it.
Cool coffee table brah, don’t get it wet.
I had a friend rent his apartment in downtown Houston on SB weekend for the cost of his monthly rent back in… 2002? Whenever it was Houston’s turn back then.
Definitely the answer is that there shouldn’t be regulation governing the commerce of people choosing where they want to stay. I understand the negative impact on a business though by the regulators picking and choosing who gets regulated and who doesn’t.
There is an argument that the more people that are exposed to the inanity of these regulations, the greater the push for deregulation (e.g., one path to ending the draft is forcing women to have skin in the game instead of sitting back handing out yellow flowers to the poor son of bitches who have managed to delay enslavement).
Every year, in a small town in Georgia, in early April with the azaleas in bloom, some people play a few rounds of golf… Many locals in Augusta use Masters week to rent out their houses and they can make a pretty penny, to be sure.
Pam Biladeau said it’s only fair to operations like hers that Airbnb hosts face the same rules.
Sounds to me like it would be only fair that her B&B be subject to the same rules as hotels.
Pretty soon you won’t be able to have dinner guests without the proper papers.
Here in NYC, our beloved masters™ are waaay ahead of you.
…the poor tourists coming to see the SB…Poor? You know how much those tickets cost?
Bill O’Reilly to Appear on CNN for the First Time
I think it would be awesome if in the middle of his interview he just took out a handful of $100 bills and blew his nose with them. Or he insisted on asking them questions like, “How did you manage to keep your ratings so much lower than mine for so many years?”
That… would be… fucking. AWESOME!
My hate of O’Reilly would disappear forever.
If papa bear doesn’t troll the shit out of them I will be sorely disappointed.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-trump-won-in-two-dimensions-1502320256
The Wall Street Journal proclaims that there is no libertarian moment and there never will be. For those who don’t subscribe, the summary: only 3.8% of voters are fiscally conservative and socially liberal (though, I so loathe that description). The most popular sentiment is fiscally liberal and socially…..conservative. Make way for the Catholic Party
Eddie’s getting turned on….
The Catholics have been working hard to get a grip on the youth. They’ve got great penetration in that market
phrasing!
Paging Swiss Servator. Swiss Servator to the white courtesy phone.
Can libertarians match Deus Vult for meme power?
“Fuck off slaver” is pretty good, but it probably doesn’t sound as good in Latin.
“Non serviam.”
Your penance will be 10 Hail Negroni’s.
When Cardinal Burke is elected president you won’t be laughing then.
Just grunting and sweating?
Then the Papists can get back to what they do best: setting Protestants on fire.
“Cold is God’s way of telling us to burn more Catholics”
/Lady Whiteadder
*narrows gaze*
I so loathe that description
I do too. I prefer fiscally libertarian and socially libertarian.
+1
“Fiscal conservative and social liberal” is used by people as a stated preference whose revealed preference is “liberal.”
The problem is that libertarians have been built up some kind of boogeyman in liberal circles. I mean, I can hang with SoCons, to them I’m the conservative who wants to legalize weed. I’m a heathen, but I’m a somewhat acceptable heathen.
When you start hanging with the the Cosmotarian crowd, having a few drinks while watching some transgender burlesque show, and your friends start to ask you why you don’t prog harder.
It’s hard to tell them “Hey let your freak flag fly, so long as nobody is getting hurt it’s all good. Also I think that school choice is probably the best option to end disparities between affluent suburban districts and inner city-school districts. Also reforming the tax code so that American companies can bank their foreign profits without dealing with a hostile IRS is one of Trump’s better suggestions.”
I would be beat to death with a pillowcase full of bikelocks for talking heresy, so ‘fiscally conservative, socially liberal,’ it is.
I ran into a closeted libertarian at a party earlier this year. She was a former democratic aid at the state legislature in FL. She brought up several libertarian hot-button issues in casual conversation, but when she started in on hair braiding licensing, I told her she was sounding dangerously like a libertarian.
She violently disagreed. In fact she made a show of shunning me for merely mentioning that she sounded libertarian (having not mentioned any of my own views). With her background, she knew that being labeled a libertarian was worse than being out as a member of the klan.
But she was, without doubt, a down-the-line libertarian. I doubt she’ll vote for anything other than statist progressives for the next several years though. She was only around 30. She needs a few more years of “libertarianism happens to you” before she’ll be able to shed that proggie cloak that allows her to mingle safely at parties.
But but but muh Gallup poll!
WSJ is a bunch of goober bullies is what they are!
TW: TSTSNBN
Define “Libertarian”
Not Nick
(dammit, my first response fell to the “you got logged out, screw your typing” feature)
That was really good. Well written, calmly argued, not using horribly failed analogies or 40+ year pop references…
He should have mentioned that IF (if if if IF) Breibart ‘anonymous insider’ articles aren’t fabrication, what the guy did is not unusual or coming out of nowhere. Blathering on about diversity and shit happens every day over at Google, employees get spammed by it several times a day, they have group meetings to discuss it, and they keep claiming they want more engagement from the employees. So guy writes a “OK, our diversity efforts aren’t working, and I think the reasons why are these” and he gets fired. It has a faint whiff of entrapment: “We want you to express yourself. So we know if you need purging or re-education.”
“Let 100 flowers bloom”
A Wonderful Advertisement For Nationalized Healthcare
“So you don’t know if they’re doing the job that they’re expected to do.”
Oh, I think we know.
I got an odd email this afternoon. Apparently the OIG inadvertently came across some language in 38 USC § 3683 stemming from their investigation of a Psychologist in Shreveport that was hired by several online universities to teach classes. The long and short of the investigation was that teaching at a for-profit university is a conflict of interest. That and she was doing it from her .gov computer which is technically misuse of public property…blah,blah,blah….
The odd email? Apparently when OIG was investigating they noticed a strict interpretation of 38 USC § 3683 meant that it is a conflict of interest for a VA Employee to even attend a for-profit university. Which can result in immediate dismissal.
Apparently, University of Phoenix is pure evil.
Proof of misuse: forwarding emails containing meeting dates/times to herself (presumably so that that she wouldn’t have a conflict) and responding to an email saying she’d respond when she wasn’t at work. Burn her!
Oh, 38 USC § 3683
VA Counsel’s response is actually sort of reasonable:
I am a little disturbed though that that’s an option- a government entity can simply ignore the clearly written law because it’s an ass.
The issue they’re having is they would have to fire a lot of people.
Wait, what’s the problem again?
*shrugs*
You got me.
In context*, its clear that “receive services from” is intended to capture in-kind remuneration. So even the “permissive” OIG interpretation is wrong. The statute doesn’t apply to taking courses at a for-profit university, provided you pay the going rate. They managed to both open the door to improper in-kind remuneration, and leave a threat of future enforcement hanging over people who just take classes.
*and remember, Meaning comes from context.
Knowledge isn’t remuneration*?
Regardless of how one interprets the meaning, I’ll be busy making sure everyone gets their waiver in to cover their ass. When I say they would have to fire a lot of people, we’re talking around half of the support staff. Its sort of a unintended consequence of giving preference to hire Vets, many just working here while working on their degree in their off time.
*I’m kidding
In Niven’s SF, both Plateau (“A Gift From Earth”) and Avalon (“Legacy of Heorot”) were around Tau Ceti.
I didn’t remember that Plateau was that close to Earth. I would have guessed from the story lines that it was further away than some of the other colonies.
I think LoH would make a good ~3 season show. Develop the cast of characters a bit more, especially during season 1 and 2. In season 3, you are mostly gonna kill them off anyway.
isn’t this guy the new White House Press Secretary?
This isn’t getting as much coverage as it should.
https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/
I saw that. Surprised it was published in The Nation. Saw some conservatives push back on the article saying their evidence is unconvincing.
Somebody’s about to get mugged.
-1 Seth Rich
Too soon.
So the russians had volunteers for the DNC! Trump got them hired there!
It was Trump, not Hillary that orchestrated the DNC ass-raping of Bernie. – tomorrows nyt headline.
Things the news media have ignored this week
1 – the fact that Loretta Lynch lied under oath to congress when she said “she only used official-email when doing govt business”
2 – the most basic facts of the DNC “hack” should have led reporters months ago to conclude that there was no hack at all, and that it was a leak by people inside the organization.
Until they turn that server over to the FBI and the FBI confirms it was hacked from the outside, it is an ALLEGED Hack.
unless i’m mistaken, the fbi duped everything so that isn’t necessary.
You’re mistaken. They duped Hillary’s private server she was using for all of her state department business.
Well, by “duped”, I mean they took what she gave them and did what they could with the parts that had been scouted with bleachbit.
I don’t think they ever got their hands on the DNC server.
Sorry – it wasn’t the FBI; it was the private security company (Crowdstrike) the DNC hired that made dupes of the server.
the comments are just talking about google fiber.
This isn’t my area. Wouldn’t the NC need to be on fiber as well as the ‘hacker’ for that to still be plausible?
*DNC
You’d need a very fat pipe between the DNC server and where ever you copied the data to.
with no one using the same pipe.
And no degradation in speed, which would definitely happen o. A fiver from D.C. To Moscow, which is where the left claims the hack came from.
It’s a fucking house of cards. The media is propping it up.
That’s my understanding. His download speed would only be as fast as the slowest link.
yes, and even then most likely not. I get 300mbps internet where I live and I can rarely break 20mbps sustained downloads off of file sharing sites which use multiple hosts simultaneously. It’s absolute garbage. Unless the NSA or some other high level agency did the hack themselves, it was an inside job.
Right. my DL speeds are always slower than advertised. Not to the point where I call them slow, but it moves a lot.
I imagine (likely incorrectly) that stuff in the DNC servers isn’t supposed to be taken, and that would go slower than when I get a game on steam, who wants to give me that data.
And, of course, these “hackers” would have also been doing various things to hide their identity and location. All of which would decrease download speed.
18 stops through VPNs and then a nice quick trip under the ocean to Russia.
Not exactly, but when you download a steam game or hit a torrent you’re actually pulling from multiple servers simultaneously, whereas this ‘hack’ would be done on one targeted machine which severely limits the data transfer rate.
At least I knew I was wrong.
Imagine a locked door. It takes more work to get through that door, but once you’re inside it’s no faster to walk in and out of the doorway then if someone let you in.
I’ve been thinking for a while that “Guccifer 2.0” was quite possibly an attempt to point the finger away from an internal link, and at the Russians instead.
Internal leak*
I never knew what to think of Guccifer. It didn’t make sense. Timing and all and my distrust of everyone involved. I could never put it together like the writer of the story, but it just did not smell right. I remember thinking back when what he had was released and it was reported as “obviously Russian” seemed a bit too obvious if you know what I mean. The Russians aren’t smart enough to take off their headers? Ya, that is believable. I am leaning toward Crowdstrike=Guccifer.
Maybe I should be checking my Reddit inbox more often. This was something I got in response to telling the guy that he was letting Trump supporters live in his head rent free, which he sent 15 days ago:
Or… Maybe I shouldn’t bother checking more often. Probably will keep doing that.
Yeah, best of luck there, Mao
I’m not gonna lie. Kind of looking forward to antifa coming for me.
I definitely don’t have a bunch of AT mags loaded up with 77 gr OTM 5.56 for just such an eventuality…
*AR. Dammit, autocorrect.
Telling, isn’t it.
Reminds of the story someone posted here a couple months ago about how some antifa groups in CA wanted to start arming themselves but quickly realized the impossibility of doing this legally because of the laws they endorsed. They haven’t thought this “by any means necessary” part through.
And by “all opposition”, he meant the majority of the population. About time for history to repeat.
Every time I hear the phrase “unregulated capitalism” I am awestruck that anyone could be so intentionally ignorant.
It’s nice that they advertise their stupidity.
It’s almost as stupid as “late-stage Capitalism”.
Gonna collapse under the weight of its own contradictions… any day now.
Like I always say: there are two industries that are presumed by a lot of Americans to be “unregulated”, yet in reality they are the most heavily regulated in the country and also the most dysfunctional: healthcare and banking.
Unregulated capitalism?
Damn, dude. Where do you live so I can move there.
Take a filtration sent up, the water is obviously full of lead.
Ooh, he lives in Flint, TSUN? Well fuck that.
Yep. Capitalism is totally to blame for the increased standard of living in S. Korea, China, Africa, Estonia, Latvia, East Germany, etc. The increase across the world from increased capitalism is a fucking miracle. A MIRACLE! And all these idiots can think about is reversing it. It makes me so furious. It is idiocy to the point of evil.
Scientology would like to have a word with this guy. Because they assure everyone they’re the only hope for the survival of the human race.
Urgh. Political Reddit is a place where people with 100 IQs sit around and constantly reinforce each other until they’re all convinced they’re brilliant.
100? My, aren’t you generous.
You’d be amazed how stupid the average person really is.
That’s the best part! It wasn’t even political reddit! It’s a gun subreddit devoted to humor and shitposting. Someone made a politically conservative joke, and the dude went NUTS in response.
Really says a lot about the mental state of liberals on Reddit that I really wasn’t surprised.
despite Washington’s broad preemption law, state supes rule that Seattle’s $25 gun tax and $.02 (.22 and under) or $.05 (greater than .22 caliber) tax per bullet is permissable.
they ruled 8-1 using an analysis created for real estate taxes. the lone dissenter (who’s not exactly a pro-gun Trumpkin) called bullshit.
here’s her dissent:
http://cases.justia.com/washington/supreme-court/2017-93723-1.pdf?ts=1502378427#page=37
mostly off topic:
my LGS’s last day of operations is next Friday, Aug 18. they announced their closing on Tuesday and were stormed by the masses that night. i missed the initial flood so it was spare pickings on Wednesday (yesterday) but still managed to get deals on a Primary Arms red dot, some 115gr 9mm, a spare mag. they still had a handful of Glocks and a Judge along with a very tempting Beretta PX4 Storm Compact for $450 less the 15% closing discount so $383. damn if i wasn’t tempted at that price but could not really justify it. the trigger was clean. nice audible click on the reset. nice curves. now, if it was the new sub-compact PX4, then that would’ve been too much temptation. heading back early next week to pickup the 455 Scout.
How in the holy fuck is this any different from a poll tax or a tax on speech?
Wait til you hear about the ID requirement & background checks…
Why isn’t this an infringement on the right to keep and bear arms? SCOTUS struck down a tax on paper and ink. Tell me how, with a few changes, the following wouldn’t apply to this tax:
I hope they go federal with a 2A challenge.
That MN tax had exemptions so it was struck down as not equal.. by SCOTUS. The MN supes affirmed it.
Its worse than you think.
It always is.
He trollin’
They hatin’
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/10/trump-thanks-vladimir-putin-diplomats-241498
That makes me gleeful enough to do some mustache twirling. Help me out here, Sloopy.
I can still twirl it. It’s like a phantom limb that I lost in the facial hair wars of 2017.
This needs a spot in BPs next comic.
*scratches beard*
Like a signal that they may have to find actual productive employment?
He’s been in the private sector. He knows they expect results.
+1 ghostbuster.
fast forward 3 paragraphs
also, it appears the people who are “hatin’” the hardest are flaks in the State dept
those poor, poor, overpaid bureaucrats.
I feel like being a diplomat in Russia would be awesome. Especially if single.
All the honey pots you want.
Sigh, too bad Groovus don’t come no more 🙁 He’d have posted a rant from his wife on the lines of “Ha, stupid! He theenks that it honey in those pots? When his penis falls off, he will know better!”
There are still people out there who put on their shocked faces when Trump goes a trollin’?
“Trump largely ignored U.S. diplomats who were ready and willing to offer him briefings when he talked to foreign leaders during the transition period.”
Because, you know, US diplomats have such stellar track records? I don’t doubt that they talk a lot to Top Men in the country they’re in, but I wonder how much they know about the situation of the average person?
I can hear it now:
“Breaking News: Trump bypassed WH to speak directly to low-level diplomats in incredible breach of protocol.”
Or
“Trump backchannels meetings with diplomats to short-circuit Obama efforts in final months of first black President’s time in office.”
The NRA is a fucking joke.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dana-loesch-explains-why-the-nra-didnt-defend-philando-castile/article/2631154
tl;dr: He had the evil marijuana in his car, so he deserved to be shot.
The truth is that the NRA would gladly shit into their own mouth before ever going against the law enforcement community. Colion Noir (who is an NRA spokesman) had quite a bit to say on Philando, though.
I would listen to Colion Noir read the phonebook. When is that sumbitch gonna run for president?
The NRA (and Wayne LaPierre) learned their lesson after getting stomped for calling ATF agents jackbooted thugs twenty years ago.
yep. anyone who thinks just possessing pot makes this ok is fucking insane.
unfortunately most of the commenters at the gun blog I frequent said exactly this. “He wuz on dat debil weed! Serves him raight!”
Too many 2A advocates don’t have a fucking clue about freedom. They are as boring as the grabbers.
Unfortunately, Doom’s right, and too many people in the gun community think pot possession = license to be shot. And/or start screaming at you about committing perjury on a 4473.
I’m surprised that the NRA didn’t end up dropping Colion Noir after his video about the Castile shooting.
The sooner Noir becomes head of the NRA (or POTUS, I’ll vote for either) the better we will all be.
Fucking hell, her response made me want to join a BLM rally.
Seriously, it really stinks of “Negro on maree-huana – clear and present menace!” attitude.
It gives them super-strength and makes them impervious to pain. Weed was the PCP of the 1910s.
What about Krokodil? Or does that only work on Russians?
Jenkem or GTFO.
Desomorphine is a sedative and pain-reliever and therefore falls under OPIOD CRISIS IN AMERICA!
It’s really more bath salt face cannibalism at this point.
Shit like that is why I’m not a member anymore. I’ve been short on both time and money for the past few years (this whole “career” thing) so joining a new gun organization hasn’t been at the top of my priorities, but I’m thinking about signing on with Gun Owners of America. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership sounds pretty good from what I’ve heard; they’re very hard-line. And you don’t have to be one of (((them))) to join, either.
Some states have excellent local organizations that are the front lines in preserving and expanding 2nd A rights. Virginia has one of the best with the VCDL. Georgia and West VA have good ones too. Don’t know what state you’re in but that might be worth checking out.
Did we ever get an explanation of whether Castile was intoxicated on weed at the time, or whether he just had metabolites in his system? Or whether anyone besides Yanez confirmed that you could smell weed in the car?
The reason I’m asking is that, after watching and listening to Yanez’s audio and (IIRC) dashcam, Yanez sounded like Officer Friendly, right up until he thought Castile was reaching for Castile’s pistol. If Castile was stoned at the time, it would make sense that Castile was digging around in the pocket where his pistol was (probably to hand it to the officer, or something else innocuous) and if stoned, wouldn’t be able to react fast enough to Yanez’s screaming to stop digging around in his pocket.
If Castile wasn’t intoxicated, disregard the previous. But that audio didn’t sound to me like Yanez was the stereotypical Officer Chip-on-my-shoulder, but rather that he had a very inappropriate stress response to whatever it was he thought Castile was doing. Which I blame on their fucking training that encourages them to think that any non-compliance, and they end up dead.
Vhyrus is right about the NRA ever contradicting LE.
FTA:
No link to fiancee’s testimony, so take from that what you will. I can’t be arsed to see if they smoked The Debil Weed six hours earlier or five minutes before being pulled over…
If the NRA can’t get their dick up about this then they deserve to have the jack-booted thugs their own doorsteps.
*at their own…
So, Libertarians are anti-NRA? OK – enjoy your gun rights while they last.
Here you go.
I’m aware of GOA and purchased a lifetime membership for my son as a graduation gift.
Great. It’s a good organization fighting for liberty, because they keep their focus on one thing. Their stated mission. The NRA is happy to fight against liberty in areas that don’t concern them, or where they (usually rightly) believe that their membership won’t care.
If you want to greet me nicely on my porch for a party, and then shit on my deck, don’t be expected to be invited back.
I’m aligned, but as a lifetime NRA member also see A LOT of gun advocacy pressure at State/Local level. No dispute from me that they are NOT libertarian, but certainly a strong voice promoting the 2nd Amendment.
I’ll concede the point that they are obviously the strongest 2A org in the country; it’s just that a lot of us are concerned about all of the A’s, if you will, and the NRA is not fans of some of them.
Let’s agree to disagree.
Cubans Using Secret Sonic Weapon on Diplomats
apparently all it does it fuck up people’s hearing. they mixed up the knobs that said, “Control Capitalist Minds” with “Damage Eardrums”
They should have stuck with the brown note.
They got “Noriega-ed”
I have to say that the story about the Minneapolis cops proves what wonderful people us Minnesodans are.
We … aquitted … a … Dallas …. fan.
Tell me that isn’t saintly behavior. Maybe it also means that people are starting to figure out cops are worse that Cowboys fans.
It still took them all day to decide that being beaten isn’t assaulting an officer.
a … Dallas …. fan.
That is his crime. That is his punishment.
Is it at all normal to test a pregnant woman for cystic fibrosis and random drugs when there is nothing to indicate it?
Just got a $750 bill for random ass tests our old MD authorized.
I don’t think that’s part of the normal battery of tests for chicks who are preggers. Could have been a coding error or just outright fraud.
I remember telling the doc we didn’t want the cystic fibrosis one (no family history on either side, plus Mrs. Lacky is Indian (dot) and CF is apparently much more common in yts), and theres no reason to do the drug testing. Sure it covers their ass but I’m the one who is paying and we already told you fucks she doesn’t do drugs. Reason #97632895 this lady isn’t our doctor anymore.
If you didn’t authorize them and there’s not a common need, you need to pass that back to her office. Most docs will either give a valid explanation or eat the cost.
Every officer or employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs who has, while such an officer or employee, owned any interest in, or received any wages, salary, dividends, profits, gratuities, or services from, any educational institution operated for profit in which an eligible person or veteran was pursuing a program of education or course under this chapter or chapter 34 or 35 of this title shall be immediately dismissed from such officer’s or employee’s office or employment.
Employees of the VA are forbidden to own shares in corporations engaged in a legal business enterprise? What about ETFs, or index funds?
That’s… bizarre.
OT: Has anyone ever been talking to a “progressive” and witnessed them having a very brief sparkle of clarity?
There’s someone I know who favors a high minimum wage, single-payer healthcare, “more regulation”, the whole package… The other day, this person mentioned that there are growing IT sectors in a lot of places you may not expect such as Texas and Tennessee. He said, “yea, companies will do almost anything to avoid paying the salaries that people will demand in San Francisco.”
Gosh, it’s almost like inflating the cost of hiring an employee will cause employers to relocate their operations to areas with cheaper labor! Holy shit!
One of my colleagues once conceded that the federal Department of Education didn’t employ a single teacher. But then I screwed up my next sentence.
That wasn’t clarity, because I promise you when he said that in his head he was thinking “Wreckers! Kulaks!”
That’s true. I’m sure if I had pressed him on it, I would have gotten a proposal to force companies to remain in San Francisco so that they can’t “take away jobs that rightfully belong to the people” or something.
It’s just amazing that people can hit on basic principles like that yet remain firmly committed to an ideology that completely ignores them.
Manly Thursday?
(now I’ll shut down the Tweeters for the evening, because what could be better?)
Ugh, those knees! How can you even?
The scars? Feature, not bug.
Mmmm. Manly scars.
I was trying to make a Glib meme*, all our shit is carryover from The Old Site.
OK, fine, there’s Gilmoring.
And maybe catbutting but that was top-down exercise of authority, not a mandate from the masses…
*can’t find a way to link to individual comment, but it’s right at the top.
Yeah, looks like a typical Vikings crowd in the background.
Thanks.
“Um, let me see. Uh, protruding supra-orbital ridges. Small cranium. Uh, 1300 cc brain. Hmmm. Neanderthal Man!”
Hey, Tundra, get up will ya? You look like the poster boy for birth control.
Sloop, violent ground acquisition games such as football is in fact a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war.
Oh, Tundra! Say hello to my nieces!
Now that’s what I call Marine Biology!
Fuck me? Hey Tundra do you read lips? Fuck you!
Hey, take it easy, will ya, Sloop? I mean, the war’s over. Get new parts for your head.
Coming into your own, are you Tundra? I wouldn’t break my arm patting myself on the back if I were you. Because get this, Minnesoda boy: no matter what you think you will always be a crude, obnoxious nouveau riche little phlebe. And you’re gonna end up just like your father.
It’s probably menstrual.
I would have thought Vikings would be more Jesse’s style since they suck. You do know that the Vikings almost always fail to lick their opponents?
This “22MBps is too fast for the internet so it wasn’t a hacker” talk is silly. Though the nonsense about how he/they could have been using Google Fiber is also dumb.
The simplest explanation is that, e.g., the alleged hacker copied the files from an SMB share over the DNC LAN to a compromised DNC machine, tarred them there, and transferred the tarball to his own machine. There are many potential variations on this same theme, though.
I’m not a DFIR guy so I won’t comment on the allegations regarding the precision modification times indicating the use of a FAT[32] filesystem, potential metadata forgery in the Word documents, etc.. Although I can say that the following is 100% false:
That doesn’t have much bearing on “The Forensicator’s” report, though, only on the credibility of the Nation writer.
Some of those words are in my vocabulary. But not inthat order.
Are you basically saying this explanation is billshit?
The notion that the calculated transfer speed indicates an insider leak rather than an external (over-the-internet) attacker is indeed bullshit. The notion that “Marble” has anything to do with tampering with the posted Word documents is also bullshit (this is nothing hypothetical or wishy-washy: Marble works on C and C++ source code, and not, uh, Word documents — it just technically has no bearing whatsoever).
Several other claims were made in The Nation‘s article and The Forensicator’s report; I’m not taking a position on those. Of the two things I said were bullshit, the second one (regarding Marble) is not very important to the narrative that it was not a hack and/or was an inside job; the former one is a fairly core part of the argument, though.
Got it, thanks.
So marble aside, what you’re saying is that this is not definitive. And it could have been hacked over the internet by Russian actors overseas? And that transfer rate isn’t relevant to location of the downloader and/or means of soenload?
I’m not a computer person, so I’m asking a serious question.
It’s not definitive, but it’s unlikely. If I were going to tar up a bunch of files for transfer to some other location, I would tar them on the machine where they live rather than scp them to a second machine, tar them there, then transfer them home. The chances of the transfer rate just by chance lining up with the download rate to a USB stick is possible, but likely would have been much higher over the network. There is definitely reasonable doubt, but I find the USB stick scenario much more plausible.
If you were going to tar up a bunch of files on an SMB share (a very likely scenario, and one The Forensicator countenances in his speed analysis), you definitely would not tar them on the machine where they live. To do so (i.e., getting RCE on that machine) would be unnecessary additional work and would increase your risk of detection.
You’re telling me the DNC mail server is configured to use a network drive to store its data files?
No. I’m suggesting that the files in “7dc58-ngp-van.7z”, which is what was analyzed in the report, could have been. Neither The Forensicator’s report nor CrowdStrike’s report attributing the attack to Russia reference the disclosure of emails to WikiLeaks.
I’m too lazy to check the exact dates, but if you recall, there were 2 instances which they claimed were “hacks”. 1 of which i think happened in summer of 2015 (and which snagged DNC documents), ….
…..and another in the spring of 2016 (which may have just been the phishing bit which snagged John Podesta’s password) which targeted the Clinton-campaign specifically.
The hack they’re referring to is probably the former (my guess)
As I recall there were three primary “leak events”, so to speak:
1. The release of various DNC documents to the media by “Guccifer 2.0”
2. The release of DNC emails by WikiLeaks, “Guccifer 2.0” also claiming responsibility for providing them
3. The release of the Podesta emails by WikiLeaks
It can get a bit confusing — a lot of people still seem to be under the impression that Clinton’s emails were hacked.
Sure, but the release of info (“leaks”) to the public is distinct from when the ‘hacking’ happened. there was also some intel released by Wikileaks that was never related to russian “hacks” in the first place, and there was data which was compromised which was never released/leaked by wikileaks either.
The FBI/DHS report cites 2 hacks of the DNC+related operatives (podesta, presumably) which they attribute to rooskies:
What makes the Russians likely?
a lot of people still seem to be under the impression that Clinton’s emails were hacked
I have no doubt they were. I would be shocked if her unsecured bathroom server didn’t have more foreign agents in it than a cheap hooker at a UN conference.
I am still 100% convinced that the NSA has a complete set of Hillary’s emails. If they don’t they should all be fired.
Sorry, I was using imprecise language, I meant hacked and then leaked a la the DNC documents and emails and the Podesta emails (and no, I don’t give a fuck if you don’t consider phishing “real hacking”).
(You and Carl) just tell me if I should go back to being outraged at Trump and Russia or at the DNC and FBI for covering up the truth.
Which scenario seems more likely with this latest info?
I think you should be outraged at all those people. The inside job with a USB stick is more likely, but either scenario is possible.
1. As the article states, this does not pertain to whether Russia or affiliates phished John Podesta. That remains likely.
2. The likelihood that Russia or affiliates hacked into the DNC’s systems remains the same — high.
3. The real question this pertains to is whether this affects the probability that the individual(s) who leaked DNC documents to the public and the media under the moniker “Guccifer 2.0” was an insider or a Russian hacker (or something else). I personally believe that this information, the irrelevance of the data transfer rate or “Marble” aside, slightly raises the probability that it was an insider, but I still consider it more likely to be the Russians. I need to do more research, though.
but I still consider it more likely to be the Russians
Probably I missed something you said–but why? Because 17 government agencies told us so?
Yes, that’s it, exactly. -_-
No, the information that the intelligence community has put out has been absolutely worthless.
I believe that it is likely that “it” (the hacking of the DNC and the phishing of John Podesta, and the subsequent disclosure of information obtained from those sources) was “Russia” (Russian intelligence services or external actors working at the behest of the Russian government) because I have read most of the technical reports on both incidents, and based on the evidence they present and the parties behind them, I find it more plausible than the alternative theories.
I may expound in more detail later but at the moment I don’t really have the energy or interest. I will say, though, that there is a lot unknown, a lot that is a bit fishy, and a lot of room for error, bias, and conflict of interest — I am very open to evidence that it wasn’t Russia, and I’m not going to yell DENIER at anyone who doesn’t believe it was Russia. Although some of said people say some very silly, misinformed things, such as that the reason people think Russia was behind the Podesta phishing is because the email came from a Ukrainian IP address (it’s not and it wasn’t).
Canadian
philosophercollege professor is aghast at the “anti-intellectualism” of Trump’s proposed points system for immigrants, because (SURPRISE!) she wouldn’t have made the cut.The upshot? The RAISE Act would be devastating to the arts and humanities in this country. To be clear, this is far from the biggest concern we should have about the proposal. (The act’s removal of family-based green cards and the fact that it is far more restrictive than other countries’ merit-based immigration systems are both contenders here.) But it’s a concern we shouldn’t lose sight of. The anti-intellectualism of the Trump regime is well established. The RAISE Act might masquerade as something that’s friendly to those concerned about having a skilled and educated populace in this country, but we mustn’t be fooled.
Obviously, philosophy is one of those jobs Americans just won’t do. Because there has not been a single native born American doctor of philosophy in centuries.
She’s probably outraged we took in Werner von Braun instead of some hairy-legged female art history professor.
Did she run herself through Canada’s points system too?
Huh. I scored enough to ‘possibly’ be granted a work visa. Of course, that depends on a possibly over-stated evaluation of my French skills. And when they saw how un-diverse I am, game over man.
It’d be a piece of cake if my mom had simply not ditched her Canadian citizenship when she moved here. Good thing I don’t have TDS.
Is 80 pts good?
Probably get you in. Just brown up your skin.
I got an 83 before applying the Jew Credit.
(((Damn you!)))
We don’t let Jews in unless you read at least one Mordecai Richler book.
78. Interesting that a McDonald’s manager is ok but not an oil field worker.
Maybe I can go back to (one of) my ancestral homeland(s).
Gustave comes from a long line of fryer operators.
I guess that’s a legitimate beef? Otherwise job would go to an inferior American, maybe even a dreaded male? But for fun, I dicked with Canadian version of the calculator and I’m stumped on “Do you have a valid job offer supported by a Labour Market Impact Assessment (if needed)?”
Would said university go to bat and claim she’s the only one who can do the job in what she admits is an oversupplied field?
I also can’t figure out what her National Occupational Classification level would be so I lumped her in with dentists, doctors and architects (hey, it’s a doctorate!)
And finally, if I score her at 0 hours of skilled work (maybe unfair? she’d have TAd?) she comes at 526/1200 points. If I give her 4 years, it jumps to 648 pts.
How the hell do you score high? Get a provincial Nomination Certificate!
Anyone interested in fleeing Trumpocalypse, this is how you enter Provincial immigration stream.
So generally, she’d be in better spot as an equivalent American in Canada, if the work as TA counts (should), and if her offer passed the Labor Market Impact Assesment, and NOC for academics was class A.
Where did she get fucked in Cotton plan? Her job offer wasn’t at 150% of median household income. That’d be 5 points and carried her over the line.
The anti-intellectualism of the Trump regime is well established.
It is? I must have missed it.
And now I must link to Tom Lehrer.
We’ll set up Libertopia on one and Commietopia on the other and see who’s resorted to cannibalism in the first century.
I have to admit, I’ve done a thought experiment similar to this. If the liberty-minded left en masse for a space colony and that colony were wildly successful, could the authorities on Earth tolerate it? My guess is probably not. A libertarian space migration would undoubtedly leave Earth closer to “commietopia”. But, it would be people with marketable skills and talents who would have the most incentive to migrate. Under commietopia, their value would be seen as relatively minor, except as a cash cow for the elites and their constituencies. But, eventually, that creates a huge pressure on Earth authorities to stop the bleeding.
Any thoughts?
Any thoughts?
Yes. They wouldn’t even notice. ‘En masse’ still means a fraction of 1%.
Liberty is lonely.
They probably wouldn’t notice at first. And I suspect, they’d welcome it at first (less political opposition as “those people” started packing up and going away). But, again, let’s say the colony is really successful. And by no means much of the population, but say 3% or 4% of the population started looking at colonial life as a viable alternative. My theory is it wouldn’t be a random 3% or 4%, but the engineers, the doctors, the entrepreneurs for who would entertain the prospect of immigration. And even those who stayed would have the prospect of immigration as a leverage against the Earth authorities. They’d have the unstated alternative of packing off and going to the colonies. Eventually, that brain drain gets costly.
I would think the remaining commie Earthlings would have a similar attitude that Calexit guy has, which seems to be mostly, “fuck off we don’t need you around here.”
As I said above, at first, no doubt. But, what happens when those Earthlings find they have plenty of human resources specialists, but no one able to figure out how to fix a bridge? All the social media coordinators you can imagine, but a shortage of doctors? All kinds of non-profit advocacy specialists, but a three week wait to get someone able to fix the toilet?
I think pie talked about that in one of his pieces about how the factory where his father worked forced the engineers to be paid shit cause the workers did all the work, then when the factory closed cause the engineers all said ‘fuck you do it yourselves’ and they couldn’t, they tried to walk it back.
I think the situation I’m talking about is similar, but potentially a little more extreme. Imagine the factory if the engineers and the workers walked away, leaving everything to the human resources staff and compliance coordinators?
So, humans don’t come in discrete blocks of, say, 10 million. There’s new ones being born, graduating college, etc, all the time. You wouldn’t/couldn’t take all the doctors or engineers or whatever off the planet and leave the planet without any; there’d be more coming all the time.
Also, at the other place I think a few times I recommended Cities in Flight, a book from the 60’s(?) in which antigravity is invented, the Earth has a totalitarian government, and whole cities just leave the Earth. I still recommend it.
I will repeat what I wrote the last time we started talking about asteroid mining: the energy levels required to mine asteroids on anything other than a geologic time scale, or to travel to another star, are well beyond those that constitute WMDs. As such, I can’t see any government or groups of same, being crazy about individuals or businesses having access to those technologies.
But sure, I’ll travel to Tau Ceti. We can skip the radical capital punishment and crew/colonist social striation though.
“But, it would be people with marketable skills and talents who would have the most incentive to migrate.”
I think one thing to address would be how “primitive” (for want of a better word) would the colony be, at least initially. Today, IT systems people seem to have highly marketable skills (as many here would demonstrate). But how many systems people would you want at a new colony – or engineers for that matter. You would probably want hydroponics people, etc.
IOW: yes, marketable skills but what would be marketable in a new colony may not be what is currently marketable here and now.
Hydroponics people? Lol, you have to build the damn think first. You’re going to need welders who can weld while carrying their own oxygen supply. You’re going to need guys who can use heavy equipment/earth movers/explosives safely. Guys who can set up your solar panels/nuke power station, and guys who can get that electricity to where you need it.
Check out the scientist to construction guy ratio in Antarctica.
Well, TBF, I did use “etc.” My main point was that marketable skills here wouldn’t necessarily be marketable skills on a new planet. Welders, heaby equipment guys, etc. as you note.
Yeah, I was slightly snarky. My bad
No problem – I was in a rush and hit upon the first skill I could think of. I was thinking that skills that a lot of libertarians tend to have (because many libertarians push themselves to high achievement) wouldn’t necessarily be in demand.
Of course, as an academic, I’m stuck on this world.
Eh, the construction workers’ kids will need to be educated, hopefully the second generation will include many more science type people.
Today, the space agencies take science people and train them in doing things like putting the space station together. I think a mattress colony
Meh. The construction workers’ kids will need to be educated, and many of those will need to be Doctors, IT people, etc.
NASA, et all, train science people to put the space station together and such. I think a Mars colony would need a more dedicated construction crew, as it were.
“mattress colony”sounds fun, though
For my hypothetical, I was assuming second or third generation. I’m assuming while the colony was struggling to establish itself, Earth authorities would be happy to be rid of the deplorable colonists. But, at a certain point, the colony has a couple of towns, a few million people, industry capable of importing something of value back to Earth (yes, this is assuming some fantastic leap in space travel). etc.
I think, at that point, the dynamics change. The colony planet is still, essentially, an untapped frontier where a reasonably smart guy (or woman) can make a fortune. Add on to that the libertarian absence of restrictions on opportunity. And the relatively high wages that the lack of a local labor force would imply. Is it as safe, steady and established as things back on Earth? No. But, there is that lure of being able to return to Earth rich.
And I think that’s a pretty powerful lure. Especially if you have earth becoming ever more regimented and politically intervened. Of course you get the young relatively skilled laborers (guys who can operate earthmoving equipment, run a hydroponic farm, or set up plumbing or an electrical system). They’d have to be the first pioneers. But, even an educated young guy eventually stops and thinks, “Hmmmm…I can stick around here on Earth and go work for either the government or a connected employer, and make less than the girl in human resources who’s lecturing me about how I need to check my privilege. Or I can take a flight up to libertopia and start off in a manual labor job that pays twice as much.”. I think you’d find a lot of people would take option 2. A lot of them would go thinking they’d just go for a few years to build a nest-egg. And a lot would wind up staying there for the rest of their live. And a lot would come back not having made it. But, a few would make fortunes.
And that puts Earth authorities in a bind, eventually. These are men (and, no doubt, some women) whose fortunes are beyond their reach. Made flouting their laws, in many cases. And eventually, a generation of young people grow up knowing this is an out. Most won’t entertain the idea. But, as I said above, the ones who would aren’t a random sample. They’re the risk-takers, the kids with gumption, the ones not content to accept “their lot in life”, the kids who solve their own problems, rather than waiting around for the authorities to fix it for them. You’d think that the authorities would be delighted to get rid of such young people. And, at first, I’m sure they would be. But, I’m not so sure they’d be all that happy with the results of them leaving.
If the liberty-minded left en masse for a space colony and that colony were wildly successful, could the authorities on Earth tolerate it?
“Mister President, we cannot allow a space colony GAP!”
WaPo writer finds out that not all of my generation has 8 brain cells and thinks about race everyday, urges the paper to prog harder
What, exactly, are we supposed to do? Gun down cops? Hand out bleaching kits in black neighborhoods? Cause you sure as fuck won’t elect us to office EVER!
Not to mention that talking about race isn’t going to fix the problem. Ending the WOD would be the number one thing that could be done to end the fishing expeditions that too often end in tragedy. I preach this to lots of people but it’s difficult to counteract a lifetime of brainwashing.
Yeah, the group decision to funnel all of policing reform into the “institutional racism” camp is what created this racial divide. Ending the WOD would allow a deeper examination of policing tactics – like the ubiquitous use of SWAT for service of arrest warrants and the “better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6” philosophy that underscores much of today’s training and tactics.
But nah, let’s just chant about how the guys who pulled the trigger are racists. That is sure to make all 1 million of today’s police officers look deep in their souls and recognize their hidden racism. Problem solved!
But Traquair also noted how easy it is for her as a young white woman in the face of the racial injustices of today to turn off the channel, to disconnect from the issue, and “to just not think about this anymore.”
Given the relative scale of the racial injustices in the 50s and today, this actually sounds pretty rational to me.
African American millennials were far more likely to list police brutality as a top problem facing the country today.
Could be the top problem for them, but as bad as it is, it may not be the top problem in the country today, IMO.
Yes, because the way minorities are treated in 2017 is exactly how they were treated in the 1950’s.
Why, just the other day, on my way to lynching a black feller what looked at a white girl, I stopped at the polling place to make sure that there were no black people voting (while I was there, I went ahead and voted for the sheriff who would use law enforcement to gang press black people into slavery building roads for the county). Thank God there’s no minorities being voted into office in the old Confederacy!
Yeah whatever dude. Take your meds.
New sources of revenue are needed to solve the M.T.A.’s crisis. Ambitious proposals like the one from Move NY have been around for years, but state lawmakers have been reluctant to pass them fearing political blowback from drivers, rich taxpayers and others. Some officials are also ideologically opposed to any taxes or fees, arguing that the cost of living in New York is already too high. But these arguments ignore the fact that congestion and a dysfunctional transit system impose a substantial and growing cost on residents and on the economy.
It has been a long long time since I drove over the GW Bridge, but I can’t help thinking, looking at the toll amounts listed in the article, they have intentionally made it pretty much impossible to pay cash. You will be tracked, either via EZpass or by license plate recognition cameras (and we all know how infallible those are).
I’m expecting a UK style congestion tax in Manhattan any moment now.
Ban government-sector workers from driving/riding in private cars.
Also ban them from emitting CO2
They could make every resident of NYC pay a thousand bucks “transit fee” that covers free access to the subway and all bridges. And then visitors could pay stiffer monthly and daily rates.
But somehow I doubt that anyone would propose such a thing. It isn’t fair.
Plus, there are a little over 8 million new yorkers. So a grand a pop doesn’t cover the 13 million in operating expenses, let alone the $31 billion in debt they owe or the extra $15 billion they need for capital improvements.
So I guess that thousand bucks is probably not enough. Better make that $2,000.
There are 11 million daily riders, so I’d say it is primarily used by non new york residents on a daily basis – so jack up their fees. At the current rates, daily commuters from outside the city are paying about a hundred and twenty bucks a month. They should make that $400. Screw the foreigners. And cars. Triple the fees for out of town cars.
Ok…. this plan basically makes it mandatory for every resident to buy a monthly subway pass at a rate of about $165. And all those commuters from New Jersey and Connecticut will be paying $400 per month. A bump of $40 for locals and $280 for out of state. But they have half fair rates for the poor now. That would have to go. And people who don’t subway would be miffed. And they’d probably start using the subway more, since they are paying for it anyway.
This would at least be “fair”. Everyone with a body pays the same amount.
But tourists don’t do the monthly pass thing. They are currently paying $3 for a one way ticket. Have to bump that to about $20. It is only fair. Plus it would help out the cabbies.
I know they like to say “make the rich 1% pay for the whole thing”, but that really doesn’t sound fair. Better to go “all-in” on your socialism and just force everyone to buy a monopoly service.
BBC NOT FOOL ME. THIS STEVE SMITH.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40892336
STEVE SMITH TIRED OF OTHER RAPESQUATCHES MAKE FUN OF HIS NO HAIR, SO HE MAKE SUIT OUT OF PUBES TO SHOW THEM.
STEVE SMITH WEAR HIM LIKE FUR SUIT!
GREATEST TRICK STEVE SMITH EVER PULL IS HIRE GAWAIN TO CONVINCE WORLD HE DONT EXIST.
STILL RAPE SHIT OUT OF GAWAIN LATER.
STEVE SMITH RAPE NO PUNISHMENT, IT GREAT REWARD.
FOR STEVE
Establishment GOP writer sucks McTurtlehead’s blobby dick because Trump is icky, then bitches about how Tea Party candidates don’t do insurgency the right way anymore…like Marco Rubio…uhhh…
“The Senate’s failure to pass Obamacare repeal is not McConnell’s fault. That the repeal bill even got to the floor [etc.]…worthy of former Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson”
…who measured success and failure by bills passed or defeated.
More often than not, not passing a bill is better for liberty than passing a bill. But only obstructionist rubes think that way, so we’ll continue to laugh at those Tea Party rednecks until they stop going to our black tie parties.
Politicians’ logic
I’m expecting a UK style congestion tax in Manhattan any moment now.
That’s the basis of the article- the Genius Limeys do it, so we should be just like them!
To be honest, I’m not intransigently opposed to congestion pricing in principle, but I certainly don’t believe these people are honest in either their motives or goals.
Is one thing that retarded communist don’t understand that they’re not anarchist, but why media do you allow them?
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/10/draws-people-anarchy-left-wing-extremism-smashing-stuff-mostly-smashing-stuff/
So I realize I can’t shoot people for most of what they describe in that article, but if someone attempts to physically block me from a public place I am lawfully allowed to enter, they’re getting pepper sprayed on the spot.
I have a policy to stay away from stupid people, stupid places, and stupid situations but yeah if one of them got in my face like I’ve seen them do to other people, that would be a mistake.
Chicago PD: Our police are easily scared, so if you just follow this simple list they won’t shoot you. Probably.
https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20150810/downtown/how-not-get-shot-by-chicago-police-department-releases-stay-safe-tips
Disgusting, isn’t it? I remember how bent our resident surfer/power lifter was at TOS when I told him that people treat cops like they do encountering wild predators: no sudden moves, no eye contact, don’t run…and for God’s sake, don’t seek them out.
15. Never call the cops
16. Shoot them first
And yet it there were a civilian-involved shooting in which a cop died and the civilian defended himself by saying “I feared for my life”, the cops would be apoplectic.
[Yes, I know the cops are civilians, too.]
And the civilian would bleed out on the curb.
Grey Lady Editorialist Will Have to Explain Themselves
whoops
Judge orders writer of NY Times’ Palin editorial to testify
I don’t think she will win. I mean this is what The NY Times does.
neither do i. but…. 1) there have been a surprising number of media fuckups lately (see: Rolling Stone, Gawker), and 2) Palin’s lawyers seem to be honing in on the fact that the specific editor must have known what they said was false when they said it. i assume their proof is that the same person penned some earlier piece which showed that. I don’t think it will go anywhere, but at the very least it will futher expose their hackery
They should try the retard defense
I think she’s got a decent chance, since the NYT itself had previously said that the slur on Palin in the editorial had no basis. That’s reckless disregard, at a minimum. The NYT can’t argue truth as a defense, and can’t argue that it didn’t know, or couldn’t be expected to know, that the slur was baseless. They really don’t have much to go on, other than “But we’re the NYT! You can’t sue us!”.
still short of “actual malice”
Defined as knowing the statement was false or acting in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity.
Didn’t they apologize? They definately shouldn’t have done that.
Man, I hope they match Gawker testimony.
There’s a nonzero chance that the arrogance of the NYT will lead them astray, just as the arrogance of Gawker did.
Crooked Stave Hop Savant with dinner. For you anti-hop folks, the brett totalky overpowers the hops. I am not usually a big fan of brett beers, but I really liked this one.
Beer advocate says they’re not making it anymore so you should feel special.
Birthday gift from the wife.
Sweet. She’s a keeper.
Today in “Weird shit i keep finding while re-sorting my gigantic record-pile” =
– Les Crane, “Desiderata”
Didn’t know WTF this was, nor could i remember why/where/when i acquired it. So i popped it on and its some bizarro spoken-word shit. But each of the bizarro tracks starts with drum breaks, so that explains why i bought it. I really hope i didn’t spend more than $1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata_(Les_Crane_album)
“”The title, and title track, come from the widely circulated poem “Desiderata”, which at the time was in circulation as ancient wisdom and not known to be a 1927 poem by Indiana lawyer Max Ehrmann.””
lol “ancient wisdom” reads more like a tacky self-help pamphlet.
I could get listen to that high for a minute
yeah, it gets old after about 30 seconds.
I also posted that pick too soon: the very next thing i pulled out of the box i’m re-sorting was an album by a Brazilian midget
Dude is stylin’
Dark humor
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40879057
lol
I’m betting the person who took the photo saw the sign on a different set of goods, and moved it to the gun rack to become todays SJW twitter-hero
I wouldn’t doubt it.
Well, trap shooting is one of the fastest-growing high school sports here, so maybe they are right on.
Trump pandering to Libertarians?
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/10/trump-im-thankful-putin-expelled-diplomats-since-itll-save-us-money/
That’s some commander-in-trolling right there. Also yes
What a heaving idiot. ‘Trump should have wagged the dog by making foreign policy decisions to distract from domestic politics.’ Yeah right. And I bet even the contention that it won’t save money because they’re still on the payroll is also false simply due not paying overseas allowances (or be still my beating heart, if the positions weren’t backfilled so the total headcount actually decreases). Finally, are those real diplomats or “diplomats” that were expelled?
Beats the it for tat expulsions and empty rhetoric that we usually do.
I’m not a Trump guy, I’m really not. But, damn, every now and then he just trolls like a master. “Thanks, Putin, you’re saving us millions!”
New reality show: Ann and Shikha as roommates.
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2017-08-09.html#read_more
You think this is maybe why they’re such a problem to begin with? Damn things are a menace.
“Hoyt also reminds residents that individuals are not allowed to hurt or harm geese.”
http://nbc4i.com/2017/08/10/geese-euthanized-due-to-safety-and-health-risk-along-scioto-mile/
You’re not surprised that Columbus is full of idiots, are you?
Nope
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Late entry to the the links, I know.
Question: do any of you gamer nerds here know of a mobile game comparable to the PC version of Age of Empires III?
Specifically, a single player game that places you as the field commander of an army pitted against another army with a similar size and technology.
Mind you, I do not seek any of that city/castle building/join a powerful alliance in order to survive bullshit. Just my tactics and strategies against another person or computer generated army.
Thanks in advance.
I don’t do the mobile thing, but this is just further proof that we need a Glibertarians Age of Empire 2 tournament.
+1 Deathmatch
Full disclosure: I’m not much of a gamer anymore. Take into account my reference/preference to a what? A twelve plus year old game? The truth is, I haven’t owned a gaming console since the original Xbox. But I do remember liking the simplicity of that game, as well as Kessen?(spelling) on PlayStation 2. A game set in late feudal Japan that basically encompasses what I described above.
Real time strategy basically died around 2008-2010. Only people really still doing stuff like it are Blizzard with Starcraft releases and Relic, sort of. Total War’s really the only ‘big’ regular title anymore and that’s its own unique thing. Apparently some of the older Age of Empires are on Android now though.
‘Apparently some of the older Age of Empires are on Android now though.’
Ah, gotcha. I’ll check it out but from what I’ve heard from my few gaming friends, they made the mobile AoE version a castle building style game. I hate those. Inevitably, the alliance leadership asks me to assume an official position that requires me to quasi-coordinate supply lines, the troop placement and attack timing of other alliance members on a given target, and squashing any internal beefs between members. I always seem to end up as Vice/Marshal or whatever the fuck in that format and it’s exhausting. Fuck that noise. I refuse to lose sleep fretting over other people’s problems in a digitally generated universe.
Do I sound bitchy over trivial shit? I think I sound bitchy over trivial shit.
*tips another Modelo Negra, takes another hit off the Diamond OG Kush*
I’m sorry. What were talking about again?
Good beer
It’s not an RTS, but if you’re interested in turn-based, Panzer Corps is a perfect port of the PC title of the same name, which itself is an updated version of the old classic Panzer General, and the touch controls even work reasonably well. It’s the only one I’ve found that actually feels like a real game, not a $2 mobile game.
Should have added: it’s an ios title. Not sure if there’s an Android version, although it doesn’t look like it.
Thanks for the tip. I’ll see if it’s available on my phone.
Hey Gilmore!
You probably have all these, but just in case…Digitized 78rpm records.
Some interesting stuff.
I’ll Just place this here: Brainbox –
Amsterdam, the First Days
That’s really cool. I wonder if they’re all out of copyright now?
lol no i only own like like a half-dozen albums of 78s
(Actual *albums*, like Photo albums: Bound books with ‘pages’ which are sleeves with 1-song-per-side 78s. )
3 Lewis Armstrong bundles, and a few other assorted early-jazz (bix beiderbeike, sidney bechet etc.) The problem with 78s is that they were made from celluloid (or some other compound) and as they get old they get super-fucking brittle and can wreck your needles or vice versa… or they just burn out real quick. I listened to them a few times, then shelved them in a box. I like my old dixieland stuff, but i’m no Robert Crumb old-timey nerd.
“”78s were mostly made from shellac, i.e., beetle resin, and were the brittle predecessors to the LP (microgroove) era.””
there you go.
that 4-armed record player is some crazy shit.
Muh Roadz
I have to wonder if anyone who ever pukes out that old saw in response to libertarians has ever owned a house. A house with a sidewalk. A house with a sidewalk and beautiful 30-year-old ornamental cherry trees that fill the small 2′ wide space (median, verge, whatever you call it) between the sidewalk and the road. A tree planted by the developers that grows much, much larger than the tiny 4′ square area it was originally planted in. That tears up the sidewalk and road.
I wonder if any of them have had this conversation with their local civic bureaucracy?
Homeowner: Hey the tree between my sidewalk and the road is tearing up the sidewalk
Bureaucrat: OK, send us a picture on line and fill out our form and we’ll take a look.
Homeowner: OK so after I send you a picture of my sidewalk with tree roots erupting through it, the city will repair it?
Bureaucrat: What? Oh no! No we’ll determine whether it is a trip hazard and need to be ground down or completely replaced.
Homeowner: OK. And if it’s bad you’ll fix it?
Bureaucrat: No no. If we determine the sidewalk needs to be repaired we’ll send you a notice giving you two weeks to get it repaired.
Homeowner: A notice? But I’m telling you it needs repair now.
Bureaucrat: Yes and if you submit the photo with the online form we’ll confirm that it needs to be repaired.
Homeowner: But after you confirm what I just told you then you’re just going to send me a notice telling me it needs to be repaired?
Bureaucrat: Yes. And you have ten days to comply.
Homeowner: So I have to tear up the sidewalk and re-pour a new one and pay for it out of my own pocket?
Bureaucrat: Well it is your sidewalk, sir.
Homeowner: But it’s the city’s tree that’s causing the damage!
Bureaucrat: Yes, but unfortunately you are responsible for the sidewalk sir.
Homeowner: Well what if I just leave the sidewalk alone?
Bureaucrat: Then unfortunately you’ll be fined for not complying with the notice to repair the sidewalk.
Homeowner: You mean the notice that you will send me confirming my sidewalk is fucked?
Bureaucrat: Erm… yes, sir… but…
Homeowner: But won’t the tree just destroy the new sidewalk too?
Bureaucrat: Well, sir, that is possible.
Homeowner: So maybe I should cut down the tree first?
Bureaucrat: Oh no! That is the city’s tree! You can’t cut that down!
Homeowner: So the city owns the tree…
Bureaucrat: Yes, sir.
Homeowner: … and the tree, the city’s tree, is destroying the sidewalk, but I’m the one responsible for repairing the sidewalk?
Bureaucrat: That’s correct, sir.
Homeowner: Ok, maybe I can just cut out the roots tearing up the sidewalk before I pour the new one.
Bureaucrat: Oh no sir! Our urban canopy is a precious resource and you need a licensed, city approved arborist to even prune the limbs so it isn’t damaged! If you cut the roots and injure or kill your tree you could be fined.
Homeowner: Can’t I just replace it with a new tree?
Bureaucrat: It’s the city’s tree, sir. Unfortunately you can’t cut down a completely healthy tree.
Homeowner: But it’s starting to rip up the road too. Aren’t you responsible for that.
Bureaucrat: Not if your tree is damaging the road, sir. You would be responsible for that repair.
Homeowner: I thought you said it was the city’s tree?
Bureaucrat: Yes, sir. But you are responsible for it.
Homeowner: I’m responsible for the tree… but I can’t prune it, cut the roots back, cut it down, or replace it?
Bureaucrat: Correct, sir.
Homeowner: And whatever damage the city’s tree, that I’m responsible for, does to the road or sidewalk I have to pay to repair?
Bureaucrat: Yes, sir.
Homeowner: I see…
Bureaucrat: So when can we expect the photo of your sidewalk…
Homeowner: CLICK!
*Homeowner heads to the garage and pulls out the chainsaw.
Last summer city came and inspected our sidewalks. 6 months later dead of winter everythings covered with ice, roads civered with snow that the city hasn’t plowed for two weeks. Several people in our subdivision got letters that they had two weeks to fix their sidewalks after waiting 6 months to send the letter. They were able to get an extension but fuck the city.
And shovel those sidewalks too, while they’re at it!
The funniest thing just happened! The sidewalk fixed itself!
That’s exactly what happened. The tree disappeared and the sidewalk got fixed. All thanks to government… wait… not government. But if government didn’t fix the sidewalks, how could they possibly get fixed?
Our military has been cut to the bone. Fuck you Weekly Standard.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/10/congrats-taxpayers-bought-posh-swag-defense-contractor/
Indonesia: Chinese deity is covered in sheet after Muslims protest
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/08/indonesia-chinese-deity-is-covered-in-sheet-after-muslims-protest
What a shame. It’s a cool statue.
Is Derp all the way down. Nuke it from orbit just to be sure.
Cue Rolling Stone article on “Giant KKK Statue Spotted in Indonesia”.
I larfed
Guan Yu was a huge badass, at least according to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Motherfucker once identified an enemy general by his parasol and just wandered through the battle to cut his head off.
Sounds almost as badass as this dude:
CAPTAIN
Doubtful it stood,
As two spent swimmers that do cling together
And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald—
Worthy to be a rebel, for to that
The multiplying villanies of nature
Do swarm upon him—from the Western Isles
Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied,
And fortune, on his damnèd quarrel smiling,
Showed like a rebel’s whore. But all’s too weak,
For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name—
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valor’s minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops,
And fixed his head upon our battlements.
Hydroponics people? Lol, you have to build the damn think first. You’re going to need welders who can weld while carrying their own oxygen supply. You’re going to need guys who can use heavy equipment/earth movers/explosives safely. Guys who can set up your solar panels/nuke power station, and guys who can get that electricity to where you need it.
Check out the scientist to construction guy ratio in Antarctica.
Meant to be somewhere else, sigh.
The message started: Me Chinese. Me play joke.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40885723
20 orders of magnitude more efficient than fiber optics in free space & no dispersion or spreading through the atmosphere? Color me skeptical.
Developing countries urged to act now to prevent technology exacerbating poverty
Florida Highway Patrol officers are told they have to write two tickets an hour. But it’s totally not a quota.
Found an interesting article today about North Korea’s artillery. Turns out only about 5% of their guns/rockets have enough range to hit Seoul. That and those guns and launchers would have to be moved into shelters quickly to avoid being destroyed by return fire. Seoul also has plenty of underground shelters which would minimize casualties.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/could-north-korea-annihilate-seoul-its-artillery-20345
Another article I read said that most of the military equipment in the parades is fake. I knew the missiles were mock-ups, but it turns out even the RPGs and goggles are cheap plastic imitations.
Many military experts predicted thousands of US casualties during Desert Storm. I wonder if there is similar exaggeration about North Korea.
^^This – Their standard equipment is still based on 1950’s era designs.
A lot of old Army folk will tell you we have troops there just as much to keep South Korea from going north as what we profess.
Derpy,
You might like the papers the Nautilus Institute’s (E. Asia-focused think tank) put out on the subject. Especially this one, Mind the Gap Between Rhetoric and Reality
Tl;dr, the artillery threat facing Seoul is overblown, but Seoul still eats anywhere between 1 to 10 thousand dead, and several 10s of billions of dollars damage in a full scale shooting war. Uh, depending on the breaks. (Like whether the NK’s or us go right to canned sunshine and slime) I don’t agree with a lot of Dr. Cavazos’s assumptions, but the report is still interesting. NK’s performance in their little island artillery duel a year or two back wasn’t that impressive, with an estimated 25% of their shells being duds. Gotta’ imagine their concrete and PPE are about as shoddy.
Another tidbit is that, while most of their tubes/rockets can’t reach Seoul, they can reach the northern suburbs. Which, AIUI, are packed with Chinese workers.
Read a little bit about the battle of Hue the other day. 10,000 dead; 6,000 of them civilians. 3,000 of those civilians were executed by the communists.
from wiki:
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..a squad with a death order entered the home of a prominent community leader and shot him, his wife, his married son and daughter-in-law, his young unmarried daughter, a male and female servant and their baby. The family cat was strangled; the family dog was clubbed to death; the goldfish scooped out of the fishbowl and tossed on the floor. When the Communists left, no life remained in the house.
***
They executed a gold fish.
Initially, the US was reluctant to use artillery, airstrikes, or even the main guns on tanks to retake the city. There were concerns about civilian casualties and damage to historic buildings. Of course, this reluctance caused the battle to drag on. In the end, airstrikes and artillery was used anyway. Tanks were used to blow holes in buildings so troops would not get picked off while trying to breach through doors and windows.
They made a song about that.
I expected this.
Keep moving! Don’t look at the camera! Keep going!
Some people play Ride of the Valkyries from their choppers, I blast that from my killdozer.
Is easier to make a pun off of “Hue” than “Valkries”. I took the easy way.
Get out the Hway, bitch! (?) Didn’t realize it was a pun til you mentioned it. It’s a good one.
[Gaze squinting more than Luda’ does in his publicity shots.]
surprise, surprise, surprise
LGBT fighting unit in Syria ‘kicked out of Raqqa offensive’ by US-backed umbrella forces
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/lgbt-fighting-unit-syria-removed-raqqa-offensive-us-backed-forces-tqila-isis-islamic-state-a7884606.html
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A tweet on Sunday from an account affiliated with the official YPG international battalion, however, said that the “IRPGF yesterday got kicked out of Raqqa, hopefully soon from Rojava – we need less empty propaganda, more fighting”.
The tweet has since been deleted. SDF, IRPGF and TQILA representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
YPG fighters have previously been critical of the IRPGF’s efforts in the fight against Isis. An official Twitter accounts said they are “three crazies” with which they refused to form an alliance with.
***
“smashing the gender binary and advancing the women’s revolution as well as the broader gender and sexual revolution,”
Does not exactly roll off the tongue as a battle cry, does it? Maybe it sounds better in Arabic?
I am not shocked that a couple of stunt fighting units got eyerolls and a big “fuck-off!” when everyone else realized they didn’t pull their weight.
The money shots are at the end of the article:
And of course, the primary driver of the non-fighting fighting units are revealed through their press release:
The YPG may be a commie organization, but even they know that when you are actually fighting, the bullshit you banter back in town doesn’t help you win.
Today I saw an 18 yr old watching a Thomas Sowell video. It gave me hope.
“OK, honey, it’s on your dime, I’ll watch it if that’s what gets you off”
/totally inappropriate, untrue and unfunny joke
Maybe covered, but anyways, Google cancels staff meeting after Gamergate-style attack on employees
Stands pencil on desk. “Hey, Sundar. Wanna see this pencil disappear?”
Hoped for frank, open groupthink?
Hoped to discover all the wrongthinkers to enact a purge.
Only the army could make shooting a machine gun out of a helicopter look boring:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8KFprP8G_Q
Not one person yelling GET SOME! Was that film made to discourage soldiers from wanting to become door gunners?
The Army kills a lot of supposedly fun things. It took about 8 years for me to kind of enjoy going to the beach again.
I had my final “Klingon” speaking test a few days ago. I think I did well. They asked me about my opinions and on hypothetical situations, which is a higher level task.
My reading and listening tests are next week. Graduation in 2 weeks.
Almost there!
AIT next or is that a change that is coming?
majQa’!
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Aug. 10 (UPI) — A tattoo shop in Dallas is offering a solution to customers who don’t want to agonize over what design to get inked — random tattoos from a vending machine.
At Elm Street Tattoo, ink-seekers put a coin into a vending machine, turn the knob and get a plastic bulb with a tattoo design inside. Whatever the design is, that’s the tattoo you get. And it only costs $100.
“They’re all good ones — old-school snakes, devil heads,” a shop employee named Boogie told the Dallas Observer.
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https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2017/08/10/Get-a-vending-machine-tattoo-at-Dallas-shop/1091502410154/?utm_source=sec&utm_campaign=sl&utm_medium=1
I’ve never had the urge to get a tattoo, but if i did, i’d definitely go old-school biker rather than the current full-sleeve japanese arty farty fad.
I’m talking more like
“flaming skull with a snake coming out of one eye which is hissing at a panther which is being ridden by a big tittied bikini wearing woman waving an american flag which was embroidered with the word “Mom”“
Fun story time, about 15 years back, I was looking to get a tattoo. So I asked one of my tatted up co-workers where he got his ink done, so I went to the place he recommended and asked for a nice hula girl on my arm.
I was told they didn’t actually have any hula girl patterns, but if I could reschedule, the artist would happily draw some up. So I agreed and went back about a week later where I looked through her drawings and picked the one I liked best. She won some sort of tattoo convention award for my arm.
So now my bicep is an award winner, not because I lift heavy things, but because I gave an artist a canvas. Said canvas giving required me to sit still for an hour so, with a smoke break halfway through. And I kind of get why people like getting tattoos, once those endorphins kick in, that’s a natural high.
SANDYMONIQUE
CATHYYOU
I don’t know if anyone else has covered this but there is a new widespread, domestic terrorism organization around.
So be careful out there.
Note for mods – article tweet function still autocorrects to “#libertarians”