Ah yes. The opening weekend of NFL football. May its splendor forever wipe the stain from the earth that is the Ohio State Buckeyes showing against Oklahoma on Saturday night. Hey coach, you do know you have a pair of 5-star QBs waiting in the wings, yeah? You do know our QB is allowed to lead receivers into open spots, yeah? You do know that someone can still be a team leader from the bench, yeah? Just curious. Elsewhere, Clemson beat Auburn. USC beat Stanford. Georgia beat Notre Dame. And everybody else that was expected to win, did. Good for them.
Before the NFL, let’s talk some tennis. Rafael Nadal won the US Open and inched back within shouting distance of Roger Federer for overall Grand Slam wins (16 to Fed’s 19). Those two truly are two of the best ever along with Sampras and Laver. On the ladies side, Sloane Stephens took Madison Keys behind the proverbial woodshed and destroyed her. So now we can all (mostly) forget about tennis until the Aussie open starts in 22 weeks.
In the pro pigskin league, Detroit rallied back against the Cards. The Iggles beat the Washington football team freaking Redskins. They beat the team called the Redskins. The Dirty Birds held off da Bears. The Jags crushed the Texans, but a little glimmer of hope arose at NRG with the QB change at halftime. The Bills topped the Jets. Raider Nation invaded Tennessee and came out victorious. Baltimore blanked the Bungles. The Rams mauled the Colts. The Panthers put it to the 49ers. The Packers took down the Seachickens. The Cowboys got the better of the Giants and the Steelers beat the Browns, and in doing so made Ben Roethlisberger the winningest QB in Cleveland’s stadium since 1999. (Not the winningest visiting QB…the winningest QB, period.) A couple more games tonight will round out the week.
On the diamond, the Astros got swept by the lowly Athletics. The BIG RED MACHINE won. The Nats clinched the NL East. The Twinks lost. The Brewers swept the Cubs and tightened up the NL Central. The Yankees drubbed the Rangers. The Dodgers continued their freefall with a tenth straight loss, falling to the Rockies. The D-backs returned to their winning ways. And the Indians reeled off their 18th straight win and moved to within 2 of the all-time record. They have three at home with the Tigers starting tonight.
That’s a lot of sports. And there’s plenty more, probably. But I won’t cover it. Instead, I’ll jump into…the links!
Hurricane Irma is creeping Northwest, according to the models. It sure looks to me like its making a beeline toward Jacksonville and the Atlantic. But I’m sure the models are correct even though they missed the landfall guesstimate from Thursday by 400 miles or so. Stay tuned to the news if you’re within 100 miles of its projected path and prepare accordingly. It’s breaking up, but it ain’t over. Also, if its passed, please let us know you’re ok.
Harry Reid says “piker”.
Pontiff plants puss on Popemobile Plexiglass. Video available for lulz.
ONLY READ THIS IF YOU WANT TO CRY!!! That’s a legit warning. Unless you’re ready to cry or want to read a story about the ultimate sacrifice and unselfishness, don’t click.
This is a really, really important court case that’s been flying under the radar. And a decision could come down today. Keep us in the loop, Chicago Glibs.
Ghanian slot machines: Di box no dey spectacular, but im get shine-shine lights.
Of course you have to turn right to get there. Its in Texas!
Finally a town is for sale in a civilized part of the country! And its named Mustang, Texas. Break out your checkbooks, Glibs. We got a crowdfunding campaign to kick off.
Sometimes I’m right… and I can be wrong.
Forget all your problems for 5 minutes and just be happy you’re above ground…wherever you are.
Damn, I’m in my basement office, and all my problems are staring at me right out of this screen.
Go off the grid.
61) I tried to read the Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Atlantic essay on Trump. I did try. And on a line-by-line basis, it’s well-written, if overwrought. It’s just after two or three pages it was So. Many. Words. In pursuit of So. Few. Ideas. I made it about halfway.
Last year, I bought the first issue of the new Black Panther comic series authored by Mr. Coates. This is not unusual for me—I buy a lot of comics, and this was a big deal in the comic world. I didn’t follow the series after the first issue, though. The writing was awful.
Actually, I recognized the problems. In my weekly writer’s group, I’ve read a lot of first-time authors who come in with the first chapter of their first novel. Often, especially if it’s a SF or fantasy novel, they’ve done tons of world-building, and they fill those first pages with all the details of their worlds, while giving us very little about the characters or the conflicts they’re going to face. Usually, the actual story doesn’t even start until the second chapter, which is the true start of their book.
This was the problem with that first Black Panther issue. All world-building details, and Black Panther himself didn’t even appear until the last few pages, where he had a highly-stilted conversation with his mother. The second issue may have been great, but I’ll never know—amateur hour mistakes and terrible dialogue? No thanks. (Just as aside, nearly every comic-rating site gave this first issue high marks. I got the impression from these reviews they didn’t even read the same issue I did.)
So far as I can tell, he can’t write essays, and he can’t write comics. I haven’t touched either of his two memoirs, but their descriptions make them sound like typical self-serving political crap. More “Dreams of My Father” and less Rousseau’s Confessions.
So have I just read the wrong stuff? Does he have hidden depths I’ve missed? Should I give the Trump essay another try? Are those award-studded memoirs actually any good? Or is this just more cultural war nonsense—empty praise for drivel just because he’s So Brave in spewing his bullshit into the pop culture landscape?
There’s a simple talk for a newbie that’s made this mistake.
“Pick the scene that you’re going to start with. Start telling the scene. If you absolutely must include background material, pick the single most relevent thread and make it integral to the scene. You have a whole book to show off your world.”
Yep, we’ve given variants of that advice many times. If the writers are receptive, they improve. If not, they get all upset that we’re daring to criticize their masterpiece and leave after the second or third meeting in a huff.
I read a Brandon Sanderson novels and he skips the whole world-building thing entirely until much later on. Then he does it by hints and much later on.
That might be the opposite extreme.
(Alternative thought: “Perhaps he didn’t even think about it until he got that far into the book himself”)
In Worm, the world-building comes out in drips and drabs but it has the effect of making everything seem more real, since there’s almost no exposition. It also builds anticipation of you trying to figure out the backstory. I rather like the technique.
Gibson did something similar in his rentboy-Jesus novel, but in that case, he was deliberately hiding the backstory.
Steven Erikson does the same thing. He starts with a few charachters in a situation, throws the reader in blind. Then builds the world and it’s mythologies from the inside out.
It’s starting with a single thread in a strand of yarn, and the more you read the more the entire tapestry is exposed
Damn I need some coffee, I think my brain hiccuped while writing that.
Greg Egan does this. It’s a challenge considering his novels are high concept science fiction.
Lots of Niven novels are “tourism” novels as I can them, where the story is there to show off a world concept. And he does a great job of giving you information in bits and spurts.
The characters get introduced before the world.
Well, I think that’s the virtue of having a Watson::Holmes or Maturin::Aubrey character in a novel when it’s possible and when it makes sense.
The wing-man provides an appropriate foil to the protagonist or narrator, allowing the writer to flesh out of the milieu at a measured and premeditated pace, without making the reader feel he’s on the business end of a descriptive fire hose. As a literary mechanism, it also permits the author to obscure plot detail, because you can control the narration and eliminate a degree of objectivity, because of the interposition of the ‘wing-man’ between the reader and ‘objective reality’.
nearly every comic-rating site gave this first issue high marks.
Social signaling.
The signal you want to pay attention to is the sales differential between issue 1 and 2. Or between 1 and whichever issue isn’t a bundled pre-order with the first for the stores.
That’s the market signal.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that social signaling and market signals tend to be inversely proportional.
Good point, let’s check that. (From the Comichron sales charts:)
April 2016 Black Panther 1 $4.99 Marvel 253,259 (best-selling title that month, by far)
May 2016 Black Panther 2 $3.99 Marvel 77,654
June 2016 Black Panther 3 $3.99 Marvel 75,037
July 2016 Black Panther 4 $3.99 Marvel 72,302
Yep, big difference.
Bear in mind, first issues almost always have higher sales because collectors buy them due to the possibility of it accruing value over time.
Coates’s Wakanda: This is what Africa would look like without wypipo
He’s a garbage writer because his premises are all false and he’s a race-baiting prick.
His purpose is to cash in while sowing discord through white-blaming and black-shaming any black people that want to integrate into white-dominated neighborhoods for the betterment of their family or children.
He’s a piece of shit the world would be better off not knowing about.
I’ve never seen anything from Coates that particularly impressed me as thoughtful or particularly considered (hardly surprising since he pretty gained minor stardom by 32 without a particular area of knowledge). I’ve pretty much concluded that the major audience for his work is middle class whites and blacks who wish to social signal.
I should also note that his first book was about his struggles in life. His mother was a public school teacher, his father was a publisher and bookstore owner. All of his siblings are college graduates and Coates himself dropped out of Howard after five years.
But, I’m sure he was raised in a log cabin.
You know who else wrote about his struggle?
Barack Obama?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?
Ivan Denissovich?
Mohammed?
Richard Simmons?
Ta-Nehisi Coates?
Everyone in a toilet paper commercial?
I wasn’t the only one who thought of Snugglesoft?
“Seven years of college down the drain!”
I can personally confirm this. I sell copies of it at a ratio of 9/1 white to black.
“…Ta-Nehisi Coates’s…”
No.
Did he take that name as an adult, or did his parents really hate him?
Did he take that name as an adult, or did his parents really hate him?
Wikipedia says his parents hated him. From his writing, they were probably right to do so.
In all seriousness, he has that weird name because his father was a Black Panther. His father was also apparently a polygamist, which I’m going to arm-chair psychologist say is why Ta-Nehisi seems so desperate for attention (a man with four women and seven children can’t possibly have time for any one of them).
No you haven’t read the wrong stuff. Coates is an idiot and a con artist. He is basically a minstrel show for stupid white people.
Love Sly, man!
LOVE!
*boogies*
+1 Infectious bass
Contagious Fish?
Base guitar would be better, no?
No, that would not be as funny.
they’re integral to the guitotem pole.
Baltimore blanked the Bungles.
The best play was when Andy Dalton got ass-raped.
Which time?
He was farting quietly by the end.
There was a lot of pre-season hype about how this was going to be the best defense since the legendary 2000 Ravens, and TBH, I was skeptical. A couple more performances like this one, though, and maybe they’ll actually live up to the hype for once.
Losing Woodhead was tough. Before going down, you could see that he and Flacco were clicking perfectly. I have no idea who will be able to step up and be Flacco’s security blanket in the way that Heap and Pitta were in the past.
Sly and the Family Stone are highly underrated. Maybe it’s because Sly kind of disappeared there for a couple decades (I think he basically got so mixed up in the drug lifestyle, but I could be wrong.) Great song.
Yes, massive drug use, problems within the band, etc. But who cares – this is how you should remember them:
live version.
Love that.
+1 thank you fahlettinme be mice elf agin
ThanQ4lenmebmiceelfagin
*Cthulhu awakes*
He was living in a van for a long time (literally) across the street from my house.
…down by the river?
*hunches up pants*
“The Iggles beat the Washington football team freaking Redskins.”
I love this time of year in the Washington metro area, as the delusions of summer turn into the reality of fall. I’ve lived here since 1998, and the Redskins have had maybe like one half-decent season in that time, but still the die-hards think the Redskins are a great team, just going through some hard times. You fools! From ownership down to the playing field, not one thing is right about the organization! I just laugh and laugh.
The idea that Kurt Cousins is a top flight QB worthy of paying top money is my favorite Redskins’ fan delusion. Along with refusing to change their name, refusing to pay Cousins was the only smart thing the franchise has done since Schneider bought the team.
Did you just fall into the Kurt trap, John, or was that intentional? I agree, that Kirkkkkk is not worth paying the market rate that someone with his stats would command. The problem is that when you at how those stats are compiled, they typically come in games that they lose. He never seems to deliver in important games. The problem that I have with how the Redskins have handled the contract situation is that they have not dealt with it in a way that will allow the team to extract value from him when he inevitably leaves, or laid any groundwork for replacing him.
They should have drafted a replacement and traded him or kept him for a year so their rookie had time to develop. Yes, Cousins’ statistics are mostly fools’ gold. Could you win with him? Maybe if you had a really good team around him. The problem is that paying him $20 million a year makes it impossible to put a really good team around him. He is a ticket to mediocrity.
The problem starts with the owner: Snyder wants to buy a superbowl instead of building a team that can win one. So he has been paying obscene money for superstars that can never bring together a decent team.
I miss Joe Gibbs and the old Hogs..
Maybe it is time to rethink loyalty.
That Cousins is not a future hall of fame QB is a given but when you survey the league how many QB’s can you really say are clearly better?
Brees, Brady, Rogers, Wilson, Newton, Ryan, Luck, Carr, Rapistberger, Manning
Then you got a couple of young guys who easily could be better but we can’t really say yet because they are too early in their careers
Mariotta, Winston, Prescott, Wetz, Taylor, Watson, Kizer, Siemian, Tannehill
Then there are a handful of guys in the same class as Cousins
Stafford, Rivers, Dalton, Palmer, Flacco, Smith
That would put Cousins somewhere between the 11th and 26th best QB in the league and I can see a legitimate argument that he belongs in the top 10 because of Brees and Brady’s age and Manning’s inconsistency. He is not the guy who is going to win you he championship all by himself but he is at worst a league average QB and if the going rate for league average QB’s is $20 mil a year then you are going to have to pay him or someone else that much money and if it is someone else there is a 50-50 chance that the someone else will end up being objectively worse than Cousins.
Two kinds of teams seem to win the Super Bowl these days. Teams with truly elite QBs and teams with less than elite QBs who are not making a lot of money. Baltimore, for example, won a Super Bowl when Joe Flacco was on his second contract and making a relatively modest amount for a starting QB. Seattle won their Super Bowl when Russell Wilson was still on his rookie contract. Once those teams had to pay those QBs big money, they haven’t won jack since.
Cousins is not and never will be an elite QB. So, paying him elite money just ensures you will never win anything.
I think you’ve summed it up nicely. Rasilio has a point, in that a quarterback of Cousins level can keep you competitive year after year, but then you will be consistently mediocre. The alternative is to be terrible, and roll the dice repeatedly in the draft and hope you get lucky. When you look at the Browns, you can see the attractiveness of consistent mediocrity.
The Redskins have had that for a long time. I am not a fan but if I were, I would want to see them go 2-14 this year, ending the Kirk Cousins experience and allowing them to draft one of the several potentially elite QBs in next year’s draft. It would also end the Jay Gruden era, which needs to happen.
Best case scenario is a playoff contender loses their quarterback in the first month of the season and the ‘Skins can trade Cousins to them and tank their season. Then I can watch them pick the wrong quarterback in the next draft and repeat the RGIII debacle.
You never know. It is funny to think about that draft now. Andrew Luck got paid and has put up some numbers but I think it is fair to say that he hasn’t turned out to be the next great QB. He was not the franchise changing replace Payton Manning with a newer model that people thought he would be. And RGIII will go down as one of the great busts in draft history.
At the end of the day, you have to have a good team with some real play makers and a good offensive system around any quarterback for them to really thrive. Put a top quarterback with a mediocre team and you will get mediocre results. The difference is that a top quaterback will get great results with a good team around him, while a lesser quarterback won’t have the skill and talent to fully exploit the abilities of the team around him.
Well things aren’t over for Luck and lets face it, the Colts problems cannot really be blamed on Luck, the front office is a disaster and they have yet to put an even halfway competent team around him.
As far as RG3 sorry he doesn’t even make the footnotes in the list of greatest busts in NFL craft history. His one good season alone elevates him above that.
Indeed. This isn’t Ryan Leaf or Jamarcus Russell.
Exactly, Rasilio. Luck is an top tier QB, but it’s hard to win games with a GM that can’t draft or put together a team and a high school level coach. To put up any numbers and win games with the porous lines and lack of defense he’s had is tough.
RG3 never came back from that LCL/ACL either, that’s not him being a bust, it’s him getting permanently hurt
Say what you want about Cousins, at least he outperformed (barely) Brady.
*mutters to himself* stupid missing the draft…
Oh gotta say, if I was picking someone to be my QB of the next 5 years, not based on their historical greatness or peak skill levels but solely on how I think they will perform in the aggregate over the next 5 years I think I would rank them something like this…
Rogers
Ryan
Luck
Carr
Wilson
Mariotta
Newton
Prescott
Stafford
Cousins
Wentz
Roethlisberger
Manning
Brady
Winston
Dalton
Flacco
Tahnnehill
Rivers
Taylor
Brees
Smith
Palmer
who cares about the rest, guys in this years upcoming draft are probably gonna have better careers than what is left
So yeah if I could get the #10 QB for a 5 year period on a $125 million contract with $60 mil guaranteed I’d jump all over that, and with the Salary Cap being up t $167 million you should still have no problem fielding a good if not great team with the $142 million a year you have for the other 52 roster positions (an average salary of $2.7 million each)
“Finally a town is for sale in a civilized part of the country! And its named Mustang, Texas. ”
I looked this place up on Wikipedia. Because it’s an incorporated town, it’s able to sell alcohol in a dry county. Owning this place should be like a gold mine.
“And here is City Hall – it doubles as the town liquor store!”
Finally, we can open a place called ATF for the right reasons.
I almost forgot to never forget today.
It’s meme day on facebook! Thanks for the remind. *cracks knuckles*
16 Years Ago: Rick Rescorla Saved 2700 Lives
Lots of onions being cut in the office today apparently.
Wow. What a life.
Me too, until I turned on the news to get some storm updates and see the more important news is 9/11 remembrance.
Traitor.
A school cancels an event named after a guy who bought slaves in order to free them – because he owned slaves (briefly).
“According to The Fayetteville Observer, Lafayette was to be the mascot of “Flip-Tap-Stack!” which is an effort to teach school children to empty the trash from their disposable cafeteria trays into trash cans and stack the trays for disposal.”
That requires an effort?
Have you ever been to Fayetteville?
Not that I recall. I’ve been in NC, so I might have driven through it.
Picture an endless progression of bad strip clubs, tattoo and massage parlors.
they have more than one establishment that offers both massage and tattoo serivces?
You can tell which is which when the tattoo wears off after a few days.
Well…yeah. I mean, Fort Bragg, right?
And then there are some bad parts.
The best thing about Fayetteville.
mmmmm… nana’ puddin’
Damn… They’re celebrating 30 years, which means that place opened up 5 years after I was stationed there.
Fuckin’ old.
You misspelled Fayettenam.
Everyone misspelled Fatalville.
They have to empty their disposable trays, so the disposable trays can be properly stacked. Then the stack of trays can be properly disposed of…
fuck
This is not just what children are taught in school, it’s something that the school is making an extra effort to teach to children.
Seeing as he’s supposed to be an educator (or at least administer education) this man should be fired for his complete ignorance and desire to signal.
I have begun to notice that the marxist crowd mostly and most loudly protest against abolitionists. I wonder what thats all about.
Happy Monday(s)!
This is so cool
Eight rooms of a Roman cavalry barrack were found at a site near Hadrian’s Wall
Pretty neat. Thanks.
Very cool, mahalo
That is pretty damn cool.
Old, but hilarious.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2010/04/top-scientists-warn-sea-gods-angry.html
Awesome.
The quotes are even funnier now the we have the knowledge that is, Pidgin.
The close is amazing:
Fantastic!
Controversial YouTuber PewDiePie uses racial slur in livestream video
using the N-word
Norwegian?
Newfie.
Cast him adrift at once!
This isn’t the first time the YouTube star has found himself in the centre of a media storm. Earlier this year, Disney’s Maker Studios and YouTube cut ties with the star after he uploaded videos containing anti-Semitic imagery.
Thanks to the WSJ, people can’t tell the difference between anti-Semitic imagery and anti-anti-Semitic imagery.
^^^ This. The whole situation was ridiculous when it happened, but now it’s just a fact. Gosh I hate the media. Lies are all it’s stories are built on.
Narrative uber alles bro.
Cue the outrage machine.
Does it make me a bad person if I don’t give a damn?
Controversial? I can’t think of a YouTuber less controversial than PewDiePie. Unless being massively successful is a controversy.
He is not controversial but annoying if you are past the age of 16
Yeah, I don’t really watch his stuff, not for me. But the outrage over him, starting with that ridiculous WSJ hit piece on him, is baffling. What I’ve seen just doesn’t seem controversial at all.
He’s a popular part of the new media at a time when the old media is losing all their prestige and power. I wonder why they started smearing him so suddenly?
I have made it my policy to never use any words that even start with the letter “N”.
Never.
The irony here being that he uses it once in a video, and Coates uses it twenty times in the essay, mostly as a descriptor for Trump (so it’s not like he’s using it in a ‘reclaiming it for black people’ way, but keeping it as an expletive). But hey, rich white Scandinavian is OUTRAGE and the black guy can use it all he wants and nobody gives a damn.
Sweet Jesus, the comments over at the chemotherapy story. RIP lady.
Them’s some horrible excuses for human beings.
Welcome to the San Francisco Chronicle comments section. It’s almost always like that.
Except for those icky Christfags. You can have at ’em.
These are people for whom altruism means “somebody else sacrificing for the greater good as determined by them”.
For most people, life is about other people sacrificing for their principles.
Virtue signaling is cheap…
Until it isn’t. ESPN, University of Missouri, Oberlin, and Evergreen College are learning the hard way.
some guy called Bastiat on lline 4 ….
http://www.ktvu.com/news/uc-berkeley-campus-police-cite-street-food-vendor-then-take-his-money
Rioting in the streets is one thing, but selling hot dogs is way over the line.
““Fascist thug [and] white supremacist Ben Shapiro is coming to UC Berkeley — The issue is not ‘Free Speech,’” the group wrote in a Facebook post. “The Issue is Fascism.””
http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/10/berkeley-agitators-say-orthodox-jew-ben-shapiro-is-a-white-supremacist/
I think it is even worse, that he is using his Jewishness as a mask for all that
Don’t they mean facist thug and (((white))) supremacist, Ben Shapiro?
I don’t think they know what words mean. I doubt any of them could define “fascism”.
Fascism: The belief that non whites should be held to the same standards as whites. The belief that the money you earn should remain yours and not be redistributed for the good of all. Am I close?
Close. But you left out the pRt where fascists want people to have equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome. Especially as it applies to women, minorities, the transfolk and otherkin.
Everyone MUST cross the line with the same shit. It is only fair Especially the ones that have not really earned it through hard work and keep making stupid choices.
Actually the people fighting fascism are doing so because they like their brand of totalitarian rule better. Its a battle between the national socialists and the international socialists, and as usual, the international socialist or communists are getting cover from the sympathetic dnc operatives with bylines.
As someone said, it’s a bunch of guys who hate jews, against a bunch of people who like Palestinians. You’d think they could share a milk shake at Denny’s and celebrate all the things they have in common.
a milk shake
Way to Nazi dog whistle, Nazi.
Curses! Cover blown!
“We are deeply concerned about the impact some speakers may have on individuals’ sense of safety and belonging. No one should be made to feel threatened or harassed simply because of who they are or for what they believe,” Paul Alivisatos, the university’s executive vice chancellor and provost, wrote in an open letter.
I think he may have “speakers” and “listeners” confused.
I don’t think the crowds causing people to feel unsafe listen.
So when does Berkeley get sued for creating a hostile environment for it’s conservative students? Oh wait, who am I kidding, those students aren’t humans.
So selling hot dogs and getting beaten by masked men with clubs are the big arrestable offenses in Berkeley.
Of course, if you are arrested, of course the police can go into your wallet and steal your money. Murica, bitchez!
I bet if he was selling vegan organic falafel they would have left him alone.
“UC Berkeley Police said they do have that right –”
This has got to stop. The government has no rights. It has the stuff granted power to do something, but that does not make it a ‘right’.
What’s the problem? I’m sure the cash will be placed in the evidence room and returned if there’s not a conviction.
Sure, it will only cost a couple thousand in attorney’s fees to get back a couple hundred bucks. Eventually.
They really are trying less and less to not look like gangs.
I’ll have the civil forfeiture dog with all your money on it.
Beat me to it. I couldn’t contain my cursing while watching the video.
We need to find the SFGate version of that story. Or the WaPo coverage. Just to see the comments.
It will be all about THE LAW (which doesn’t count when it comes to illegal aliens).
A quick search found nothing – just a ton of stories about Secret Nazi Hot Dog guy who got fired in April.
Why in the name of God would anyone live or try to do business in Berkeley?
Berkeley Bowl. So awesome, it makes living there almost worthwhile.
nearly every comic-rating site gave this first issue high marks.
“For a… you knooooow…”
Now that the hurricane is breaking up, what you do suggest the MSM use their “Cone of Probability” CG capabilities for? Tracking the projection of the loss of individual privacy by government intelligence agencies? Projecting the path of the destruction of 1A and 4A? What you got?
Projecting Democratic losses by county with the probability of voter fraud?
The cone of probability as to whether or not a person needs reeducation due to wrong think based on how many disagreements one has to the woke position resulting in a graphic of the upside down cone on the suspects head because he/she is obviously a Nazi KKK member.
Hopefully they’ll store it inside the Cone of Silence.
I almost forgot to never forget today.
I had completely forgotten. And you ruined it.
I always remember it when I have to get my anus fingered by a TSA agent.
Go on…
I hope he leaves a tip.
Just the tip?
spread your cheeks and think of America.
No kidding. Just make them proctologists and kill two birds with one stone.
UC Berkeley Police said they do have that right – if there is an arrest, or in this case a citation, officers can confiscate money.
And then they eat all the hot dogs. With ketchup.
Who puts ketchup on a hotdog?
Australian kid decides he’s a girl. Two years later, decides he really is a boy after all. After his mom let him take hormones of course. One thing I notice absent from this story; any mention of this kid’s dad. Yet another win for single moms, amiright?
Don’t dare suggest or even hint that a father’s presence and influence is helpful for a child’s normal development.
He would’ve just infected the kid with his toxic masculinity, right?
Relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkcveiCnN44
Actually I came across this particular story from the Bearing video I saw in my notifications when I woke up this morning.
That is indeed a very well-done transition….
Should I be in my bunk? I might be going to my bunk.
I just got out of my bunk, was I not supposed to go in there?
Could those years of evidence instead have been an incessant barrage of progressive propaganda?
You know, when you are suffering like this, a few months can feel like years.
“Day 730, now it’s officially been ‘years’, chop this penis off already you chishetshitlords.”
Evil Godbag, Sky Daddy loving bleevers.
Get to da coppah, it’s not a FEMA.
“it’s not a FEMA”
still, wouldn’t hurt to get it checked out just in case.
This is because they selfishly refuse to pay higher taxes so FEMA woulds not be so underfudned
Ugh, see how terrible Trump is? He’s letting disgusting Christians do more help than good selfless government. Obama wouldn’t have let this happen!
True, Obama (PBUH) would have had the authorities stop any unauthorized rescuing.
Wow, there’s actually a government incentive in favor of people solving problems through private action. Nobody tell the progressives: they’d probably call this a loophole.
Somewhere in California, a prog had a heart attach upon reading that.
Johno of the day.
Swissy, kind of in line with comments we made a day or two back; have you noticed how few references there are to the work the Salvation Army is doing/has done? One of the local TV stations made a two-minute reference to it today and the local rag (the Kansas City Star) made scant reference, if any, to the work General Booth’s cohorts do.
Floridians are organizing against the hurricane.
In Floridian fashion.
They’re all Han Solo now?
Koona t’chuta
SoloFlorida Man?Wait until you can see the white of it’s eye.
“Florida is a Stand Your Ground state, after all.”
Ha!!! Those stupid people who believe in the right to self defense, they all want to shoot at a cloud
“Here, hold my funnel cloud.”
LOL
Help, I Can’t Stop Hooking Up With Trump Supporters
When someone asks about my worst hookup, I have plenty of options to choose from, but I inevitably end up telling the same story. It’s the one where I started arguing with a Trump supporter at a bar and then before I knew it, I was waking up the next morning in his bedroom. There were flags everywhere: Ronald Reagan’s face was emblazoned on one of them, “Don’t Tread On Me” made an appearance on another. I say it was the “worst” not because the sex was bad, but because, well, see above.
https://www.glamour.com/story/hooking-up-with-trump-voters-essay?mbid=social_twitter_glamourmain
I think your problems are twofold – starting with hanging around with people who pry into such matters and continuing on to being overly judgemental of people because of political positions.
Or you wrote a ficticious article and then you’re even less redeemable because you thought this complaining would make you look good.
It’s obvious bullshit.
It’s not just bullshit. It’s recycled bullshit. I have seen several versions of this propaganda story before with the same theme. I am not sure what the point of it is.
When you are dealing with the mentally ill / personality disordered you start to notice commonalities. Maybe that is all it is – a symptom of a certain personality disorder.
LOOK AT ME!!!!!!!!
Fucking losers.
“Fucking losers.”
It does appear that everyone in that article has been doing that.
I suppose dating a man for a while before starting a physical relationship is a crazy old-fashioned advice?
I wish I knew how to make a woman so angry she immediately sleeps with me
“Your sister was easy.” – waits for it…
She doesn’t want that.
“Plus, in an odd way, sleeping with Trump supporters reaffirms my own political and personal values. I don’t think I could ever have a serious relationship with a one—I can’t be with someone who won’t understand why the news sometimes causes me to burst into tears, or why I want to throw my phone across the room after reading the President’s latest tweet. For me, differing political ideologies are a deal breaker. But that only makes me more OK with accepting these flings for what they are: Opportunities for excellent hate-sex. And to be able to walk away unbothered, unburdened, and sexually satisfied makes me feel powerful at a time when many people with my liberal leanings have never felt less in control.”
If you are such an emotional weakling that you tear up or get angry over presidential tweets, you’re not in control when it comes to whoring yourself out either.
Not self-aware enough that she’s seen as a slutty leftist disposable cum-dumpster.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Not in control? So you’re saying it’s rape?
Oh, yes. She was SO unbothered, and just so darn unburdened that she wrote an article about how unbothered and unburdened she is
Reading this passage caused me to burst out laughing.
What, don’t jump into bed on the first date? SLUT SHAMING! How dare you judge her for being a total slut!
How dare you judge me for judging people!
I wasn’t judging for judging. I was judging for wrong judging! So how dare you judge my correct judging!
It’s judging all the way down!!
Gee, you don’t think it might be possibly because the Trump supporter isn’t the bogeyman you made them out to be in your head and, politics aside, he might be someone you actually like who treats you as a peer? Nope. That’s unpossible. It must be the space-based mind control lasers that the alt right Nazis are launching from their secret moon base.
You mean Iron Sky wasn’t a documentary?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/
And to be able to walk away unbothered, unburdened, and sexually satisfied makes me feel powerful at a time when many people with my liberal leanings have never felt less in control.
Have you tried straddling the fence?
“It’s the one where I started arguing with a Trump supporter at a bar and then before I knew it, I was waking up the next morning in his bedroom.”
I wonder if she’s ever considered that this is obviously rape.
That guy needs to report it to the police if he’s been assaulted.
This liar is making a career out of bullshit stories.
I Don’t Know If I Was Raped
What I Learned After Being Ghosted Just As I Was Feeling Secure
“I know it seems outdated and slightly misogynistic, and I know virginity is really just a social construct, but I was raised with certain values. And even after I grew up and explored my own beliefs, I still knew I wanted to wait until I was married to have sex. I had strong convictions about it, sex was a big deal to me, and it still is.”
“Now, I still don’t know if I was raped or just made a very poor decision.
And I don’t think I’ll ever know the answer. But maybe one day it won’t matter anymore. Maybe, one day, all that will matter is that I’ll be with someone who loves me. Maybe, one day, I’ll forget about my purity ring. Maybe.”
I’m thinking Suthen may be right. It’s more cluster B than someone who knows they are lying.
I’m not a fan of the “diagnose from a distance” thing, but I remember reading an article from a psychiatrist saying that many political extremists and fanatics met most of the criteria for BPD and NPD. I’d say progs fulfill those diagnoses better than most.
It must be a bitch when your political and sexual fetishes both involve authority and power, but your political tribalism excludes all but the most effete and emasculated men who can’t deliver it for you.
Lol. If this is a true story, then your observation is spot on.
“Harder to ignore was his conviction that if Clinton won, we would automatically go to war”
Smart guy.
One wonders how many of these random hookups weren’t, like, rabid Breitbart-commenter MAGA types but normies with a more sanguine attitude toward politics than hers. I bet levelheaded and emotionally stable probably looks pretty attractive to an insecure hysteric.
Of course she transformed them into Steve Bannon in her mind ex post facto. Because everyone who supports Trump is like this:
http://liberalsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Trump-Supporter.jpg
Finally a town is for sale in a civilized part of the country! And its named Mustang, Texas. Break out your checkbooks, Glibs. We got a crowdfunding campaign to kick off.
And this can be our anthem.
“A Playboy model is ditching her vegetarian diet in a bid to be crowned the first ever international winner at this year’s Miss BumBum.
In preparation for the competition Jeni is eating a meat-heavy diet of steak, ham, chicken and tuna, as well as doing two hours of squats every day.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4869656/MissBumBum-hopeful-gives-vegetarian-diet-win.html
Not that bad, the competitors of miss BumBum tend to be a bit to thicc for my taste
It is not that they are thick so much as that they are otherwise skeletor skinny but then have these big asses. It is like you took an ass from a size ten girl and stuck it on a size two girl. It just doesn’t fit. It looks weird and unattractive to me.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4769706/Miss-BumBum-2017.html
None of these women look particularly skeletor skinny to me but opinions differ I guess
They are in every part of their body except for the asses. Look at their arms and legs. They are all very thin. But then they have these huge asses. That is what is so odd looking about them.
And many of them have way too many tattoos. SOme of them are not super skinny. But the Playboy model is. She just doesn’t look right.
I’m familiar with the body type John is referring to, I’m just not seeing any examples of it in that link. Plenty of meaty arms there. Maybe the chick with one leg is working his brain like an optical illusion or something. I thought she was just playing flamingo until the crutches registered….
If I did 2 hours of squats every day with any significant weight, I’d be in a wheelchair.
My current workout is only ~20 minutes every other day, and only 1/3rd of that involves squats.
Then again, I think she’s using low weight high rep strategies, so no significant weight.
Only around 20 minutes? I’m guessing those are some heavy weight, low rep workouts? Also, don’t forget to do workouts besides weights. I had been doing weights every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but I recently added in abs and cardio for Tuesdays and Thursdays. Shouldn’t neglect parts of your body.
You doing stronglifts? That’s a good program.
She’s pretty good at simulating this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lordosis_behavior
But, she’s wearing a Mexico jersey, so I’m sorry to inform you that she, too, must be destroyed.
Who is DEG having an orgy with today?
http://archive.is/wPI3A
5 and 14 for reproductive behavior and 8 for boiled bunny.
1 and 38.
Can I borrow 1 when you’re done with her?
Seriously. That is one beautiful woman.
No obvious tats or piercings and she’s smiling!
So, no.
You scrolled all the way down to 38?
What can I say? I take my responsibilities seriously.
35
1 and 6. 6 has whiskey.
The one with the bright blue bra…… Mmmmmm
1, 9, 30.
40 gets DQ’d by lack of face in pic. I’m very, very curious.
Tunes from FIFA 10 soundtrack. New things for your listening pleasure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbZhJCUfJAc&index=25&list=PL8143CDABCDC71F4B
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS3qsQMsgBQ&list=PL8143CDABCDC71F4B&index=7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cQyg7CtEDo
Also: go look up pics of SoShy, she should probably be an FLBP girl.
That’ll be tricky with the “Love Attractive Women” and “Hate Girls with Tats” contingent.
George Monbiot: how do we get out of this mess?
I give you 3 guesses
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/09/george-monbiot-how-de-we-get-out-of-this-mess
Donald Trump. North Korea. Hurricanes. Neoliberalism. Is there any hope of a better world? Yes, but we have to come together to tell a new, kinder story explaining who we are, and how we should live – all the buzzwords of the day.
“We have been induced by politicians, economists and journalists to accept a vicious ideology of extreme competition and individualism that pits us against each other, encourages us to fear and mistrust each other and weakens the social bonds that make our lives worth living.” – yes, this is totally the case, lets ignore that big government does not in any way lead to better social bonds
“With the help of this ideology, and the neoliberal narrative used to project it, we have lost our common purpose. ” – or maybe it is impossible for millions pf people to have a common purpose
“Most people are socially minded, empathetic and altruistic. Most people would prefer to live in a world in which everyone is treated with respect and decency, and in which we do not squander either our own lives or the natural gifts on which we and the rest of the living world depend. ” – this is, off course , equivalent with lotsa government
Anyway there’s a whole lot of nonsense there for your reading pleasure
Communism: We’ll make a utopia this time, we promise!
If only we could all just get along and work for the common good, life would be paradise. If only we could create the new Soviet Man who works for the collective and not himself, the world would be a better place.
Of course as long as the collective is doing my bidding.
So much this…
“If i could just do violence against everyone who disagrees with my perfect plan for the course of humanity, then everyone would agree with my perfect plan for the course of humanity.”
Tautology of the day folks!
Is this sentence really in the article?
No, that would require way more self awareness than the author possesses. It’s just a neat summary of his argument.
“We have been induced by politicians, economists and journalists to accept a vicious ideology of extreme competition and individualism that pits us against each other, encourages us to fear and mistrust each other and weakens the social bonds that make our lives worth living.
Does it occur to anyone but me how much of a sociopath someone would have to be to write something like this? Essentially, what he’s saying is that people shouldn’t value their own life and happiness. It isn’t universally true, but a betting man is going to come out way ahead assuming that someone who tells you not to value something has plans to take it away.
I see no mention of the simple fact that in the locations where there are more individualists people are much more decent and polite than in the places where there are fewer.
As usual with pinkos up is down.
Excellent point. I’d also note that the best research shows individualists tend to be much more personally charitable than collectivists.
It is because they respect the individual. Individuals do not matter to collectivists.
And to collectivists charity or help must come from government..
Anecdotally, My extended family runs wide gamut of VA planter aristocracy, Carolina smugglers, South GA sharecroppers, and Southwest FL builders; I was always raised to mam & sir all strangers, smile when you approach someone, look people in the eye when speaking with them, and don’t make promises you know you can’t keep. I have always considered this to be just normal human civility, the kind of adapted behavior that enables easier social transactions amongst strangers. Now, living in NYC, I overheard some coworkers describe me as the nicest person they’ve met and a maintainer of an impossible standard of customer service.
Years ago, my high school class (we were Memphians) took a trip to Philadelphia. We were ordering food at a restaurant, and the servers started to talk about us, saying they hate Southerners like us because we’re all fake, and stuff, with our “please” and “thank you” nonsense.
I don’t think any of us were cognizant that we were being polite.
*eyes cavalier suspiciously*
You’re too nice, you want something…
Ellsworth Toohey is a great role model.
“We have been induced by politicians, economists and journalists to accept a vicious ideology of extreme competition and individualism that pits us against each other, encourages us to fear and mistrust each other”
It you feel like that, it’s probably because you’re a sick demented human being, projecting your power fantasies on everyone. I feel more trusting if people in the market because I know they are trying to provide a good service to me, peacefully.
This is the flat-out lie that stuck out at me. It holds for one’s immediate circle of family and friends but unless one is a saint it’s complete bullshit beyond that.
I’d say that the wealthier an individual is, the likelier that this holds further and further out from one’s immediate circle. It is easier to give out of one’s excess than one’s essentials. Which ironically would mean a more individualist society will be more charitable than a collectivist society, as it will be wealthier (see cat article from yesterday) and therefor the people more likely to give.
When someone asks about my worst hookup, I have plenty of options to choose from, but I inevitably end up telling the same story. It’s the one where I started arguing with a Trump supporter at a bar and then before I knew it, I was waking up the next morning in his bedroom.
“Dear Penthouse, I never thought…”
I guess this is the 21st century version of Nazi Death Camp sex. “She made unspeakable sacrifices, JUST TO SURVIVE!!!!”
To be an unapologetic Trump supporter and say that to the face of a Prog woman, takes a certain amount of balls. It doesn’t surprise me at all that she ended up in bed with him. Chicks dig guys with balls not matter how much they claim otherwise. Sensitive and obsequious never got any guy laid.
Why does being honest take balls?
Because being honest and telling the truth tends to piss people off. People like lies. They are comforting.
John, that was one of the finest comments I’ve ever read.
Thank you.
Un…unless he’s just trying to comfort you and he really doesn’t mean it.
Yes, he is. And it worked. I feel very comforted. Why see the truth when lies feel so much better?
Sensitive and obsequious never got any guy laid.
Because sensitive and obsequious is usually someone with an agenda. It’s the person who outright disagrees with you who is going to be more likely to actually respect you.
Maybe he gave her herpes too…
Uhh… Imma guess there is a higher likelihood she gave him herpes.
+1 diseased cesspool vag
An acclaimed British conductor has been fired from a prestigious American music festival after a seemingly innocent joke he made to a black friend was labelled racist.
Matthew Halls was removed as artistic director of the Oregon Bach Festival following an incident in which he imitated a southern American accent while talking to his longstanding friend, the African-American classical singer Reginald Mobley.
It is understood a white woman who overheard the joke reported it to officials at the University of Oregon, which runs the festival, claiming it amounted to a racial slur.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/09/british-conductor-sacked-us-music-festival-joke-labelled-racist/?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_fb_tmg
putting on an exaggerated southern accent and joking: “Do you want some grits?”, in a reference to the ground corn dish popular in the south.
“I’m from the deep south and Matthew often makes fun of the southern accent just as I often make fun of his British accent,” said Mobley. “Race was not an issue. He was imitating a southern accent, not putting on a black accent, and there was nothing racist or malicious about it.”
But the singer suspects that a white woman who overheard their conversation and spoke to him moments later went on to report it to the university, alleging Halls had made a racist joke.
“Ah, Bach.”
If it had been Wagner, he’d be fine.
Are grits any better than polenta is the question here
Not instant grits. Only slow cooked with a shit ton of real butter is palatable, damn palatable actually.
So you are saying that in the time to cook real grits two sets of guys can walk into and out of the sac-o-suds?
Well, you must have magic grits!
Add bacon…
Cheesy grits ftw.
Cheesy grits are divine. May I also suggest, when having left-over plain grits (refrigerated and hard), break them into small bits, drizzle them with honey, and top with cream/milk; eat as cold cereal.
Nice…I was thinking about trying to deep fry cold grits.
With jalapeno. .
I love jalepeno…do not like in cornbread though. Smells/taste fishy.
Euphamisms!
I won’t lye to you: they are.
https://www.ch.ch/en/alarm-signals/
*activating*
Cook your grits in a pot as you normally would. When done mix with rotel, cheddar cheese, and place in a casserole dish. Bake the grits at about 350 until the cheese is melted thoroughly. Serve with any holiday meal. My mom has made these for every family get together since I was a kid. They are outstanding. I’m probably missing an ingredient or two, but that’s the gist of it.
We did something quite similar last week. Tempered in a few beaten eggs to fluff it up a bit. It was delicious.
I don’t supposed the phrases “mind your own business” or “nosy bitch” came up during her tattletale conversation with officials at the University of Oregon. One reason I’m not a college official.
“a white woman who overheard the joke reported it to officials at the University of Oregon, which runs the festival, claiming it amounted to a racial slur”
What is the psychology behind this “white savior” ideal that so many progressives have? White progressives seems far more likely to get offended by perceived racial slurs than any minority group.
Same as it ever was. Progressives have always seen themselves as superior in every way to others, which is why they started out championing eugenics until Hitler gave it a bad name. Being the enlightened few, it is their duty to shepherd the weak and the stupid now that they can’t just round them up and kill them.
And they never even bothered to talk to the supposed ‘victim’, who is vehemently objecting to the characterization of this as racist. They must believe the black man is too unwoke to realize he has been the victim of racism, so they must handle it for him.
False consciousness ftw.
I think she was just pretending to be offended.
“What is the psychology behind this “white savior” ideal that so many progressives have? ”
Base racism.
The believes they must embrace racism to stop racism. Or something.
“The left”
I had a prof in college who once played a tape of a white guy speaking with a Southern accent – everyone thought it was black guy. This was decades ago & much of the country is still completely ignorant of where a “black accent” comes from.
Thomas Sowell has a whole book about American “black culture” being a hand me down from uneducated southern rednecks.
Yeah, I’ve read it. Fascinating and so not woke.
Good thing he did it in the US instead back home. In GB he’d probably get fined, too.
Yeah… because mocking the accents of others is not at all funny.
The U of O is a lunatic institution. Professor dresses up as black doctor at a private off-campus Halloween party because she just finished a book about being a black doctor. University disciplines her.
Also, the local rag which has been carrying stories about the abrupt firing gets scooped by a British paper. I guess they’ve got their head wedged too far up the university’s ass.
The poor dears. I hope they get closure by banishing the vile racist.
So this racist bitch thinks all black people talk with a southern accent or all southerners are black.
Either way she’s a racist pos.
It is understood a white woman who overheard the joke reported it to officials at the University of Oregon, which runs the festival, claiming it amounted to a racial slur.
SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING
The Stasi would be jealous.
Am I a bad person for hoping that every single word that woman says from now until the day she dies gets put under a microscope for the possibility of someone using it to ruin her life?
Nope. Although I doubt she would learn anything from the experience.
And the bitter irony here of course is that white woman snitch is almost certainly ALSO posting hysterical screeds about “FASCISM RISING!!”
well, I guess you should know, lady.
My schadenfreude meter just hit 11.
http://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-confident-victory-second-home-chappaqua-accommodate-white-house-staff/
And to think that she and Bill were flat broke a mere 17 years ago when they left the white house. What an American success story!
And the Clinton Foundation is a totally legit charity, not really a money-laundering slush fund at all!
And don’t forget – Trump spending lots of time at Maralago = bad. Clinton dragging the West Wing to Chappaqua = totes cool.
Thereby reinforcing the idea that Chappaqua should be renamed “Unpleasantville”. (Pleasantville being the next rail stop to the south)
And since I was visiting this fine media establishment I give you
The Guardian view on climate change: see you in court
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/10/the-guardian-view-on-climate-change-see-you-in-court
Recent days have seen Houston, Texas literally sunk under sheer weight of rain, Carribbean islands battered by powerful storms barrelling across the Gulf and now Florida homes blasted by Irma, the largest of three hurricanes churning in the Atlantic basin. It seems almost certain that man-made climate change has a role in such events. Scientists used to be circumspect at attributing any single extreme event to global warming. No longer. Now scientists make the link between climate change and droughts in Kenya, record winter sun in Britain and torrential downpours in south-west China.
The unmistakeable fingerprint of extreme weather at the crime scene of global warming seems intuitively obvious: consider that Houston is reckoned to have been hit by three “500-year floods” in three years.
Most serious scientists – evan warm inst – say quite clearly attribution is quite difficult so this is bullshit.
Three major legal actions will test such thinking. First in the Philippines, where it is being determined whether polluters violated the human rights of Filipinos for their role in creating the conditions for Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest ever tropical storm to make landfall, which left more than 7,000 dead. Second in Germany, where a German utility company is being sued for costs associated with glacial lake flooding in Peru. Last in the US, where two California counties are suing 37 oil, gas and coal companies, claiming they knew their products would cause sea-level rise and coastal flooding, but failed to reduce their greenhouse gases.
Good luck with all that
It flooded in Houston, a city that is built mostly on a swamp and is barely above sea level. My God, look at what we have done to mother earth.
I don’t see went they don’t sure the consumers of the products, cause if they didn’t demand the product, then the company’s would have gone out of business. I mean the only way this would make sense is it these people were just looking to cash out on the businesses, but that can’t be it.
The trial of everyone versus everyone
A recent thunderstorm dropped a tree limb on my car. I wonder if I have standing.
Guardian pinkos fapping to disaster porn.
“How many dead? Ohhhh yeah…”
Solving their pension crisis, one bullshit lawsuit at a time.
It should be good in court when they have to present actual scientific proof that the products actually caused said effects. Because so far no one has been able to even come close.
Don’t worry, some lefty judge will give them a pass.
Sad but true.
Recent days have seen Houston, Texas literally sunk under sheer weight of rain, Carribbean islands battered by powerful storms barrelling across the Gulf and now Florida homes blasted by Irma, the largest of three hurricanes churning in the Atlantic basin.
It seems almost certain that man-made climate change has a role in such events.
Isn’t “seems almost” just fancy way of saying “it didn’t”?
Recent days have seen Houston, Texas literally sunk under sheer weight of rain
And these people want to be taken seriously? Houston hasn’t literally sunk a fucking inch. We are exactly where we’ve been relative to sea level for some time. What happened is the eaters rose…then receded.
“Sinking” implies we literally dropped below the surface of the water permanently. That’s what sink means. It doesn’t mean “water temporarily rose higher than parts of the city”.
The Guardian might be the worst major publication out there by a long shot. Itakes the WaPo and NYT seem sane by comparison. They’ve literally sunk to a new low with this piece. Literally.
Actually, I read somewhere that the weight of the water actually caused the city to sink about half an inch, but that it will rise when things dry out.
These dumbshits think their rhetoric is going to pass muster in court and the defendants aren’t going to have a chance to present hard data. Their scam is going to be shot down.
I hope they get stuck with the defendant’s attorney bills.
Then it must actually be demonstrable, no? Because otherwise, go fuck yourself, you unscientific moron.
Reduce their greenhouse gas emissions? Uh they aren’t the ones really using their products
…consider that Houston is reckoned to have been hit by three “500-year floods” in three years
The flood terminology really throws a lot of people. Houston is unlucky of late, but “500-year flood” doesn’t mean “once every 500 years”, it means 0.2% chance of occurrence per year (i.e. the probability approaches 100% as the time scale approaches 500 years).
More LARP meetups gone bad.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/09/11/antifa-far-right-protesters-clash-again-in-portland-disrupting-peaceful-rallies/?utm_term=.6cac9470cf91
I mean seriously put them in an arena already. And use social media for the thumbs up/down for the vanquished. Put the money towards reducing national debt.
Really that’s a win win win, everyone gets what they want. Violent people get to kill, the rest of us get to go on with our lives knowing it’s a better world now, and less debt.
Not one Russell Crowe amongst them.
There was a George RR Martin story “Weekend in a War Zone” where in the future there were some designated war zones and you could pay a fee to be assigned to an army and you would go there and you know kill or be killed. In the story it reduced crime cause people could work out their aggression.
What does that have to do with medieval rape fantasies as conceived by a 14 year old virgin?
So in the States there seem to be a lot of houses made mostly of wood. As a romanian I find that weird, here everyone aspire to owning a brick house. So what is the deal with y’all and wood houses? Is it a cost thing? A preference thing? Brick and reinforced concrete seem so much more resilient.
Some parts of the nation (eg: Florida for obvious reasons) building code would not allow for a wooden house.
It is totally a cost thing. Wood houses can be virtually manufactured and assembled at the site. Brick houses have to be built there and require real skilled labor. Hiring a brick layer costs money. Hiring a bunch of Guatemalans to hang sheet rock and nail plywood is cheap.
Also, it’s easier to remodel a wood-framed house than a brick one. Knock out a wall, put in a new room, a lot cheaper and easier than relaying brickwork.
People like to customize a lot.
French Canadians hardest hit.
Stack ’em high and sell ’em cheap. Once upon a time this country had a shit load of land, a shit load of trees, and a shit load of capital to turn the combination into rows and rows and rows of tract houses that middle class people could afford to finance.
Everyone wants a brick house.
I was hoping it was the Commodores.
How are houses in Canadia ?
Also there is the expression built like a brick shithouse. Why build a latrine of bricks? Don’t make no sense
Don’t worry, that expression doesn’t make sense to people here either.
It means over-built; built beyond what is needed, way above average, etc.
In many places, we have earthquakes. Brick is not a good thing.
Well we have earthquakes as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Vrancea_earthquake
Vernacular Architecture is a cultural component. Wood is cheaper to put up, cheaper to tear down and easier for the homeowner to fiddle with, which makes it ideal for the self-reliant strain of American culture. (You will note that the urban prog tends to live in a habitat of concrete and steel, which cannot be easily customized to suit the individual)
I’m not going to guess what brick aspirations mean with regards to Romanian culture, but maybe you can illuminate that.
I’m going to guess they aspire to live in castles. Cause Europe.
I’m cosmopolitan like that.
Ours happen a bit more often, especially on the West Coast. Most areas there actually forbid the use of brick for new construction.
1977 Vrancea: 1578 dead, 11,300 injured.
1989 Loma Prieta (SF Bay area): 63 dead, 3757 injured.
1994 Northridge (Los Angeles): 57 dead, 8700 injured.
Is that all due to wood construction? Unlikely, but the overall awareness of earthquake hazard in the US has led to a variety of ameliorative and preventive construction requirements, minimizing the damage. Wood frame construction is part of the equation.
that does not explain the predominance of wood outside of the shake zones either.
Different areas, different things. Here in the Chicago area, brick and cinderblock is super common. As Suthenboy notes below, brick has not traditionally been available in Extra Toes Country, so wood is the default. When SP and I lived in Butte, MT, brick predominated.
And of course, CA is 20% of the US right there.
Up here in America’s Heartland, wood is far and a way the most popular. Pretty much the only place* you’ll see brick is in highly affluent areas. And even there, not all of them.
*You will run across brick veneer from time to time. A wood structure with non-structural brick running up the street-side wall 3-4 feet.
Brick dominates in Chicago because of the fire.
Cost. Historically wood was abundant and stone or concrete, not so much. Here in Louisiana it wasn’t until the early 1970’s that bricks and slabs started showing up. Prior to that people build wood frames up on piers.
(nostalgic sigh) My beloved and dearly missed Irish Chanel house (side-by-side, shotgun camelback) was a good 4′ above the banquette. When pulling all the trash out from under it, we found a blank granite tombstone.
Because we live in a civilized land we don’t all either live in castles or sleep in the stable with the peasants.
Canukistan isn’t civilized, it has government-run health care and laws against freedom of expression and self defense!
If only we could open carry in Chicago like you Americans.
I did not claim that this side of the border was civilized, just that Canadia was not.
Go easy, Canadians have a serious inferiority complex that they try to ameliorate by constantly bitching about Americans. They really can’t help themselves.
What is the psychology behind this “white savior” ideal that so many progressives have? White progressives seems far more likely to get offended by perceived racial slurs than any minority group.
“Take up the White Man’s burden.”
The darkies are just a bunch of ignorant, feckless children. They don’t even know when they’re being insulted, unless a well-intentioned progressive arbiter of taste is there to tell them.
You beat me to it. It’s Kipling colonialism all over again, but this time it’s at home.
It is two things. The sense of feeling superior to black people you mention and feeling superior to other white people. Part of the appeal of being a “white savior” is feeling morally superior to other white people who don’t see their burden and moral duties. You would think white guilt is an act of self-loathing but it is actually just the opposite. White guilt is the primary way Progressive whites assert their moral superiority over non Progressive whites. They understand the burden of their race and America’s racist history and want to make amends and people like you don’t. And that makes them morally superior to you.
That’s exactly what I was trying to get at above.
Beat me to it by two minutes. Dammit!
– Hoffer
Of course, whether or not they are actually selfless is a matter of argument, but they think so.
If they didn’t get something out of it they wouldn’t do it.
They almost never are. Being “selfless” is mostly just meaningless symbolism or expecting other people to suffer for your principles. If your “principles” only require other people to suffer, they are not principles. They are rationalizations for your self-interest.
And even if they are being selfless, to think that makes them morally superior requires the belief that your selflessness does any good and doesn’t end up doing harm. And there is no way to square that assumption with reality. If helping people and making the world better were just a matter of being selfless and trying, the world’s problems would have been solved a long time ago.
Not quite. I rather suspect that the progressives don’t even see minorities as in their league. Hence, they see them as irrelevant. What they do see the existence of racial slurs as is a means to establish their superiority over other white people. The minorities simply provide them a convenient excuse to attack the lesser white people.
Progressives treat minorities as useful idiots to the cause. Go to any pollster’s Twitter page and you see all sorts of drooling about how “Latinos” and Blacks will deliver for proggies in Sunbelt states in 10-20 years. They’re not even hiding that they’re the Racist Party anymore.
They’re desperate for this because without identity politics, division and hate, they have no chance. Assuming recent electoral trends with whites continue, if the Rs can pick up even 15% more blacks and Hispanics, the Dems would be doomed.
And complicating the racial calculus, ~50% of American Hispanics identify as white, so if the Dems get too racial and become seen as “anti-white” they’ll risk reducing their Hispanic vote.
The important thing is to signal right, who cares about minorities, really
RE the mom with cancer:
Those were some ugly people posting at the chronicle. I wonder if any of them have kids. Reminds how much I hate that song Imagine by Lennon. “Imagine there is nothing to die for” Fucking really? You wouldn’t take a bullet for your kids or fight a cougar off if it was eating your offspring?
I hate that song.
Agreed. That song is bullshit pablum. It’s Barack Obama in song form.
I like it because it is decent musically, and allows you to expound on its fallacies to believers in it. I’ve converted several people to critically thinking about the costs imposed by the ideas in the song merely by stating how each part is a fallacy.
My favorite version of “Imagine”.
Or maybe it’s this one.
…not if that’s God’s plan.
/Kevin Hart
This car dealership tried to park cars in a campus garage during Hurricane Irma. People weren’t happy.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/09/11/car-dealership-tried-park-cars-campus-garage-during-hurricane-irma-people-werent-happy/652740001/
A North Florida car dealership angered Florida State students when it parked its inventory in a campus parking lot as Hurricane Irma closed in on the Gulf Coast city.
Students and locals complained Sunday they couldn’t park in the covered garage because the spots were filled with brand new cars from Napleton Infiniti, a local dealership. So they filled the company’s Yelp page with negative reviews.
“Don’t be that guy,” wrote one Yelp reviewer, Maurina D. “Don’t park your cars in student parking during a hurricane.”
A bad Yelp review instead of a good keying? Man this country has been emasculated.
I was thinking maybe the University intentionally rented the spaces to the dealership, but apparently not. Appears to have been a reasonably good intention imperfectly executed. Don’t think I’ll blame the U too much for not having thought it through far enough to see that coming.
So, everyone gets a little lesson in tragedy of the commons.
He was a great man, Stalin. He got things done.
In part, too, Shaw’s insistence on seeing the Soviet Union as the harbinger of the great socialist utopia can be explained by the disappointments of democracy. He had fought for decades to establish universal adult suffrage, especially for women and the working class. Like many radical intellectuals, he was dismayed to find that many of these new voters preferred king-and-country conservatism to the socialism they were supposed to support. Especially as the Great Depression took hold, parliaments and political parties seemed utterly ineffectual. Stalin’s apparent ability to move mountains and transform society with triumphant five-year plans offered an antidote to his impatience with the frustrations of democracy.
Those fucking peons don’t know what’s good for them. They need a truly visionary man to take the reins, and drive them to greatness, whether they want it or not.
It never occurs to people like Shaw that democratic societies don’t “move mountains” and “transform society” overnight because doing so is really hard and fraught with risk and endless numbers of unknown second order effects or that totalitarian states only do so at the price of brutality and murder. To be an “intellectual” is to never mature past that of an earnest teenager.
They even managed to work Trump and white nationalists and Putin in at the end there.
I’m willing to cut those early believers some slack. The failure of Western democracies to address some long standing legal inequities created an opportunity for the communists to pose as the alternative. However, once the bloom was off the rose, they should have seen the Marxists for what they were, instead most of them doubled down.
The bloom should have been off the rose the day they murdered the Tsar and his entire family. The Bolsheviks were murderous animals from day one. The true believers just didn’t care or want to know. The crimes got bigger in the 1930s but they were just as inexcusable in the 20s.
I don’t disagree, but it was a murderous time in Europe. How many little people died in the name of nation-states over the previous few years? I can see where disillusionment with the Western experiment could set in. If governments were willing to sacrifice an entire generation to achieve their inane goals, why shouldn’t the rebels be willing to take lives to achieve theirs? It’s a sick calculus, but in the immediate aftermath of WWI, I can see its appeal to those who were disenchanted.
The bloom should have been off the rose the day they murdered the Tsar and his entire family.
I’d argue the bloom should have been off the rose when they wrote the damned book. The communists never made any pretense that they were interested in anything other than brutally imposing their ideology on everyone.
I agree. I’m reading The Open Society and Its Enemies at the moment. Even Popper, writing in the 1940s, feels the need to preface the section on Marx by telling us that “there can be no doubt of the humanitarian impulse of Marxism”. But Marx knew perfectly well how many people would have to be killed to achieve his utopia. There was a wilful blindness to it that persists to this day in the tantrums that accompany any attempts to decry Antifa and the like.
(I delurked to make this incredibly important point. I hope you’re grateful.)
I hope you’re grateful.
Thanks, Tulpa.
Fuck off, new guy
I hope you’re grateful.
Our nipples explode with delight!
Go on…
here
I’m willing to cut those early believers some slack.
Don’t. They never gave a fuck about those inequities in the first place. It was a means to an end. It’s the same delusion of supremacy we were discussing above. Whether it was Utopian democracy or autocratic mass murder, they just wanted their pony and were willing to sell their souls to whoever could get it for them.
Pay no attention to the haystack of skulls behind the curtain.
Communist Apologists are some of the worst scum on the face of this earth.
“Neither the Great Purge nor the Ukrainian famine, nor even the pact between Stalin and Hitler, seem to have troubled his faith in the genius and historic rectitude of the Soviet dictator. ”
Obviously that’s partly because, as Orwell noted, Shaw “declared Communism and Fascism to be much the same thing, and was in favour of both of them”. He also said that capitalists would have to be humanely gassed, or something like that, for communism to work. Quite refreshing honesty, really.
that is absolutely insane.
Student organizers who this month called for sweeping changes on campus to address a string of reported incidents involving racist messages targeting black students, said Wednesday that they don’t know the identity of the hoaxer. But they say their protest went beyond any single incident.
“Our movement wasn’t about one individual,” said Precious Ismail, a spokeswoman for the campus group, the Coalition for Change on the Hill. “Our movement was about a pattern of institutional racism.”
On April 29, St. Olaf senior Samantha Wells, who is black, posted images on social media of a threatening note she said she had found on her windshield. Wells was a featured speaker at campus rallies this month, tearfully relaying the discovery of the note and how unsafe it made her feel on campus.
Anderson said Wednesday that a student was responsible for the fake threat, but “federal privacy laws prohibit the college from disclosing the identity of the author of that note and disclosing the actions taken by the college now that we know the author’s identity.”
http://www.startribune.com/st-olaf-report-of-racist-note-on-black-student-s-windshield-was-fabricated/421912763/
For which we have exactly zero evidence of its existence. At all. But it’s totes real because feelz.
For which its existence cannot be proven or disproven. FIFY.
PSEUDOSCIENCE!
There was a similar incident at my kids’ high school. It was interesting how we went from OMGRACISTS!! to crickets as soon as the powers ID’d the perp.
Inconvenient truths and all that.
So now university staff is getting in on the false flag act. Fan-fuckin’-tastic.
With all this institutional racism why do they need to fabricate and make up examples?
I’m gonna guess because real examples don’t exist.
What do I win?
Two weeks at a government-run re-education center?
Does he get to keep the little piece of brain they cut out?
Only if he wins the boss fight at the end of the DLC.
Otherwise they put a little bag of sand in there.
I am guessing the reason has something to do with DeVos cutting their fucking water off.
Yeah, ok.
im sure this means that crazy racist running around is being protected by the school and the “Coalition for Change” or whatever the fuck they’re called is happily accepting of the school rule preventing them from publicly shaming the awful racist. No way in hell could it be one of their own committing fraud in a way that wasted a lot of taxpayer money on police investigations. That’s inconceivable.
ONLY READ THIS IF YOU WANT TO CRY!!! That’s a legit warning. Unless you’re ready to cry or want to read a story about the ultimate sacrifice and unselfishness, don’t click.
Well, I learned today that Sloopy is a reliable source when it comes to warnings. That story hits you right in the feels.
Too sad; didn’t read
We have someone in our hospital now in a similar situation. Hospice and Labor and Delivery are basically in a race to see if the mother can survive long enough for a C-Section before she dies. The kid will almost certainly be a preemie in our NICU. She will never leave the hospital; we’ve been setting up the ways and means for us to take her baby to her in our hospice, which is in a separate building – moving a baby in and out of our NICU is not a matter of tossing it in a baby seat in the back of a car.
Vacuum tubes?
When you see that so-called “non-partisan” polling sites hire young, vapid, pretentious proggies like this guy to cover elections, is it any surprise how they desperately skew data and predictions in their favor?
What do they think they are accomplishing, though? It’s not like this shit actually helped Hillary.
It sure as hell helped Obama…
As a romanian I find that weird, here everyone aspire to owning a brick house.
You would, wouldn’t you?
This is one of the weirdest, most awesome cartoons ever.
Where’s Lord H. been lately? Been around?
I believe he mentioned a couple weeks ago that he was taking some vacation time or something along those lines.
I remember he was looking to take in a foster kid/adopt a kid. He’s probably busy and could use a long vacation.
He mentioned that the foster kid didn’t seem like a good fit given their current children and concerns about adding the foster kid, and they ended up not doing it.
Better to find out now rather than later.
So not sure if it was covered over the weekend but it seems like everyone’s favorite Columbia J school grad has landed her bog site in a bit of trouble…
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/oregon-life-coach-sues-former-gawker-property-jezebel-for-defamation/
OFA money drying up?
https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/36510/
As we mark another anniversary of 9/11 down in the history books, I’m finding it, as I have for the last several years, with mixed emotions.
Of course, I feel sadness for those who died and for the scope of the tragedy. I can also revisit the feelings of fear and anger from that day.
But, I realize that we are *still* spending blood and treasure in Afghanistan, 16 years later with no clear idea of why we are there, what we expect to accomplish and how we will accomplish it.
We can honor the dead and the soldiers who sacrificed by traveling to hostile territory to fight; simultaneously we can demand from our leaders an explanation of how our continued presence in Afghanistan benefits anyone.
We’re saving the illiterate goat-herders from themselves, because America……
I saw the phrase “National Day of Service” on my morning news, frowned, and asked myself, “When did that happen?”
*googles*
I see we have Obama and a Kennedy to thank for that.
I’m not going to accuse specific people of using the deaths of 9/11 as an excuse to conduct foreign military adventures or make a buck off taxpayers by creating business for their defense contracting businesses, but I will say that there are well-meaning people who need to have some cold water dumped on their heads to get them to snap out of the fixation on solving the problem of Islamic terrorism. Many, many more people have died as a result of the war on terror than were killed by terrorists at this point, and we’re no closer to a solution.
I’d say we’re farther away than at any time in my 40+ years.
Paraphrasing Robert LeFevre,
Say the great pyramids were 100 miles from the Mediterranean sea and you wish them to be moved closer. You went out and hired a company amd payed them 5 million dollars to accomplish the task. After much work and after spending all the money, the pyramids were then 125 miles from the sea. Would you then raise more money to give to the company?
In other news, there are assholes on Twitter:
http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/10/leftists-celebrate-the-death-of-eric-bollings-son/
People sure are determined to prove how stupid and rotten they are.
Wow, people really can be utter pieces of shit. This is part of the reason I’m getting off of the Facebooks. It just seems to bring the worst out in people. There are people that I know and like who I’d like to keep thinking of as friends, not to mention family members, and it’s hard to do that when I’m barraged with thoughtless, idiotic remarks they post on the Internet.
It’s totally worth it, believe me.
I actually wrote an essay in college about this waaaaay back in 2000. This, of course, was before Derpbook, Twitter etc. and most people were just beginning to use email regularly. Most of the kids on campus had started using AOL Instant Messaging; I noticed that people would say things in those chatrooms that they would never consider saying in meatspace. So, I wrote an essay for a philosophy class about the online, anonymity asshole effect. If anything, that perceived anonymity has given us a window into the heart of others we didn’t have before.
Made more popular on the tubes as the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
I think at that time the anonymity factor may have been primarily responsible, but nowadays you’re encouraged if not required to use your real name and personal information on social sites, and I think most of the people on there do. I think the issue is now more about our online environments becoming carefully cultivated echo chambers. It’s easy to relish the deaths of your political enemies’ children when you only have to hear feedback from people who agree with you. And then in that environment, there becomes a game of one-upmanship where you compete to see who is the most extreme asshole. You see that especially in activist groups and communities (both online and offline). Libertarianism included. By your 2nd week on any given libertarian website you’ll be writing apologia for pedophilia or calling Murray Rothbard a Stalinist if you hope to keep up with the “I’m more libertarian than you” competition.
It’s the last vestige of the ‘conservative’ in me, recognizing that just because you can say something, that you should say it.
Facebook and Twitter simply allow impulsive people to turn off whatever social filter they might have, in more ancient times, engaged. The interesting thing to me is that on the few occasions I’ve challenged people about their shitty comments, most seem genuinely surprised that anyone thought they were beyond the pale. It’s almost as though they feel that having the freedom to *be* a nasty shit so easily sanctifies their behavior.
For me, that moves them from the ‘impulsive’ column to the ‘repulsive’ column. And I have very little regret in discarding them, frankly.
Freedom of speech works both ways. You’re free to open your mouth and I’m free to say you’re an asshole for it.
The question that occurs to me is whether it’s the anonymity that creates the vileness or if these people were always vile and only held in check by social pressure?
I think it’s the second one. Character is how you behave when you think you won’t get caught.
I don’t mind learning what people really think, even friends and family. If a friend thinks I’m one of those that should be rounded up and sent to a gulag because of X, that’s not someone I want to be friends with and I’d rather know than not. I’ve distanced myself from certain extended family members for similar reasons. I can handle a liberal with different viewpoints from mine, but progs and SJWs are little more than rabid animals that should know as little of my children’s’ lives as possible.
Sometimes the reverse happens and I find myself pleasantly surprised by libertarian posts from someone I didn’t expect, though that doesn’t happen as much as I’d like. I rarely post anything ever, but my wife often posts pictures of me armed while playing with our kids on the homestead. I think my views are known.
Speaking of pleasantly surprised, I don’t know my future BIL that well yet and went to visit him and my sister a few weekends ago. First thing he does when i walk in the door is show me where the guns are kept so I can grab one if I need it. Then he showed me where the extra hp ammo is stored for them in case I run out and need more. Then where his go bag is stored in case I need it. Of course I had brought my own of all three, but damn, I’ll take him into the family.
I’ve mentioned my future BIL not being comfortable around guns before so I should clarify there’s two of them. Both of my little sisters are getting married next year.
it’s good to have at least one person you can drink a beer at the wedding with.
I hear you on that, and I have experienced some pleasant surprises myself, but mostly it’s just seeing people I care about voice idiotic opinions I never would’ve known about had Facebook not existed. I was raised in the fine old tradition of never discussing politics or religion, and while I obviously don’t necessarily hold to that I like to think that there’s a time and a place for both. These are topics that deserve thoughtful discussion and consideration, not the rhetorical equivalent of yelling out the window of a moving car. I have enjoyed seven years of happy marriage due in large part to dissuading my wife from engaging in political debate with me.
I routinely put Jeff Tucker on blast because I think he’s a cosmotarian in the heavy throes of chronic TDS, but one thing he has said often that bears repeating is that, at the end of the day, politics doesn’t really matter. Most of what we debate about isn’t going to impact our lives on a day-to-day basis to the extent that it’s worth ruining your day or a valued relationship over. The best strategy to sell people on libertarian ideas is to live them, and if your main premise is that you don’t really want or need the government to be involved in your life the best way to show that is to not dwell on politics. Chances are pretty good that, unless you’re particularly close to a Supreme Court justice, you don’t know anyone whose opinion is going to dramatically alter government policy or law or anything, so the stakes are pretty low in terms of getting them to agree with you on health care policy, or immigration law, or whatever.
The best strategy to sell people on libertarian ideas is to live them, and if your main premise is that you don’t really want or need the government to be involved in your life the best way to show that is to not dwell on politics.
I can go either way on that. As the government grows more and more intrusive it’s increasingly difficult to live a lifestyle consistent with your values, and it forces you into the political arena whether or not you would like to ignore politics. Eric Erickson is a clown, but I think he was spot on when he said “The Left will not let you stay on the sidelines. You will be made to care.”
I agree with you Bill, especially on the no politics, no religion at dinner, but Pat’s hitting on what I was getting at.
There’s a tactic called swatting that gun grabbers use where they call the police on legal open carriers.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423458/anti-gun-zealots-adopt-dangerous-tactic-antagonize-firearm-carriers-charles-c-w-cooke
There’s also a similar tactic the progs employ where they call CPS on homeschooling families.
I try to insulate myself from such people as much as possible because of the damage they can unleash on my family using the government as their proxy.
I don’t even own a gun, but that gives me the urge to buy a gun and carry it around wherever I can.
Just had the mental picture of outfitting a bike jersey pocket to serve as a holster…
That’s a good point, but that’s sort of an extreme example. Valid, certainly, but hopefully unusual within the context of family and actual friends, meaning people you know outside of social media. I mean, I have friends I’ve known since high school who are actual socialists, as in self-described, members of the Socialist Party USA, red as hell socialists, and while they advocate policies that would probably result in my eventual imprisonment I know that they would never SWAT me or anything like that. I have family who are absolutely anti-gun, and while they vote for repressive gun laws they would never sic the local gendarmerie on me for owning guns or that sort of thing.
That’s probably true, but as a personal example I’ve got a cousin who moved to Canada after marrying a Canadian. She’s a Canadian citizen now, but she still posts shit on Facebook talking about “we” and “us” as if domestic American politics were somehow an item of personal concern even though she lives in BC and has her very own PM Woke Bae to worry about. She is very much a Progressive and suffering from profound TDS, but she’s still family and is a wonderful person whose company I enjoy when she’s not talking about politics. Now, I could jump in when she says idiotic things about Betsy DeVos or climate change or whatever, but the odds are good that I wouldn’t be able to change her mind. From a cost-benefit perspective, there’s a good chance that would damage our rapport, a minuscule chance it would have some positive impact on her opinion, and absolutely zero chance that policy would change in any way whatsoever regardless of my success or failure. So there’s a lot of risk, a lot of cost, and pretty much no benefit.
This explains in a nutshell why the vast majority of perfectly ordinary and rational people are outgunned in the culture wars by a fringe of nutters. The proggy nutters are willing and eager to escalate their political opinions into every area of their life and to raise the ante for those who disagree to a level that most aren’t willing to follow.
She is probably perfectly willing to cut you off, cold, and make any subsequent face to face meetings highly unpleasant, in service of her delusions. You, on the other hand, are making the eminently sane calculation that politics ain’t worth it. You’re right, she’s wrong, but her wrongness actually gives her more leverage.
Well, it’s also that I’m just not willing to have a discussion that would require nuance and probably benefit from face-to-face interaction over Facebook. People post stuff on Facebook for the benefit of acquaintances. It’s not so much that they really want to change people’s minds one way or another so much that they want to be seen to have a certain perspective. It’s not really any different than wearing a shirt with a pithy slogan on it. She’s a comic book artist, so at the risk of painting with a broad brush the people she meets at conventions or knows through Internet stuff are the kind of people who are going to eat up any kind of “Trump’s a crazy Nazi, healthcare is a human right, blah blah blah” stuff. Lots of chicks that dye their hair pink and have Hello Kitty purses, guys who are nerdier than hell, people who don’t identify as a particular gender, you get the picture.
So, she’ll post crazy shit online for the benefit of Proggy Canadians because a.) it’s her echo chamber, and b.) it promotes an image of herself that she finds valuable with those people, but in conversations we’ve had in the past she’s been much more moderate. And that seems to have held true with a lot of other similar people in my life. When they think they’re virtue signalling to a friendly audience, they’ll say some outlandish shit, but the minute the context changes and they realize they’re talking to an actual person who is evaluating their statements critically and may or may not agree with them, they become more reasonable. Or at least willing to agree to disagree civilly.
Ah, yes, the moral, compassionate left.
Literally the wokest of the woke. How caring, how loving.
Holy fuck. That is a cesspit of degeneracy.
Also, progressives that invoke “karma” completely un-ironically are doubly retarded.
Is Irma still head for Ft Benning? Was waiting for the inevitable Gaia hates long dead Confederates narrative.
Wait, if it is heading to Ft. Benning Gaia must hater Army Rangers?
And tanks
Everything is banned on Facebook
https://twitter.com/Lauren_Southern/status/906906430103584768
What a love story, career DC RINO buddies playing footsie with each other and getting a safe Senate seat arranged. Please tell me that Bannon is ready to primary him, too. I think “Sen. Mia Love” has a nice ring to it.
A heapin’ helpin’ of ostentatious pseudophilosophical moralizing to get your heart going.
These days, many of us would rather not be living in the present, a time of persistent crisis, political uncertainty and fear. Not that the future looks better, shadowed by technological advances that threaten widespread unemployment and by the perils of catastrophic climate change. No wonder some are tempted by the comforts of a nostalgically imagined past.
———-
To live in the present is not to avoid hard work or strife. Alongside the projects that occupy you in your profession, or in your political life, the telic activities that matter to you, is the atelic process of protesting injustice or doing your job. To value the process is not to flee from work or political engagement. That is why living in the present is not an abdication of ethical responsibility or a recipe for detachment.
To focus on the telic is to focus, all too often, on the distance and precariousness of our goals: to provide health care for all, to halt the resurgence of white supremacy, to limit global warming to 2 degrees. Consequences matter, as do activities that aim at them. The point of political protest is to change the world. And yet the process matters, too. The value of standing up for what is right, of going on strike or marching in the streets, is not exhausted by the value of its effects. It is not wholly erased by failure. We protest in part because we see no better way to make a difference, in part to make the present count for something, whatever the future holds.
Get out there in the streets and battle the forces of darkness. Live in the moment. Punch a fucking Nazi.
to limit global warming to 2 degrees
arrogance knows no bounds
Even the bankruptcy and misery they want to bring to the world won’t achieve that. All those fancy words and it’s still ignorant bullshit.
To focus on the telic is to focus, all too often, on
the distance and precariousness of our goalshow unrealistic and even impossible our fantasies are: to provide health care for all, to halt the resurgence of white supremacy, to limit global warming to 2 degrees.What a love story, two career DC RINOs playing footsie with each other over a cushy, safe Senate seat. I hope Bannon is ready to primary him, too. I think “Sen. Mia Love” has a nice ring to it.
I really hope Willard does run. I think it would be great to hear him explain why it is that he thinks Antifa are unequivocally the good guys during the primary debates.
What the fuck? When it’s over…42 years?? I’m 42 now…this guy’s been in the Senate almost as long as I’ve been alive??
I propose a new Constitutional amendment: If you’ve been in office so long your term is old enough to drive/vote/get reduced car insurance rates/feel like an old perv for scoping out 25 year olds, it’s time to GTFO of office.
I personally don’t like the idea of hard term limits, as I think it potentially deprives people of who they want representing them as well as limiting the impact of the few talented people who go into politics (it is my contention that the majority of politicians are terrible, and that term limits would ensure the few good ones get ushered out right quick and replaced by mediocrity), but since there is merit to the argument in favor of term limits I prefer a compromise where there is a limit to consecutive terms, forcing the politician to return to the private sector periodically.
That implies to me a cycle of “Legislator – Lobbyist – Legislator – Lobbyist…” rather than actually going out and doing useful work.
I’m of the theory that people vote for who they want, so if they want some old, decrepit statist to serve for 40 years, they deserve to have it and should get everything that comes with it good and hard.
I subscribe to the low information voter hypothesis. That being, in most races the voter will pick the name they recognize first, regardless of whether or not they know what that candidate has done or proposes to do. This leads to higher incumbancy regardless of competency.
I personally don’t like the idea of hard term limits, as I think it potentially deprives people of who they want representing them
Doesn’t bother me. Its just another limitation on pure democracy in our (nominally) constitutional republic. Presidents are term-limited, why not legislators?
I think its more consistent with a constitutional republic to have ordinary citizens cycle in and back out of elected positions, than to have professional politicians who make a career of it and thus avoid experiencing first-hand what they have wrought.
I have suggest several times at the old site and elsewhere that the following was preferable to term limits….
The Citizen Legislator amendment…
1) No person elected to any federal office is eligible to be elected to any Federal Office or appointed to any Executive or Judicial position requiring Congressional approval until the term to which they have been elected has expired
2) No person appointed to any Executive or Judicial Branch office which requires Congressional approval is eligible to be elected to any Federal Office for a period of 3 years after they leave that position
3) No person in the US military holding the rank of General Officer is eligible to be elected to Federal Office for a period of 3 years after their separation from the military
4) No person barred from being elected to Federal Office by this act is allowed to have any direct business dealings with the Federal Government, to act as a Lobbyist for any entity, or to have any place of residence or business within the District of Columbia. Failure to abide by this shall result in the term for which they cannot be Elected to Federal office to be reset to the last date in which they are not in compliance with this provision.
5) The Federal Government is barred from issuing any contracts to any business who employs a person barred from being elected by this act on it’s Board of Directors or in a position of fiduciary responsibility
Under current law, #3 lasts seven years. They had to legislate a waiver for Mattis.
I think 3 is enough it guarantees that they have to be out of government for at least 1 entire Congressional election cycle
Gosh I can’t stand Hatch…
Hmm, I wonder why my comments and articles are not being posted. Is there something wrong with the site?
You aren’t sufficiently Nazi. So your comments are being blocked.
OK, it got fixed. Good hahaha
The spam filter didn’t like your link for some reason. I pulled your comment out and it still marked you for manual approval. Should be fine now.
I guess the spam filter treats Mitt Romney as if he were Tulpa or Tony. That means it’s working!
Spam filter?
Spam Spam Spam Spam…
Spam Spam Spam Spam…
Spam Spam Spam Spam…
Spamidy SPAM!…
SpamSpamSpam
Hey y’all.
Made it through the hurricane relatively unscathed. Stripped several trees of branches/palm fronds, front yard is a mess, tress down around the neighborhood and our power’s been out since Saturday night. Otherwise okay.
Currently at my mom’s house, since she didn’t lose power.
Excellent news. Glad to hear that nothing/nobody important has been harmed.
Nothing important?! WHAT ABOUT GAIA!!!11!!!!1!!!?
Seriously; Glad to hear it JB
I thought this was Gaia’s way of cleansing?
+1 Aenima
+1 TOOL
That’s good.
I, for one, am glad you didn’t die.
Great news. Glad y’all made it through okay.
Well, that’s one.
How many more are we waiting to hear from?
Have we heard from Carol yet?
Pretty sure the crunchy peanut butter will be the problem.
To be sure
Mrs. Dean, who works with quite a few (((retirees))), couldn’t stop laughing about Publix closing before OMWC’s mother could get her roasted chicken. We begin imagining the Cajun Navy showing up to rescue people from Del Ray Beach.
“The boat was so small and it smelled bad! Plus, the ride was too short!”
That sums up Glick’s, the other supermarket nearby, albeit Kosher. My mother warned me about it (“They’re very rude, it caters to New Yorkers.”), so I had to go. The entire parking lot was filled with Crown Victorias, El Dorados, and similar Medicare sleds. Every one of them had a New York Giants bumper sticker or license plate frame, and Florida license plates.
HA! I’m stealing that for sure.
Great news!
Thanks for the update.
Good news.
I am still waiting to hear from my nephews around Gainesville.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was the hurricane and not the wood chipper you have out back, right?
Seriously though, Good News!
Good to hear! I have a few relatives in the Tampa area, but luckily all of them evacuated before the Hurricane hit. Glad that everything important is mostly in tact.
Good man.
Hooray! Glad youre here.
Anyone hear from stilljustcarol?
Great to hear. I’m glad you’re okay.
Made it through the hurricane relatively unscathed.
Excellent. Glad to hear it.
Ernest Hemingway’s Key West home, cats safe after making it through Hurricane Irma
I was so happy to hear that. I was very worried about the cats down there.
Indeed. First news that Richard Branson was OK, now the cats. I’ll sleep well tonight.
Cats >>>>>>>>>>> Richard Branson.
Seconded.
Practically anything>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Cats >>>>>>>>>>> Richard Branson
Perusing the Roman cavalry find on Daily Fail, I came across this Bella Thorne lass. Damn.
Fire crotch!
She’d be cute if she didn’t look like she’s been doing blow for a week.
Sadly released and fell into skankdom on her 18th birthday, up until that point, looked quite promising, but once parental control was eliminated, went downhill pretty quickly, which is a huge shame.
The curse of Juvenile Disney Fame strikes again.
PSA: The reason drag queens use exaggerated makeup and dress is because they are trying to conceal the fact that they are presenting themselves as something they are not. If you’ve actually got the assets, you don’t need to do that.
She got her pics published which was her goal.
Herpes in boots
That’s what I thought. In the 90s I probably would’ve been into her, but staring down the barrel of 40 all I can think is, “Christ on a crutch, where are her parents?! What mistakes did her father make, and how can I avoid them?”
Like I said, it’s the Disney Starlet effect.
Carefully curated image, no piercings, no tats, no weirdness but plenty of photo-ops in the Daily Fail thru’ her 17th year – lots of ‘effortlessly chic’ and ‘stylishly dressed’, then her 18th birthday arrived and within weeks, you had this.
Presumably, being released from some kind of Disney moral terpitude and professional image contract, she decided it was now time to kick back and ‘be herself’. After all, she’s of zero value to Disney now.
I would honestly rather have Sophie Wessex.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4872566/Sophie-Wessex-trades-BGC-charity-day.html
At least she doesn’t look contagious.
She’s so completely horrendous, I assumed she was British.
“Ghanian slot machines: Di box no dey spectacular, but im get shine-shine lights.”
What is this shit and why is it linked?
You haven’t discovered the joys of BBC Pidgin yet?
Hard to believe isnt it?
… someone ain’t woke to pidgin, obv’sly.
It’s the BBC World News Service in Nigerian Pidgin English. It’s a new humor link meme.
LOL
What is this shit and why is it linked?
If you have to ask…
Sad.
Interesting article about Ray Dalio and Bridgewater (NYT).
The effort to establish Mr. Dalio as a business icon in the vein of Steve Jobs or Warren E. Buffett comes even as questions persist about Bridgewater’s unusual culture. The firm videotapes nearly everything that goes on there for future case studies, and employees are given homework and graded on their understanding of Principles.
In interviews with nearly 50 current and former Bridgewater employees, including several chosen by Mr. Dalio, The New York Times found that he is driven to enforce his rules to ensure that they survive at the firm. Some senior executives have been taken to task in “public hangings” — one of the Principles meant to “deter bad behavior” — when they break the rules. Other employees have been pushed to tears.
The Times also found that Bridgewater’s investment process is largely a secret not only to investors but to most of the firm’s 1,500 employees. No more than a dozen people have a full sense of how the firm trades.
Even employees who left with a positive experience describe a workplace that is rigid and sometimes oppressive.
“Is it a hedge fund, or a social experiment?” said Tim Bradley, a technology consultant who worked at Bridgewater for a year in 2010.
I wouldn’t want to work there, but it sounds like they have a healthy respect for the unvarnished truth.
Comments are predictable. Simpletons, for the most part, baying for blood.
I have a fair amount of first-hand and second-hand insider knowledge of the firm.
It’s a challenging environment with a proprietary trading model and a culture that would be considered a ‘cult’ by the people who can’t tolerate it, or ‘meritocratic’ by those who can. As with most things, the reality is somewhere in the middle.
For those of you who are acquainted with the Japanese ‘Quality Circles’ concept, it feels like that, but dear Hastur, you need a thick skin. The more seasoned staff are OK, the real problem is highly empowered, ‘new blood’ personnel who can sometimes be a little too eager to strike down the impure, but Dalio’s Principles are relatively straightforward. Indeed, in many ways, they’re a formalization of the informal question that I think all responsible employees of a company should ask during their working hours – “If Mr. Dalio was was critiquing what I am doing now, would he approve, and if not, what should I be doing that would lead him to approve?”.
As a firm to work for, it’s not *much* nuttier than a lot of hedge funds I could name, except that Dalio has formalized the process a little. The problem – over the long term – is that the Principles will not be upheld if the firm is left in other hands. We know this because when Dalio tried to step back from the firm and establish his family office along with other founders of Bridgewater, he had to get re-involved to deal with developing ‘heresies’ in the management he had appointed.
Dalio is not a nut. He drives his people hard and has some expectations that some applicants to the firm find hard to meet (and sustain). 40 years ago, he wouldn’t have needed to formalize Principles, he could have imposed them from the trading room the way Richard Steinhardt did in the 70’s and 80’s.
The ubiquity of surveillance, the security, the secrecy of trading models etc is really nothing new, or unusual in the alternatives business. For some firms, the secrecy is for legitimate reasons – in Bridgwaters’ case, among other things, is the danger of front-running because when Bridgewater trade, they’re big enough to move markets. For others, it’s to obscure the banality of their allocation model. But for whatever reason, that secrecy can be justified.
It is a very poorly written article. It never really talks about what the firm’s principles are. The fund’s current value of $160 billion speaks for itself. Clearly, the guy is doing something right. The only thing about the firm’s investment strategy I could divine from the article was that it is data based, long term and not intuitive. That seems pretty common sense to me.
The complaints from the employees are just a collection of “he was mean to me” and “I felt uncomfortable”, whatever that means. I don’t see how expecting the employees to understand the firm’s principles and doctrines is so onerous. It reminds me a lot of the military. In the military everyone lives and dies by doctrine. You are only heard to the extent you understand and can put your ideas within the context of doctrine. This seems pretty similar and is not a bad way to run an organization. And the rule against socializing with other Wall Street types would make working there more attractive in my view.
Dalio is not a nut. He drives his people hard and has some expectations that some applicants to the firm find hard to meet (and sustain).
That’s my takeaway. Not everybody fits. So what? Go someplace else.
He’s got a long term track record few people can even approach.
It really is challenging there for some people.
I don’t think I could take it for a number of reasons, a primary one being – unfortunately – that the Principles aren’t equally imposed, and I’m someone who is secure enough in his own ego to stand up and say “I fucked up” when I fuck up, but the degree of honesty and self-reflection that the firm demands creates a paper trail that can and will be used against you at some point in the future.
There are plenty of ways that Principles get subverted in day-to-day operation, and the staff get to know pretty quickly who the perpetrators are, but said perpetrators are kept in positions of authority.
Furthermore, the ‘no fraternization’ policy is of dubious utility – once a staffer gets to a certain position within the firm – it’s not enforced (inasmuch as it’s enforceable at all) – and it’s a source of a lot of dissatisfaction, particularly with staffers who weren’t recruited directly from college.
I know I’m crossing the streams here and also addressing John, but the thrust of any firm’s investment strategy when they get that big is to look at thematic trends, one of which will be “The Fed will increase rates over the next 15 years” (particularly obvious since they can’t lower it any further), and so look for investment opportunities that will arise as a second-order result of those increases. Another one will be the graying of America – the ‘inevitable’ rise in equity prices will cease when 401-k outflows start to outpace pension fund subscriptions. As with anything, the devil’s in the details, but at 160 billion, your biggest problem is that when your system signals a position reversal or a liquidation, how do you execute those trades without all the momentum traders jumping on board because YOU moved the market.
In practice, adherence to Principles is extremely onerous and presents an obstruction in day-to-day work at the firm, so I’d opine that old Ray’s overshot the mark a little. Having said that, he pays well and for the people who can survive and prosper in that environment, more power to ’em.
Having rules is one thing. If the rules really work, then I don’t have problem buying into them. But, if they are not enforcing those rules and making everyone live by them, then they don’t have rules. They have excuses to fuck with people they don’t like. And that is something entirely different and not something I would want to be associated with.
This article is worth a chuckle. Amusing lack of knowledge dig at libertarianism.
Why are video games obsessed with the Apocolypse? Maybe because it creates endless opportunities for adventure and to kill stuff?
If video games were all about straight cis-gendered toxic whiteness or whatever the fuck they’re on about right now, you think there’d be a popular slave trade simulator or a PUA game or some kind of harem game.
An African slave trader RPG would be epic. I wish I was a coder and could create that. It would be the biggest underground hit in the history of video games. Talk about forbidden fruit. It would be the must have for every rebellious 14-year-old boy in America
Puts a whole new spin on “Gotta Catch ‘Em All!”
Sweet. You could do a “Slaverman Go” version that people play on their phones, that identifies minorities and lets you add them to your coffle.
You would have to take the role of an African, capturing members of rival tribes and selling them to Portuguese
That’s how you would start. Eventually, you would level up to being wypipo.
what all post-apocalyptic video games have in common is that they assume that everything is over, permanently. The one thing they do not model or dramatise is social resilience.
Let’s take a slice (post-apocalyptic) of one genre (shooters) of video games, and ask why they don’t have gameplay or story elements that really don’t have any function in that genre. Who in their right mind would say “You know what Zombie Smash IV really needs? MOAR SIM CITY!!!” WTF would modeling or dramatizing “social resilience” look like in a frickin’ shooter, anyway? You might as well ask why they don’t have special teams in baseball.
The very name “post-apocalyptic” is a synonym for “total societal breakdown”. Shooters generally don’t happen over years or decades, either, the kinds of time frames it would take for “social resilience” to make itself felt after an apocalypse.
Just shifting genres to post-apocalyptic RPGs, one finds the Fallout games, which typically have competing societies, which one can join or not for various outcomes, etc. Kinda like “social resilience”, I guess. As ever, one is tempted to say “If its such a great idea that people will love so much, then put the damn social resilience game together yourself.”
I don’t really follow any writing on videogames, but the few chin-stroking articles (as opposed to just reviews) that I have read are just bonecrushingly stupid.
There’s a couple good places. Coincidentally, they’re also fairly apolitical. Or follow stuff written by actual designers.