Well, this is embarrassing. Sloopy is on the road, SP is fast asleep, Brett is waiting for someone to pay his bail… and I’m in a cheap room at a motel in Crawfordsville, IN owned by someone named Patel, who must have been attracted to a state with a name like this. Outside my window is a cornfield.
So these are bare minimum links, put in only to stave off the inevitable riots.
“I’m not Steve Bannon,
Once again, Team Red shows its uselessness.
Had anyone considered allowing private employers to make their own hiring and firing decisions, and letting the market dictate whether or not they’re good ones? That seems to be the one argument no-one wants to make.
In local news, Indianapolis is just as horrible as Chicago.
Every once in a while, a bad idea actually dies. If it had succeeded, that would have led me to another snarky comment about the uselessness of Team Red.
Finally, a musical selection from the world’s most imitated flautist.
Comments
493 responses to “Morning Links from the Road”
48) On a recent car trip we listened to the first Harry Potter. It was okay. Better than I expected, since my impression was that it’s a cookie-cutter mash-up of fantasy tropes written in a turgid style. Well, I found the writing style to be a little slyer than I expected, the tropes used a little more cleverly. But only to an extent. My original impression was off by a few degrees, but not essentially wrong. My guess is, in 20-30 years, Harry Potter won’t be read too much by kids anymore.
A few years ago, I read the first of Lloyd Alexander’s High King series to my son. He wasn’t too impressed, and although I had fond memories of the books, frankly, it didn’t hold up too well for me either.
Narnia and the Hobbit, on the other hand, have held up really well on re-readings to my kids. My favorite Narnia book, as a kid and now, is the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is just a really remarkable and moving journey. Prince Caspian, then and now, is the worst, just a book where very little happens.
You know what fantasy series gets short shrift today? The Wizard of Oz. I mean, somebody must be reading it, because I just checked Amazon and the books are still in print. But you don’t hear about it much. What I like about the Oz series is it’s real American fantasy, not warmed-over Norse mythology. It’s scarecrows and living apple trees and glittering cities with skyscrapers and hard-working little towns. I think a lot of fantasy writers would definitely do better to look back to Baum rather than Tolkien for inspiration.
Good thoughts. I have never read any Oz stuff.
The wife is reading the Narnia series to the kids (11 & 8) and they love it.
I never liked the Narnia series. I think Tolkien’s criticism of it having everything and the kitchen sink was apropos.
You’re right. It mixes Christian theology, Greek mythology, and even Santa Claus. But so does J. K. Rowling–and unlike Rowling, Caspian’s prose was beautiful. He also had a real purpose in the writing, and that shines through, and I think serves to unify the work.
I think you meant Lewis’s prose.
Isn’t 11 kinda old to be read to?
He will read 200+ page books in a few days. But having his mother read to him is something he enjoys.
Our home school curriculum is Sonlight. It is a literature based system and her reading to the kids is an everyday occurrence.
What do you use for math?
We use something called “Life of Fred”, and it covers everything from kindergarten mathematics to calculus (not all in one book, though).
We use Math U See. Life of Fred has been researched and was found to be a strong interest as well. Does it work well for you?
Phooey. No age is too old to be read to.
When taking long road trips, my wife or I will often read from trivia books (obviously not the driver). It helps to pass the time if we’re tired of the audio book or listening to music.
The old “I have the look of a man about ready to snap your fucking neck” Jordan Petersen says that the reason that series works out so well is that she absolutely nails the archetypes. Too bad Jung never took a shot a fantasy.
So what you’re saying is, is that you’d like to see more works like ZARDOZ?
Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series is awesome you just have to keep going. The books start off with Taran as a worthless shitty kid and it’s all about growth. They take some dark and disturbing turns culminating in books 4 and 5 which are truly fantastic. That series has always been a long prequel to the High King itself which is, in my opinion, the best kids book there is. I loved lots of series as a kid, but Prydain is the only one I still love as an adult.
I still go back and read the 4th book from time to time.
It’s basically an existentialism primer for kids. I didn’t realize until college how much Taran Wanderer altered my thinking.
It portrays a successful anarchocapitalist society (the Free Commots), which is something I’ve not seen elsewhere.
Now I know it’s fantasy.
It is a small section of land on the far west side of Prydain; the High King keeps the Big Bad corralled on the east side, so the Free Commots don’t have to worry about him. It is also situated in and near the mountains, so the people would,be difficult to conquer.
The real fantasy of the book is that the High King and his son do not desire anything more than to actually provide national defense. They have no imperial ambitions.
Math is a good high king, but there are plenty of shitty kings (and one queen) in the books too. The political structure of Prydain is basically a confederation and the shitty members are held in check by the fact that the High King’s warlord Gwydion is a total badass. But you definitely get the feeling throughout that the arrangement is anything but stable.
It conveyed a notion that you earn your identity through discipline and hard work. It’s definitely not surprising that those were my favorite books growing up and I became an existentialist ancap.
The Alan Dean Foster Spellsinger series is dumb but fun. I believe there are 8 books, but I only read the first five.
Alan Dean Foster’s Spellsinger series is dumb but a lot of fun.
My late wife turned me on to the Prydain books. They were awesome. We’d sometimes lay in bed and read the stories to one another making up voices for the characters (she said I did the best Gurgi).
I remember liking Lloyd Alexander’s work, but, I don’t know if I’d like it if I re-read it.
Voyage of the Dawn Treader was great. I remember liking all of the Narnia books.
I haven’t read any Harry Potter. I don’t feel any urge to.
The Hobbit and everything Tolkien has held up well.
I’ve read Harry Potter several times; it does a fine job showing a society that begins to value security over liberty, and then suffer the consequences.
What is interesting is that the only reason that Harry is “the chosen one” is because the bad guy got it into his head that Harry was the chosen one. Another character in the book met all the requirements (including the same birthday) to be the chosen one, but because Harry’s dad was who he was, Voldemort decided the prophecy applied to Harry.
I also like how hero worship is dealt with. Harry, in the early books, is told what a great guy his dad was by several characters, but in later books, he discovers that his dad was kind of a jerk.
In addition, Harry is a subpar wizard; Hermione (who is the Mary Jane in the series), is the real talent. Harry can do defensive magic really, really well, though, and has a hero complex that other characters call him out on.
Wizard of Oz is very, very overtly political.
It was very topical, as well, which is lost on most people now.
Although that interpretation only really took hold in the 1950s and is disputed.
Baum ended up wimping out by making all the characters immortal – you can’t kill them even if you feed them into a woodchipper, you can put them back together again.
Plus Oz (spoiler alert) was turned into a real wizard *and* awarded a monopoly on wizardry – how could Baum, who supposedly was from the Populist tradition, have approved a monopoly?
The Narnia series is one of the only books that I’ll reread. Eustace’s redemption is one of the most powerful scenes I’ve ever read.
Alan Dean Foster’s Spellsinger series (8 books, although I only read the first five) is dumb but a lot of fun.
And leads to short-term memory loss.
I have been re-re-reading Tales from Arabian Nights. So very good.
I recall reading the Alexander books as a kid. I think I liked them, but they apparently didn’t make too much of an impression.
For very young kids’ fantasy reading (like, 1st grade-ish), I loved the Dragon series by Ruth Stiles Gannett. And of course, Roald Dahl (which I guess is more like Kids’ Fantasy rather than traditional Fantasy)
I say good enough!
“Finally, a musical selection from the world’s most imitated flautist.”
Not Zamfir?
You’re dead to me.
Damn you, that was my first thought, too!
Don’t knock the master of the Pan flute.
You are the Master of the Skin Flute.
I thought it was going to be Ian Anderson.
Anderson has never done anything original on the instrument. His shtick was directly ripped off Kirk, but just not done as well.
@ROBC me too.
Far Left Militia Training For Guerrilla Warfare Using ‘Sabotage, Kidnapping, Executions, and Terrorism’
“Redneck Revolt’s organizing principles mirror much of what you would see on any other far left organizing platform. They begin with their very reasonable, very east to support, opposition to “white supremacy”. They then dive into class theory, anti-capitalist, and anti-wealth rhetoric that could have been copied directly from The Communist Manifesto. And finally, they wrap up with open calls for “militant resistance” and “revolution”.”
They have been doing this for a very long time.
“They begin with their very reasonable, very east to support, opposition to “white supremacy”.”
…so their founding principle is racist opposition which they see as a systematic problem, and they’re surprised they’re turning violent to it?
So when it turns out that there really aren’t that many actual, bona fide white supremacists out there, it’s time to flip over a few other apple carts.
That’s pretty much how lefty ideologies operate. They claim that they’re just advocating for some simple proposition that nobody could really disagree with. This is what they’re doing when they say “You don’t like feminism? But feminism is just the notion that women are people!” They act like this is all there is to feminism, but in reality, it’s loaded down with a lot of political baggage.
Most of the far left militias are not very good at the whole warfare thing, but these may be an exception. They have redneck in the name, after all
I saw one of their leaders interviewed – he looked more hipstery than Doomco, and the flannel appeared to be a vain attempt to hide an effiminate build. Had he claimed to be a trans-man, I’d have bought it.
more hipstery than me??
*drops gloves*
I was hoping this was a police academy recruitment video.
With a headline like that, are they led by a bald guy stroking Ceiling Cat?
The Washington Post had this line today: “The cinematic infighting that has consumed the White House in recent days was pushed into public view on Thursday, exposing the West Wing as the political equivalent of a New York-accented reality television show that runs on a raucous mix of drama, machismo and suspicion. ”
All I can say is, if presidents are incapable of governing nowadays, the very least they can do is provide us with something like this.
Very least? I wish the past four administrationa had been consumed by this rather than governing.
Scruffy Nerfherder’s Laws of the Universe
Smoke alarm batteries always fail between midnight and 4am, regardless of time zone.
I had one fail at 2:30am this morning and then another at 3:30am. BEEEEEEEEP
I think it’s because the temperature of the house is lower at this time, and so batteries right on the edge are tipped over into non-functioning by the cooler air.
Nah, the house is at a very consistent temp. It’s simply the universe saying FYTW.
That is why you have a loaded handgun bedside.
I have very high ceilings and the last time one went off in the middle of the night I beat it to death with a broom rather than try to set up a ladder.
That’s barely a euphemism.
When I read I beat it to death with a broom, I was wondering if that helped you sleep.
Because phrasing.
Boom.
Same thing happened with our CO alarm. Thing is it’s plugged in to the socket, so it should be fine. But sure enough last night it goes off.
The battery is back-up… with a plug-in alarm you can’t even wait the battery out.
I posted here last month about the alarm going off a bit after midnight with very irregular beeps. Two short shrill full-volume blasts followed by a third after I was stumbling around the room looking for a chair, then nothing. Pulled it off the ceiling and was reading the back panel for maybe some indicator info when I saw a tiny little spider crawl out a screw slot.
Haven’t heard a peep out of it since.
Easily avoided by changing the batteries when there’s a daylight savings time shift.
Yeah, yeah, look at Mr. OCD over here.
These batteries lasted over 5 years and failed within a hour of each other. It’s a little bizarre.
a motel in Crawfordsville, IN
If you’re headed to Injanoplace, be sure to yell, “We don’t make anything in this country anymore!” when you go by the Steel Dynamics facility in Pittsboro.
Heading back to IL today. I spent yesterday at an insulation factory, part of the glamour of my job.
“The sole question here is whether, as a matter of law, Title VII reaches sexual orientation discrimination,” the Justice Department said in a friend-of-the-court brief, citing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination in the workplace based on “race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” “It does not, as has been settled for decades. Any efforts to amend Title VII’s scope should be directed to Congress rather than the courts.”
That sounds like a reasonable, but politically dense argument.
As the courts should be. The courts should be focused on the interpretation of the law, not making it or bowing to political opinion. If you expand the Civil Rights Act to include a group that it doesn’t, there’s nothing stopping them from unilaterally expanding it to include more groups that they like (former cops, single mothers, undocumented democrat voters, and whoever else the victim of the day is).
Worst than that, if there’s nothing stopping them from expanding it; there’s nothing stopping them from contracting it. They can decide that white women shouldn’t REALLY be included in the Act.
Or, they could unilaterally water down constitutional provisions, like the First, Second, or Fourth Amendments (oh, wait…).
“Had anyone considered allowing private employers to make their own hiring and firing decisions, and letting the market dictate whether or not they’re good ones? That seems to be the one argument no-one wants to make.”
With all the flip flops in policy it makes you wonder: were a lot of people replaced, or did one of the presidents (Trump or Obama) just steamroll dissent and force the outcome they wanted. (In this case I lean towards Obama because Trump really has been supportive of Gays in the past,. So going after them seems out of his MO)
“Well, then, Mister Scaramucci (if that really is your name); whose dick are you trying to suck? Be honest.”
Today’s Google historical feature is a memorial to the 1917 Silent Parade. The parade was in response to a bloody race riot, in which white mobs may have killed up to several hundered black residents of St. Louis, as well as extremely significant private property damage.
Let us not forget, in simple terms, the East St. Louis Riots were due to a putrid multi-punch blend of racism, xenophobia, and labour protectionism.
I bet you could find some literature from that period where people are demanding a minimum wage hike so that them negroes and eye-talians will stop terkin’ the jerbs away from white men.
I’ve been drafted into helping my sister get the alcohol for her wedding. I think the quantity is sufficient but does this sound like the right ratio for what party revelers will want to drink? I pretty much stick to bourbon myself but I figure vodka will be the most popular. There’s not going to be everything possible (no tequila for example) but I wanted to at least make sure there was enough for the major drink requests.
Should be about 200 moderate to heavy drinkers with 3 bar stations.
-3 kegs local craft beer
-80 bottles of wine
-6 handles vodka
-3 handles gin
-3 handles rum
-3 handles blended whisky
-3 handles bourbon
-3 750 ml scotch
Mixers: Coke, Ginger Ale, OJ, Cranberry, vermouth sweet, vermouth dry, sour mix, triple sec?, grenadine?, roses lime?
Do not forget the tonic water.
And the Meth.
He did say “Coke”.
He said that the booze is for a wedding, not a steel production plant. My lands, can you imagine the hazard of steel workers drinking heavily on the job?
It’s also not in Florida. Also not Columbia so will have to be BYOC.
As long as you have roofies, you see some happy campers.
“triple sec?, grenadine?, roses lime?”
Not without tequila.
I would add seltzer and tonic water. And maybe club soda if it’s an older crowd.
Had tonic but forgot seltzer. It would be good to scratch the others.
“-3 kegs local craft beer
-80 bottles of wine
-6 handles vodka
-3 handles gin
-3 handles rum
-3 handles blended whisky
-3 handles bourbon
-3 750 ml scotch”
What are you getting for the other guests?
Right. My sister said she’d be giving away gifts of alcohol for the next year afterwards. I requested the entire drink list be changed to bourbon.
That’s about 315 drinks of beer, 320 of wine, and 400-odd of liquor. So about 5 drinks per drunk, which sounds about right, but the ratio of liquor to the soft stuff seems a little high to me.
So about 5 drinks per drunk,
5 drinks per drunk at a wedding sounds a bit light to me.
That would be a little light but it should be closer to 450 beer and 750 liquor.
Warty, agree its a little high on liquor but I figured that’s what more people would be gravitating too. The caterer recommended 400 bottles of wine which seemed crazy.
I don’t know, I’d go more wine, more beer, and drop the blended (I’m assuming Canadian Club or something like that) whiskey. Maybe drop the gin and/or rum. I mean, you know the guests and if someone specifically wants martinis to be available or whatever then that’s one thing, but if it’s just the usual wedding reception where you’re trying to get a bunch of people drunk enough to mingle and dance, you’re better off having too much of a narrow selection than having too broad a selection and running out of stuff.
Those are good points. I know she was concerned about being able to have the most requested drinks but it probably does need to be narrowed more. I’ll mention dropping the whisky and rum in favor of more beer and wine. I thought bourbon, whiskey, and scotch all together was a bit overkill but it seems like everyone she knows has a strong preference among those 3. My vote, of course, was for bourbon (and the scotch is to placate/anesthetize her soon to be MIL).
Most of the weddings I’ve been to – people will drink whatever is offered. Beer beer beer was usually the only thing other than champagne. And given beer and wine’s popularity, that’s what I would concentrate on above hard alcohol.
Go with Miller High Life. Two birds, one stone.
Champagne and beer
Depends how many Irish are invited
Good point. That looks like enough booze for only one Irish.
What’s the difference between an Irish wake and an Irish wedding?
One less drunk.
I think I’d add one keg of something from Bud/Miller/Coors.
I’ll bring that up.
Bud Light or Miller Lite. People who drink domestic often bro-out to a light beer.
Shouldn’t the caterer handle alcohol?
They caterer can but their markup increases the cost by 400% versus supplying the liquor ourselves.
Well that is good the more money you spend the more people know you are rich. Helps with keeping a high social status.
ehh, I think the goal is more to let her friends and family have as good time as possible for as inexpensively as possible. I suggested just putting mouthwash on the tables instead but was shot down.
-3 kegs local craft beerSeriously. If you’re going craft beer, make sure it’s a session ale or something low ABV. We made the mistake of having a real beer keg at a party and more than one person was swilling it like Bud Light turning them into a gooey, pukey mess.I’ll mention that. One of their friends owns a brewery so is supplying the beer.
Excellent! I’d at least ask them to clearly mark them or something. The problem at our party was that the beer was excellent, but also 7.2% abv. It caught more than a few people off guard…
Shades of my sister’s wedding. Her new hubby is quite the homebrewer, and I was drinking his very tasty porter like it was water.
Yeah, session beer may be better…
A handle has 39 1.5 oz shots in it. You have (6+3+3+3+3) 18 handles. Call the 3 Scotch bottles 50 shots. So, 40-ish times 18 equals 720. 770 shots total.
5 5 oz. glasses of wine per bottle, 80 bottles, equals 400 drinks.
From Belmont Station’s guide, 165 12 oz beers per keg. No idea if you actually get that many, as I dimly recall a lot of foam from keg parties past. Call it 420 beers.
770 + 400 + 420 = 1590 drinks for 200 people. How long’s the wedding?
My first guess seeing your post was to have more beer/wine, fewer liquor, but I don’t know your crowd. Who’s pouring, and are we really worried about dram shop stuff? At my wedding long ago, we ended up with too much wine and beer. (My relatives hated Sam Adams, but cleaned me out of Bud. Te women walked off with un-opened bottles of Beringer Cab. As party favors, I guess. Klassy.)
Reading those numbers, I think I picked a good week to quit drinking. ::puke::
I’d estimate it’ll go 4-5 hours.
There should be some heavy drinking going on but I really have no idea what people prefer. I’ll mention maybe scrapping the rum and whisky in favor of more beer/wine.
Maybe it’s just a regional thing, but for some reason unknown to me, people around here seem to love them some spiced rum. Might want to keep a bottle of Captain Morgan on the list.
Yeah. I had a friend once who, without fail, would start the night on beer and after 3-6 would switch to Morgan/Cokes because he “just needed something sweet.”
Take some of the risk out of the calculation by finding a supplier who will take back unopened bottles and refund, assuming your state permits it. If it doesn’t permit it, there are still ways around the issue, if you are proactive.
This Insider Explains Why The Obamacare Debate Is Such A Mess
“He’s done everything! The President is trying very hard to convince people that they need to get this over the finish line.”
A huge part of the problem is that Trump promised to keep parts of the ACA that need to go.
Because it is debated by unprincipled political shills would be my guess? Also thoroughly incompetent I would assume
Ive stayed in 200 hotels. 192 of them were owned by Patels. Is everyone in India related?
Of course, have you not seen Meet the Patels?
After googling it, all i can say is that movie looks just awful.
It’s more one of those forced into watching movies but explains the hotel ownership and the inter-relatedness. A close friend of the family married into a Patel clan and it’s pretty spot on.
For me, it’s been closer to 199/200. It’s a running joke in our workplace. My Gujarati chemist tells me that “Patel” means “landowner,” so I shouldn’t be surprised at their dominance in the motel industry.
They’re takin our jobs. I think ive heard the landowner thing before.
Patel is a caste. It’s literal meaning is landowner but it represents the caste of village leaders.
Speaking of “kids’” books- The Once and Future King. I read it in college, and thought it was awesome. It sent me on an author binge and I think I read everything T H White wrote.
That’s a good one. For adult fantasy, I think Zelazny’s Amber series is about the best thing I’ve read. Wouldn’t read it to the kids though. Maybe when they’re in high school.
You’re still gonna read to your kids when they’re in high school? Ohhhhkkkaaaayyyy
Amber is awesome. But jut the Corwin books. His kid is a stupid whiny douche.
I will let them/encourage them to read it in high school. Poor phrasing.
I tried to read “The Once and Future King” when I was a child – I found it impenetrable. It may have been to early.
Didn’t read that but I did actual read Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Lots of knight crying in that
I like The Once and Future King. That was a very good book. I think I read it in high school. It wasn’t an assigned book, it was too good to be one of those. I read it on my own.
To be fair, my high school English teachers did assign some good reading. Not all of it was garbage. Orwell, Mark Twain, and Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. I cringed whenever they assigned a Steinbeck book.
It is my favorite treatment of the King Arthur stories.
Democracy dies in darkness and then the entire screen fades out, telling me I need a subscription.
My response: “LOL K. ::navigates away to a less obnoxious news outlet::”
Same here. I guess great message want b as important as their motto suggests.
I’m stupid. “I guess that message wasn’t as important as their motto suggests.”
Life, it seems, will fade away
Drifting further every day
Getting lost within myself
Nothing matters, no one else
Incognito FTW.
Here. For those of you who don’t like creepy around all incognito like some kind of perv. *Quietly goes incognito*
the entire screen fades out, telling me I need a subscription.
FREEDOM ISN’T FREE! you moocher.
Does that mean I need to buy a yellow ribbon magnet for the back of my car?
Do you favor restoring full civil rights to released felons?
To be honest, I’d not put that as a blanket answer. I’d be in favor of having certain crimes carry a lifetime loss of some rights. Such as the person who racked up multiple assault convictions not being allowed to legally own weapons anymore. But it would have to be related to the offense. Embezzelers are no more of a threat to life and limb than non-embezzelers, so they should not lose the right to bear arms due to their crime, unlike the aforementioned violent thug who can’t stop hurting people.
Yesterday, I linked to what is probably the second best song cover ever, Tonight, the Bottle Let Me Down performed by Elvis Costello.
Today, the first best. I Fought the Law by The Clash.
*Takes liberty and adds video*. Seriously, try it with the audio from LPB.
You spelled “three little pigs by Green Jelly” wrong
“Johnny Was” by Stiff Little Fingers.
Have you heard Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt?
The Disturbed cover of Sound of Silence is up there as well
How a woman’s body is put to shame today
Body positivity in a capitalistic-patriarchal society is difficult.
There’s one of those around? Would someone mind pointing me in the direction of this capitalist patriarchy so I know where to move?
Mao’s bedroom is thattaway.
Lady, the people most judgemental about a woman’s appearance are other women. All of this angst and scrutiny – your clique of hens and spinsters.
The calculus in the back of a man’s mind is “does she look healthy enough to bear children?”, even if it is not the conscious processing.
Well no fucking shit. I guess you could always wear a burqa instead.
“There is a price we pay to remain desirable an even so, to remain “invisible”.”
Maybe she could start with “inaudible”.
So much derp, but let’s analyze this part:
“but above all, a woman’s body is not that of a grown woman’s until the visible markers of womanhood are present for the rest of the population to see it.”
You mean a woman is not a grown woman until after she has finished puberty? An grown adult by biological definition is someone who had completed their juvenile stages of development. This is by definition after puberty. Legally, a person is an adult by 18, an age where if you haven’t got puberty, you should have talked to your doctor a few years ago.
” patterns of production of sexual desire” ehm what now?
“Me and muh body” ad nauseum
So… men don’t feel any of the same pressures? I used to be about 30lbs overweight and felt some shame about it. I started working out and eating healthier and lost the weight so I could get the hotter women. It worked.
Shame is a really excellent motivator.
Two minutes, by yourself, you know and you feel shame, you know. And then you get free.
Trade me to Detroit. Right fucking now.
Shame gets a bad rap. Shame is your mind telling you that you’ve diverged from your ideal self. Sure if it’s pathological it can be a problem, but there’s nothing wrong with feeling unhappy and embarrassed that you’ve let yourself go so long as that turns into motivation to do something about it.
This^ Shame has led me to start watching calories and to buy a bicycle. (And it is sort of getting me to actually ride it…could use a little more of a push from shame there)
Ride your damn bike!
Tell me you bought a good bike though.
Define “good.” Haha. No, I bought a cheapy first to make sure I like it/stick with it. It did get good reviews and I even saw it mentioned begrudgingly on serious biking sites as a pretty good bike for the very low price tag.
Ride it till it dies. Don’t spend any money to fix it, well maybe a patch kit for tubes.
Your a Minnesota guy right? Framed Bikes is a brand from there that offers a wide range of bike options. Friend bought one of the cheaper fat bikes and has been pleased with what he got for what he paid.
Close enough; North Dakota. I will check them out. Thanks!
And yes, ride it ’til it dies is the plan. I think I will get a nicer seat but otherwise I’ve been pretty happy with it so far. One review I saw, the guy got 6000 miles on his with minor fixes and handed it down to his sister to use as a commuter. If I can get half those miles out of a $100 bike I’ll be pretty damn happy.
ride your bike, fatass.
That was hurtful doom. I blame the pineapple pizza.
I did write that while making a pineapple upside down cake.
not pizza, but maybe we’re onto something.
It has been said on this forum before, but…. Yeah, women really hate being attractive.
“(re)presentation”
What the fuck is that? I have seen a number of these marxist twits use odd spellings or parenthasis like that and I have no idea what it means. It reminds me of schizophrenics that use words in strange ways because they have figured out secret meanings behind certain words. Did I just answer my own question…I did, didn’t I.
Asked and answered
Oh no they don’t…
Gorgeous photo series shatters stereotypes about what it means to be beautiful
LOL. The popup:
They’re definitely not running the grammar police.
Kinda conflicts with the whole patriarchal order running the world.
Master-Blaster run Barter-Town.
She’s angry because the nonstandard bedroom brigade only showed up on par with their demographic quotient?
Also, look, bitch, demographics do not equal good storytelling. If the story doesn’t call for a disabled lesbian Navajo, it’s not going to have one, and showhorning one in won’t make the story better, it will be a glaring discongruity.
Piss off.
That photo with the Cheetos.. hahahahahaha! Wow.
Gah! The goggles!!
None of these indigenous folks originate from societies that were patriarchal?
Oh wait, this is the sprinkle-buzzwords-around-for-the-friendly-audience method.
Sorry, I just saw a bunch of hurtings. And the chick with the Cheetos is a good example of the difference between sloppy fat and pleasantly plump. Like she’s unpleasantly plump.
So just 2% of characters are both gay and wear their sexuality on their sleeves so much that you can tell they are gay from passing conversation. Honestly that sounds to be a perfect match to reality.
Sure LGBTAQBBQWTF’s make up around 5 to 7% of the overall population but only a very small portion of them are open about it.
From the article, the new word for the day: indigeneity.
I tried to read “The Once and Future King” when I was a child – I found it impenetrable.
That doesn’t surprise me. I think The Sword in the Stone was written for that reason. Don’t ask me which came first.
Ego boost: getting an email asking me to schedule an onsite interview 15 minutes after the screening interview. So that’s cool.
Fuck, but in the meantime I have to go to my current job. It’s not easy to pretend to care about things that you really don’t care about, is it?
That’s a nice ego boost. Hopefully it goes well for you.
Actually, that’s my job description…
Buddy, you’ve been reading my mail. I just show up, get things done, and get the hell out as soon as I can. No love for what I do but it provides the food ‘n’ shelter that my family needs. So here I am.
You get paid to post links and comment? Good for you mate.
“Fill out these simple Like/Don’t Like forms”
You can lift three Chris Christies with your little finger but this is hard? I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS.
Hi, IFH!
Haven’t seen you around for awhile. Good to see you.
Here’s something Australian https://youtu.be/aGpODs0kFBc
Good luck, dude.
Shit, the last two or three jobs I left I busted my hump during my last couple weeks to get things wrapped up nice and tidy for my replacement. I liked most of my coworkers and didn’t want to leave them in the lurch, so I put in a lot of OT so that everything was documented and ready to go.
But yeah, it is nice to go to the meeting where they want to talk about the demos that will go into next year’s Comdex booth and not give a shit.
Good luck! That’s great to hear, Warty.
I’d be interested to see if you find in the next few days that you like your old job more, now that you know that you don’t have to care about it.
Finally, a musical selection from the world’s most imitated flautist.
There are flautists not named Ian Anderson and James Galway?
.
.
.
I’m kidding. I know there are.
F*** police’ viral video man evades drug charge
WARNING: Extremely offensive language
There are more important things to worry about in Australia than “offensive language”.
Haven’t seen you in a while. Glad you’re back!
Thanks Brett 🙂 Hope all has been well in your world.
I mean, the bill itself was useless, so it all works out in the end.
At the risk of going full Ken here, yea, sure. Great. Now we’re stuck with the ACA in its entirety. Well, that is until the Democrats ram an even bigger monstrosity down our throats in another 10 years.
10 nothing. How much longer is the ACA going to slouch towards oblivion? With more and more insurers saying, “Screw It.”
I give it 4, and I think I’m being generous. No idea what’ll replace it, other than Medicaid for Everyone! and mandatory pro bono medical service as a condition of licensure.
The Ds have already pivoted to “ACA is good but needs some improvement.” This is their attempt to not take any of the blame for the rotting carcass that is Obamacare.
The attention whore John McCain cannot die soon enough. The media will, just a week after its members were wishing he’d die, now laud him as a principled standout among the GOP once more. Feinstein hugged him. Yea, the Republicans should really be working with the Dems on this one, John. That’s your fucking reason for voting no. Not your pathetic ego and legacy and the fact that you’ve always just basically been a Democrat.
I’m pissed at Rand Paul for voting yes. It was about as worthless a bill as they could’ve passed. The only things it really did was get rid of the employer mandate and the medical devices tax … which both would come back in a few years.
At this point, just keep Obamacare and let it fail, because it’s already on the precipice.
Raaaannnnddddd!!!!!!
Far more likely – the GOP loses power without ever getting anything done. Democrats take over. What do they do to ‘fix’ things? They throw massive amounts of money at the problem. See, problem solved! The federal government can prop up the market. And that’s just what they’ll do. I wouldn’t be surprised if fucking Republicans ended up doing it for them first.
Even the next path to a legislative fix at this point is some bipartisan move. And the only way to work with Democrats is to throw money at the problem.
Protesters wall off access to French migrant shelter
Formule 1 Hotel? Is that the French equivalent of a rent-by-the-hour crack motel called The Ritz?
From Popbitch:
Does that mean he’s very regular, or all-the-time?
Or maybe he does that recently discussed “chili dog cleanse” when he’s on the road.
Given how full of shit he is, I’m guessing the latter.
possessing the body of a woman in a man’s world
What the fuck is it with these people?
Do they think they absolve themselves of agency by referring to themselves as some sort of golem?
Do we have proof that was not written by a random nonsense generator?
Golem? Fuck you for appropriating Jewish culture.
*spins dreidel, winks at JB*
According to this fine website https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g37039-Activities-Crawfordsville_Indiana.html Crawfordsville Indiana seems like quite the happening place. I will add it on my to visit list for when I eventually make it to the fair shores of the US of A
I’ve been to the Ropkey Armor Museum. It’s one of those places where an eccentric rich guy has a warehouse on his property filled with tanks, troop transports, etc., and is well worth the visit.
John Stossel: $2 Million Bathroom
“Yet not far away, Bryant Park has a bathroom that gets much more use. That bathroom cost just $300,000. Why the difference?
Bryant Park is privately managed.”
“Comfort Station”
Taking a page from Imperial Japan, eh?
Did some dopey millennial think “restroom” is outdated, or just too pithy?
Millennials don’t poop.
Roka Akor merges steakhouse and sushi restaurant
Houston outpost merges steakhouse and sushi restaurant
Knock it off.
“three types of Japanese wagyu (from the Kumamoto, Miyazaki and Shiga prefectures)”
Isn’t that like claiming to taste the difference between counties in Nebraska?
If Nebraska counties have centuries old traditions of unique steak production, yes.
Which one comes garnished with a free pair of soiled panties?
That’s the Osaka Steamer. A set of octopus balls on the side.
That is the Sariman Special
How many double-blind studies have they conducted to verify that there is a detectable difference in flavor that can be consistantly identified?
Most culinary emperors turn out to be streaking
Imagines Julia Child running naked through the kitchen….
And that is also a weird fetish… but I’m not judging.
Rule 34, man. Rule 34.
Maybe the difference between Nebraska and Kansas.
The point is: If you make a genre of food that is delicious, make it. Make your money and continue. Why would you mix sushi and steak? Don’t you already have a Denny’s in the U.S.?
Why wouldn’t you offer as wide a range of options as you can deliver on reliably?
They won’t be able to deliver on it reliably. It’s like MacGregor going in to box Mayweather. Total gimmick unless there really is no decent sushi in Houston. In that case, I’m betting food poisoning shuts them down sooner rather than later.
Do you have anything to back up this conclusion?
I don’t have a vested interest in a restaurant I’m likely to never see, but I do want to know the line of reasoning that gets you to “there’s no way they can pull it off”.
Put myself through Uni by working at and managing restaurants. The biggest thing that kills a menu is expanding it beyond abilities. You could spend your whole life learning how to make the best steak in the world. Fine, I want to eat there. You’re trying to make sushi and steak? Opportunity cost.
So there’s no way they’re hiring a sushi chef to handle the sushi orders separate from the steak chef? Sure it means splitting the stock of sous chefs a bit, but it doesn’t degrade directly to “food poisoning all but assured”.
I’ve gotten food poisoning at least 3 times from sushi. It’s very easy to sicken your customers while handling raw fish all day. Here’s the thing. You have a choice between going to a restaurant that specializes in one dish or another that has multiple genres on the menu. You don’t know much else about the place, which do you choose?
I avoid specialist restaurants. They tend to be overpriced, pretentious, and often have nothing on the menu I actually want.
Also, last I know Sushi was a dish characterised by rolled vinegared rice, and did not necessitate the use of raw fish. Though the original blurb did say they were making the mistake of also selling sashimi.
There is, IMHO, but I’ve not been to Japan. The one I like is packed with FOB-y Japanese (and, until the smoking ban went through, their cloud of smoking wafting from their Silk-Cuts)
This OTOH looks like a great way to separate the nouveau riche from their cash. Hey, more power to them if they can taste the difference.
You’re right. nigiri sushi can come with things other than raw fish and sashimi is used to describe slices of raw fish. Of course it’s up to you, UCS. Sashimi is offered at some of the izakaya around, but it’s usually pretty bad. The good sashimi comes from the sushi bar with the old fart who has been preparing it for decades. Also, as an added bonus they don’t let chicks prepare nigiri sushi because their hands are too cold.
The good sashimi comes from the sushi bar with the old fart who has been preparing it for decades.
That’s what I go for. There’s a literal mom and pop place near me where he does the sushi and she takes the orders and does drinks. I may have to go there today.
Today I learned that UCS is the Cytotoxic of food.
I am not arguing for the unlimited, unlicensed immigration of food.
Or was there some other trait of this commenter I’ve never seen you’re saying I have with regards to cuisine?
Houston has an entire culture based around world-class restaurants. When I’m in NYC, I play a game counting the offenses that would get front-of-house staff fired in Houston before I get to my table.
@UCS
Cytotoxic was infamous for his utterly pedestrian taste in pop culture. Remember his love for nu-Trek and Michael Bay movies?
HM, to be honest, I don’t remember ever having seen him comment.
I lived in Shiga Prefecture for a while. It’s basically Japan’s Nebraska.
Do they have women in cowgirl outfits? Asking for a friend.
Now I want to get sushi for lunch.
Why would you put a glaze on the best steak in the world? Those… monsters.
They’re not, they’re glazing waygu.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/BetterNamesForHillarysBook
LOL
“Close but no cigar”
^^ no cigar, eh? So you admit it was sexism that cost her the election!
Excellent.
Nice. I needed that.
My favorite:
‘”The People’s President” because she won the popular vote by more than 3m ballots despite Russian collusion.’
If you have to explain your title, it’s not a good title.
Yeah, I love this narrative too. There is no voter fraud, how dare you try to impose any kind of inconvenience on people trying to vote! But the Russians hacked our elections!
Oops. Picture might help.
The woman and her team of soi-disant expert members of the Smarter and Better Than You Party simply cannot do anything that isn’t risibly tin-eared.
I mean, who can read that title in anything other than a plaintive “What happened?” in the tone of voice you would have if you got home one day and there was water running out from under your front door. The twitter feed’s pic of Hillary doing the “beats me” gesture (wearing a pantsuit in an retina-searing shade of Felony Orange) is just perfect.
The fact that she learned NOTHING from her husband about retail politics over several decades tells me she might be the worst Preezy evah.
hahahaha
When McCain says “bipartisan” or “compromise” I hear “Grease your little cornholes.”
There were no stats at all on the representation of native peoples, specifically.
Chief Dan George is dead.
The Artist Formerly Known As Quince
Marijuana is bad mkay
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/27/trump-should-crackdown-on-legal-weed-commentary.html
I like how the article doesn’t mention a single cost of prohibition.
“All of us were so inspired by the speech and the life of the senator from Arizona,” Schumer said, tearing up. “And he asked us to go back to regular order … maybe this can be a moment when we start doing that.”
Scumbag is crying again. Lol.
It’s the estrogen.
I spent 23 years as an elite fighter pilot, and it taught me that motivation is meaningless
http://www.businessinsider.de/top-gun-pilot-dave-berke-discipline-2017-7?r=US&IR=T
This whole discipline not motivation thing is starting to gain popularity.
I tend to agree with him. I liked this:
Work is work. It sucks a lot of the time.
“Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
Chuck Close
At this point, just keep Obamacare and let it fail, because it’s already on the precipice.
I was thinking about this yesterday. Don’t take those people off Medicaid. Add more. Shifting people to private insurance policies paid for with government dollars isn’t “privatizing” anything. It’s just hiding the vodka bottle behind the washing machine. Get it out there in the open and fucking break it. I think Rand is exactly right to oppose it.
At some point, when you’re designing and building something, you have to engage in destructive testing. If you want to know if your welds are any good, you clamp your part in the vise and reef on it until it breaks.
A government run health care system isn’t going to work. Demonstrate that to the satisfaction of large numbers of people. Give it a shot, anyway. As far as the Medicaid expansion being the answer to health *care* goes, try this: randomly call ten doctors’ offices and ask if they are accepting new Medicaid patients. I doubt even one will offer to schedule an appointment. More people on Medicaid does not equal more people getting to see a doctor.
:Passes law requiring doctors to accept new Medicare patients:
:crows about how many new doctors are accepting new Medicare patients, while ignoring predictable increases in costs and wait times :
This man could be the next UK Prime Minister:
I’m still annoyed and befuddled that the Tories decided to shoot themselves in the foot by making an election Manifesto that was laden with crap and wasn’t just “All-brexit, all the time”
“Corbyn has tried to reason with the cat (literally on one occasion saying “That’s not very socialist, El Gato” to it)”
Au contraire, I think it has embraced the principles of the socialist rulers quite well.
“A couple distraught over health care costs jumped to their deaths in Murray Hill early Friday — leaving suicide notes pleading for their children to be cared for, a law enforcement source told The Post.”
http://nypost.com/2017/07/28/couple-jumps-to-their-deaths-because-they-cant-afford-health-care/
That’s some top-shelf parenting.
oh god that’s going to be posted by every progressive friend of mine isn’t it.
Look what Trump does!!!
TRUMP LITERALLY KILLS COUPLE OVER HEALTHCARE!
Yep. Totally because of health care. Not because they were both fucking loony.
Lies. Everyone is saving money now thanks to the Affordable Care Act. It’s right there in the title!!
That’s pathetic
Maybe they couldn’t afford shit because they spent every penny living in Murray fucking HILL
I remember that happening all the time before Obamacare.
To be fair, if I was gonna be a scumbag and leave my kids orphaned, I might peave a screed like this hoping that the outpouring of sympathy from those who are having their narratives confirmed would help provide the kids some money and emotional support. Of course, since they decided to signal to progs, I’m expecting lots of verbal support and very little material support.
It’s gloomy weather today, but I have on the cute shooz.
That is all. For now. Until I start reading Twitter.
Me too. They’re called flip flops.
Awwww, isn’t Tundra cute with his little piggies sticking out!
Except for that middle toe, you should get that checked.
“Pop that blister!”
I don’t blame you, since flip flop season is, like, 1 month in MN.
I wear them until the snow flies. Last year it was the end of November.
Thanks, global warming!
Right?! If fall lasts through November, sign me up! Of course, you know that means all those southerners will be invading our northern paradise when it gets too hot for them.
Shoes!
Happy Friday, KK. And everyone else.
Easily the dumbest thing you’ll see today
Fascism vs Capitalism
At least we have colors…
I think it’s illustrative of the worthlessness of the word fascist. It’s just a replacement for “thing I don’t like”.
Yep, it’s pretty damn stupid.
That’s exactly what a fascist would say!
They forgot all of the people lounging around doing nothing while everyone else was working.
That is up there.
Intrinsically inclusive by excluding all dissenters.
Ha, I missed that. These people couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag.
I wish them all the luck in the world.
Somewhere else in the world.
It’s like some good-hearted soul built an asylum where the commies will incarcerate themselves.
Your favorite color is what?
https://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/53045.aspx
I choked on my coffee, thanks.
That’s not even a “G”, though. Looks like a “J”. Jitler or Jlitter?
Lower case “g” up too high
Altright, I laughed.
It’s pretty hard finding a tote bag that complements clothes in Eva Braun
My kids do that. Put words that don’t make any sense (but still sound like the word I said) into the sentences I say.
But they are kids.
A couple distraught over health care costs jumped to their deaths in Murray Hill early Friday
“health care costs” or “gambling debts”?
We may never know.
Whatever pushes the narrative.
When they take bets like “Bet you won’t jump off that building”, they are one and the same.
Their kids staged it.
I’m just glad they were able to come up with a satisfactory solution to whatever problems they were having.
Halfway down, the wife turns to her husband and says, “I think we made a–“.
Yesterday: “John McCain is a spineless piece of shit who should’ve been tortured to death in Vietnam and saved us from ever knowing him!”
Today: “Brave and heroic WAR HERO Senator stands up to Trump and shows his true patriotic colors, saving billions of Americans from an early grave”
That alone shows how much power the media has. Who else, besides a politician, could flip flop 180 degrees in less than 24 hours and not be disregarded as an abject liar/piece of shit?
Alternatively today, the headline has been: “John McCain, cool I guess, but these two strong lady Senators (who we use to call gender traitor cunts lol hugz sorry) really deserve the credit”
That shows why thinking people no longer give a flying fuck what the legacy media says or how they frame the issues. They can’t be trusted even when they’re telling the truth.
I still kick myself on occasion for having voted for the scumbag back in ’08.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. I voted for him in 16.
1816?
Yes. At the time, he and I saw eye to eye on going to declaring war with both England and France. Both countries deserved to get their asses kicked for impressing American merchant vessels.
*Stares reverently into the horizon.*
What fools we were. I’ve moved on. Sadly, McCain has not.
TonytheTampon. Not SFbreakfast time. Sorry.
Do we really need this story reposted a dozen times? It was disgusting enough the first time. Can we go back to Oregon Man?
No need
To pretend you don’t like it, we’re not judgemental here.
I should’ve known. This is why I come here. Only degenerates worse than me.
Does this make sense to anyone?
eh, it does. Obama spent time pushing his bill. Trump … really hasn’t been.
I don’t see what the ag has to do with it
Because he’s been feuding with Sessions all week.
Ok. And this pertains to healthcare how?
Instead of pushing passage of the legislation, Trump,fought with Sessions. The author is trying to figure out Trump’s strategy, which is an action more confusing than any of Trump’s actual actions.
I think Trump wants Obamacare to die of its own volition.
Regarding trumps transgender thing… a lot of people are missing the big picture here. The cost of surgery or whatever is small potatos.
Rather trumps decision was being a lightning rod to basically say hey we are no longer going to use military for social engineering via identity politics the progs wanted to force upon them. He provided cover and took heat for generals
Will try to find link from yesterday on pj media but Mattis said yesterday he wants to get away from training that has nothing to do with being in military or their job
Something else people seem to be missing: Serving in the military is not a right. There are dozens of legitimate medical and mental conditions which will disqualify anyone from serving.
I look at this like diabetes. Can you join if you have it? In rare circumstances where you can manage it without medication, yes. If you develop it later and need it managed by medications its another issue, but that puts most diabetics in a non-deployable status–that makes them useless.
The uniform is androgynous and if you can manage your gender issues without hormone treatments and without being a distraction for the rest of the unit, there should be no reason to bar one from service. Of course, many with these issues are doing this specifically to be a distraction–so I can agree to a point on the ban.
Its a net-net analysis: Does allowing trans people (really, I suspect its almost all M-F) make the military a better military? They are more prone to depression/suicide, may need hormone treatments that reduce their strength and endurance, may have surgery that, at a minimum, doesn’t make them better fighters, and may add more complications to fielding a fighting force. Taking that into account, is the juice worth the squeeze?
“Ksenia Kalugina, 23, was photographed posing in the racy bridal lingerie inside the Orthodox church – and could be chucked in jail under same law that caged Pussy Riot”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/bride-could-go-jail-after-10886939
*looks at photo of Ksenia’s wedding*
Dude married up! Congrats are in order.
Now that’s a potential political dissident I could get excited about.
Top photo not very flattering. Bottom part of face seems disconnected from the rest. Lingerie photo on the other hand is a would.
Wood.
Not just wood. Hardwood. Frickin’ ironwood.
Spent last night at the ER.
The receptionist was a black woman named Cimeyon.
There was no way in hell I was going to attempt to pronounce that.
Anything serious?
Well, it would seem disrespectful at the very least.
18 month old needed an IV.
She has been running a high fever (probably has roseola) and wasn’t taking in fluids.
IV and high dose Tylenol meant we got to come home and was a good night. Fever is rising again today, not too bad yet, she is drinking some, hopefully we wont be getting another IV this weekend.
Gah! That’s stressful. Hope she’s better soon.
Oh, that’s what your roseola comment from the other day was referring to. (Thought it was a typo when I skimmed over it yesterday)
That sounds awful. Hope she feels better.
Sick kids are even worse than Nikki.
I hope she makes a speedy recovery. Sick babies are not fun.
🙁
Well, I hope you’re OK.
Hope everything is ok.
My guess would be that the name is a creative spelling of Simeon. I once knew a woman named Miyorker (Mallorca).
There once was a chick named Miyorker…
Sim e yon?
Would be my guess.
which is far too close (with my accent) to simian.
I knew two unrelated young ladies in New Orleans named Cassette. One of them spelled it Cass’ette, or as she said “C, A, S, S, comma to the top, E, T, T, E.”
Believe it or not, it’s a variation of Simone.
Was she from Francophone Africa, perchance?
I would guess south-central KY.
Did she pronounce pie like it had two syllables, and call you darlin’?
/Probably the wrong stereotype
“Had anyone considered allowing private employers to make their own hiring and firing decisions, and letting the market dictate whether or not they’re good ones? That seems to be the one argument no-one wants to make.”
OK, but until that magical time, why not try to keep the list of suspect classifications down to a minimum, and don’t get sucked in by the “logic” which says that once you have some protected classes you’re honor-bound to add more and more and more?
The minimum number of protected classes is zero.
We should strive for that.
Brotherly, with heart and hand? (sorry, channeling the nice parts of the German national anthem)
Seriously, this is looking-glass world and sometimes you have to run like heck just to avoid going backward.
And so long as i’m using overworked metahpors:
When you realize you’re in a hole, stop digging.
When you realize you’re driving the wrong direction, then stop. Maybe the way you came is now blocked so you can’t go back without difficulty, but at least don’t keep driving down the wrong road.
Too many libertarians, just when they come across a winning issue – new and dubious protected classes – decide to sit on their hands because now that the purist cause of free association has been lost, you may as well let the statists multiply the number of suspect classifications.
Wouldn’t want to be called “anti-gay” at those cocktail partiez.
So you get to be the libertarian purist admired by leftists – “see, *he’s* a consistent libertarian who wants to legalize racial discrimination but won’t lift a finger to stop us from passing new gay rights laws because he knows his cause is lost. We love noble losers!”
So, shorter you – we’re arguing for the same thing.
See below
I was thinking about the people making excuses for the “pragmatism” of Gary Johnson – pretending that the cause of free association was already lost so why not force Christians to make gay cakes.
Listen, that Obamacare thing is a done deal. It’s the law, the subsidies are already going out, the tide’s rising and it’s best to keep your head above water.
So what we should do is just embrace single payer already.
Pretty much, yeah.
No special privileges for anyone.
Don’t whine to big daddy government, get out there and start your own business if you don’t like the employment decisions of the people running the current place.
Any steps in that direction are welcome. Any attempt to create new protected classes must be stopped, and existing ones amputated from the law as discriminatory against everyone not of that protected class.
OK, we’re not so different, you and I.
get out there and start your own business
Will require a couple of things to make this more realistic for many/most people:
(1) Deregulation at all levels. Licensing and regulatory requirements are barriers to entry, full stop.
(2) Tax cuts. Most people can’t open a business because they don’t have any capital because their paycheck gets emptied out on the way to their bank account.
It’s not the law as written, but it would be logically consistent.
How so?
If you are going to include belief systems, social constructs, and other identity groups, then why not sexual orientation?
belief systems, social constructs, and other identity groups,
Under the civil rights act, the following are protected classes:
Age
Pregnancy
National Origin
Race
Ethnic Background
Religious Beliefs
Sex (The statute says sex. Agencies and courts have added sexual orientation and gender identity without any statutory basis.)
Only religious beliefs are something you can change. So, the logical consistency isn’t really there, at least as far as the statute goes, unless you want to equate religious belief with gender identity. Now, if you want to say that ultra vires actions of courts and agencies should be a reason for further expansions of bad law, go right ahead, but I’m not going to go along with that.
Shoulda said “religious beliefs and pregnancy”, but at least pregnancy is an actual verifiable biological condition, and its temporary. In any event, its not a belief system or social construct.
Pregancy is not a belief system nor social construct. Neither is age. And their inclusion is inconsistent in that that they are not generally considered identity groups, and are physical conditions that can effect the ability to do a job.
Well, race is a social construct. Whether one can change their “sex” (which as far as I can tell is actually gender as far as the law is generally concerned) or sexual preference is debatable. Regardless, a law that protects Buddhists but not lesbians seems quite inconsistent. So the reasonable options are for the legislature to expand a bad law, or get rid of it entirely.
“sex” (which as far as I can tell is actually gender as far as the law is generally concerned)
Only if you think agency or court actions contrary to statute are valid.
their inclusion is inconsistent in that that they are not generally considered identity groups,
I think you are going at this backwards. The actual statute doesn’t protect “identity groups” (with the possible exception of religion). It protects people who have a certain objective status, where status is an immutable and/or biological trait (again, with the exception of religion). Saying that its inconsistent to include certain statuses because they aren’t identity groups is upside down. What’s inconsistent with the statute is protecting identity groups that aren’t an objective status.
The big inconsistency is religion, and that’s in there because of the historical discrimination based on religion.
Your “race” isn’t something you can change (its an immutable status, regardless of its biological basis), any more than you can change “national origin” (also a social construct, but also immutable). You are born into your race, after all.
Of course, any generalization, any descriptive category, hell, any use of language to describe the world, is to some extent a social construct, but far enough down that road lies the madness of intersectionality. “Social construct” is a concept from our friends the neo and crypto Marxists, and is employed to tear down the meaning of language. Its really not very helpful in understanding what’s actually going on.
Sexual orientation may be a status (it depends on the needs of the gay rights movement from day to day), but its not a status in the statute and should not be elevated to a protected status by fiat – its not about logical consistency, its about who has the authority to manufacture protected statuses. Gender orientation is definitely not a status, and including it is not logically consistent.
The number of identity groups is infinite. People with blue eyes, people who like cats, people born on Wednesday’s. To conclude that naming any group logically means another group is included but somehow ALL groups are not is absurd.
I got these WW2 era vacuum tubes in the mail the other day: pic of the boxes
A pic of one of the tubes
I’m sorta-kinda planning on making a push-pull amplifier but haven’t sussed out too many of the details yet.
Joint Army Navy tubes can be excellent. My best pair of 12ax7 (at least for a phono pre) are JAN Phillips.
So which is it, the army or the navy?
It’s “Pass the Joint” Army Navy – none of that Air Force bullshit.
Well, since the Air Force was part of the Army at that time…
+10 Junior Birdmen
This is a family-friendly site, I’ll have you know. Stop posting pr0n!!1! Lulz
Tubes come in boxes.
+1 slender homo
Honest journalism, from the top shelf
Phew.
The effort to take health insurance from millions of people — an effort opposed by doctors, nurses, scientists, public-health workers and a strong majority of the American people — failed last night.
Yeah.
“Late last night, a Republican attempt to force transgender bodies into rail cars bound for death camps was narrowly defeated by noble Democrats and a brave cadre of patriotic bipartisan Republicans.”
” an effort opposed by doctors, nurses, scientists, public-health workers”
MUH CARTEL!
Getting rid of mandates in skinny repeal is taking away health insurance for millions?
Progs only care about people’s opinions when it aligns with their own
More “bodies”. So. Fucking. Tedious.
And, we get this:
Above all, it failed because Congressional Republicans and President Trump never developed a real health care plan. They developed a make-believe plan, made up of lies about Obamacare and talking points about their own plan that were unconnected to reality.
“No repeal. No replace,” Peter Suderman of the libertarian Reason magazine wrote. “Despite years of promises, Republicans had no shared health policy goals.”
Yes, that’s right, Petey, not wanting a comprehensive structured national health care delivery system run by the Ministry of Plenty means you have no policy goals.
Suderman is still flogging the “Its not reform unless it means spending more money, passing more regulations, and hiring more bureaucrats” line.
Repealing taxes and regulations is never reform to brainless statists. Fuck them all.
It failed because the GOP is a bunch of spineless twats that are content to skate on their incumbency reelection rate.
Unfortunately, this is the original outcome I predicted. I thought for a brief moment I might have been wrong, but alas, no.
The whole thing is mess because the ACA was almost purely political. The Democrats voting in lock-step to pass it couldn’t care less if it actually “worked”.
Obamacare lite was make believe and unconnected to reality? Sounds like Obamacare
It shouldn’t be about goals either. This is why they are so messed up.
It is a system that needs reform not goals
Also I like how the media neglected to inform you 75 percent of those losing coverage was due to no mandate which is a choice, not a loss. And the cbo has consistently over estimated the impact of the mandate to buying a plan. The difference is so large that the mandate is kind of meaningless. Thus cbo is operating on unrealistic terms
Why not just remove the mandate. Let law fail.
I swear this wasn’t me. I don’t get up that early.
I canot tell if this comment is genuine or written by one of you all:
Having lived in the bay area for 20 years, I’m going with genuine.
Hmph.
For the past couple of weeks I had a tiny dot on the palm of my hand. Easily dismissed, and so it was. Then I started to feel a tinge of something when pressure got applied to that spot. This morning the spot was slightly swollen, and there were signs of lymph buildup. I drained it and there was this object sticking out of the skin. It is obnoxious to get a hold of (lacking tweezers at my desk) but I finally draw it out and find a sliver more than an eighth of an inch long that had been embedded vertically in my hand. Discard the thing and figure that’s that.
Nope. Now that the foreign object is gone, the spot is even more swollen and hurts when so much as water touches it. Thanks, immune system. You didn’t care when there was something impaled into my hand, but once it’s gone, now you decide everything should be inflamed. Of course it’s also in a terrible spot for not having it come into contact with things.
UCS doesn’t like splinters either. Figures.
Can you blame me on this one?
UCS sat alone in his living room. The walls were painted battleship gray. The walls in the adjoining kitchen were painted military gray. Above him hung a lifeless painting of a sunless meadow in winter. The neutral tan carpeting was thin, just like the bowl of gruel sitting on his lap. He got up from his brown sofa, careful not to spill any of his precious food supply. It was time to go to work.
Carpet?
The walls are off-white, but not quite beige. The floor is laminate pretending to be hardwood (It’s easier to clean than carpet). There are two pieces of art on the walls. One is a framed Declaration of Independance. The other is a demotivational plaque that reads “Government – If you think the problems we create are bad, just wait until you see our solutions.”
You are, however, correct, the sofa is brown. But I don’t use it, it’s for company. I sit in the chair.
The TSA of immune systems.
Did it look like this ?
No.
oooh, another shot…
Too much wood stroking?
Are you sure there isn’t another splinter in there? Any idea what material the splinter was? The body actively rejects brass and that rejection mimics infection; learned this the hard way during a plumbing repair. Wood isn’t inherently toxic but can bring infection with it.
Be proactive unless you want to end up with IV antibiotics every day for a week or longer.
Sounds like a trip to urgent care is in order, for a shot of novocaine at the site and some energetic rooting around to clean it out. The odds there isn’t something left in there are pretty low, it sounds like.
^^This is good advice.
Except I wouldn’t trust the urgent care people around here to go exploring for a hair-fine fragment that may or may not be buried an eighth of an inch under the skin. they’d do more harm than good. Xray to see if a bone is broken, sure. Digging around in my hand, not these folks.
In that case, wait until your swollen hand turns green.
It’s actually a lot less inflamed now than when I posted the original statement. I think what happened was pulling it out ripped up some of the surrounding skin (see: had trouble getting a grip on it).
Good thing you’ve got another hand, then, because that one may not make it if its really infected and you don’t go in to get the source of the infection removed.
It really is quite startling to see just how much disgusting stuff your body accumulates when you get a splinter. I got one in the second knuckle of my thumb, down by the webbing, and I never realize there was still about 3/4in of untreated cedar in there. Eventually, it didn’t hurt, I just found the joint stopped articulating, so I pulled off what was by then, a very small and uninspiring scab, and clenched my fist.
Nature returned the splinter, now caked in a somewhat slick sleeve of coagulated yellow pus, and a stream of about 2-3cc of very nasty, rather less viscous green ichor. So no, don’t ignore your injury, the least you should do is consider is a tetanus shot, and the chance to appear on a youtube video.
Glad to hear its getting better. In that case, maybe not go to urgent care unless it turns again.
I don’t think it was wood to begin with. It might have been a piece of wire (which isn’t inherently any cleaner)
I don’t know if there’s something stuck at the bottom of the hole – it was extremely narrow and has been closed by the inflammation.
On a more serious note, I recently had an employee who got a piece of wire stuck in his finger and ended up with a full-blown MRSA infection. So get it cleaned out.
Yeah, when my brass splinter came out the swelling went down immediately.
Infections take longer to go away, but it shouldn’t be getting worse if it’s all out.
as a locksmith, I’ve had hundreds of brass splinters in my palms and fingers. they suck.
They also rarely (never?) broke apart inside the skin, so if i could dig it out, that was that.
Metal slivers suck. Even tiny ones seem to hurt like hell.
About a week ago I was taking a bat of fiberglass insulation very carefully to the trash when the wind picked up and slapped it right on my sweaty leg. I have a rash from my ankle to my knee for several days now. Sucks
Fiberglass is terrible, too.
I’ve done that same thing. Carried some to throw away and it swiped my leg. it took a few days of cool showers to try to fix it.
The ones from work that are the worst are when they barely go into your skin so you don’t notice.
Then you get out of work and grab a steering wheel or try to shift, and you force it into your palm. immediate pain.
I knew a guy that brought a different pair of socks and shoes for work. He had a brush and would sweep his feet before changing to leave. We’d laugh, but sure enough, I’ve had a few slivers wind up in my socks and eventually stab my feet.
I always hated crawling around that stuff. Fiberglass insulation is the worst, its almost as if the asbestos people wanted to punish you for shutting them down.
I have gotten to the point where if I’m going to work with a lot of it I put on a full face respirator and a tyvek bunny suit. So worth it.
Reminds me of the time I was milling brass stock and a brass chip went behind my safety glasses and landed in the white of my eye. Fucking terrifying ordeal where I prevented myself from blinking for a solid 2 minutes while I went to the bathroom, scrubbed machining oil off my fingers, and then carefully extracted a 1/16 x 1/8″ brass chip from my eye. If it had been lost behind the eyelid after one blink…fuck, that would have sucked. Whew.
I had one sliver bounce off my cheek, off the glasses, then rest on my bottom eyelid. I thought it got me in the white. Scary as fuck.
The old man I worked with in Boston had been cutting keys for 40 years or so. His brother and him opened a shop right before Nam.
He had a bunch of brass dust and shavings in his eye sockets. Told me that the doctors had a way to fix it. “They said they’d pull both eyeballs out, then clean the sockets with water. but it was a 50/50 I would still be able to see when I woke up.”
He asked if he could do one first, so he could still have the use of his other eye if it went bad. They told him they’d only do them both.
wear safety glasses.
About a year ago a little zit-like dot appeared right above my appendectomy scar. Over the course of a few days it grew into a very large zit-like growth, and eventually popped while I was at work one day, leaking puss and blood all over my shirt.
A band-aid kept it under control for a while, but it wasn’t healing, so I went to my GP doctor. He had no clue, so he referred me to a get an ultrasound and a consult with a surgeon.
The surgeon did some bed side exploring with his scalpel, but couldn’t find anything. He gave me some gauze strips and had me pack the now enlarged opening full of gauze twice per day.
It closed after about a week, but then a few days later started swelling and then popped open again. This time a scab started growing over the hole, but the weird part was that the scab kept growing outward, away from the skin. One morning after a shower I noticed it was lose and felt like it would fall off. I was on the verge of being late for work, as is my standard procedure, so I just slapped some gauze and tape over it and went to work.
All morning it hurt like a bitch, so I went home for lunch and pulled the topping gauze off. The scab was stuck to the gauze and there was a green piece of string standing straight up out of the scab. It was a suture from my appendectomy that had failed to dissolve. I cleaned up the hole and pulled it open a bit, and sure enough I could see the end of another suture down in there a bit, so I pulled that one out too. One week later the wound closed up for good.
Here’s the mind blowing part; This happened more than 20 years after my appendectomy.
Worst Penthouse letter ever.
Seriously, you dodged a bullet there. Retained objects like that can go septic, and once you have sepsis, the time to treat it without suffering death or loss of limbs is very short. We had a case where a patient (in another hospital) went septic and was undiagnosed for probably 24 hours, maybe 48. By the time they caught it, the patient lost both hands.
Way back after the initial appendectomy there was some drainage and the doctor pulled the wound back open on one end and had me do the pack it with gauze twice per day thing. It eventually healed up, but there was a solid mass under the skin that ran parallel to my scar. The doctor said it was just scar tissue. I believed him.
That mass is gone now. I, apparently, had been carrying around a little sack of puss with two sutures floating in it for twenty years.
I’ve read of soldiers – especially 18th/19th/early 20th century, having shrapnel or bullets work their way out of the body decades after the initial wound. Yikes – glad you were able to “self surgery”.
I hear that happens a lot with shotgun victims. They shot just keeps comin’ out!
I once heard a story about a civil war soldier who was shot through the testicle on the battlefield. The bullet traveled into a nearby medical tent and lodged itself in the womb of a nurse. Nine months later a baby was born. The baby was happy and the mother was healthy–and she was completely guilt free. The soldier who got his testicle shot off was presumably pissed off about the whole thing, but if you’ve ever seen photos from a civil war battlefield, worse things have happened to good people. It was war.
Anyway, point is that it was possible to create a baby outside of sex even before test tube babies; it’s just that the test tube method is much less . . . invasive.
That civil war story is just a story, according to Snopes. Apparently the legend started with a joke article in a medical journal.
One of the responsibilities of a surgical nurse is to keep a count every needle and sponge.
They all turn the same color when you put them inside somebody. I’ve seen x-rays of sponges the size of postcards that were sewed back up in somebody.
I wouldn’t want that job. Over the course of a thirty year career, of all the hundreds of thousands of needles and sponges, you’re never going to miss one?
The other thing that always surprised me was nurses and needle sticks. The overwhelming majority seemed to be from nurses recapping needles. They used to tell them just to never recap a needle. Don’t do it. They still do it. And then they have to get tested for HIV, hepatitis, etc.
Also, I knew another hospital employee who went in for an appendectomy. He had all the symptoms of appendicitis. He was a radio tech, and he looked at his own x-rays himself. Had his coworkers take the shots.
When the surgeon took his appendix out, he saw that the guy’s intestines had been perforated by a chicken bone. It wasn’t appendicitis at all. It was a chicken bone. They couldn’t see it on the x-rays.
Over the course of a thirty year career, of all the hundreds of thousands of needles and sponges, you’re never going to miss one?
I know about every single retained item in the many thousands of surgeries we do every year at my hospital.
We average less than one per year. Only one that I can recall was a true retained item. The others were tiny bits of surgical equipment that broke off. Retained items are very rare; we actually set more patients on fire.
David Brooks’ descent into madness continues.
Do you ever get the feeling we’re all going to be judged for this moment? Historians, our grandkids and we ourselves will look and ask: What did you do as the Trump/Scaramucci/Bannon administration dropped a nuclear bomb on the basic standards of decency in public life? What did you do as the American Congress ceased to function? What positions did you take as America teetered toward national decline?
———-
Frankly, I think Flake’s libertarian version of conservatism paved the way for Trump. People are being barraged by technology-driven unemployment, wage stagnation, the breakdown of neighborhoods and families. Goldwater-style conservatism says: “Congratulations! You’re on your own!” During the campaign, Trump seemed to be offering something more.
But Flake is in most ways an ideal public servant. He is an ideological purist but a temperamental conciliator. On spending and free trade he takes lonely principled stands; on immigration he’s crafted difficult bipartisan compromises.
In a time when politics has become a blood sport, he’s sunny and kind. “Assume the best. Look for the good,” his parents taught him. But he possesses a serene courage that is easy to underestimate because it is so affable.
Most important, he understands this moment. The Trump administration is a moral cancer eating away at conservatism, the Republican Party and what it means to be a public servant.
That’s right David. Social signalling and moral preenery are your stock in trade. Never let the NYT readership forget you’re really one of them, a thoughtful discerning deep thinker appalled by the coarseness of our Court Jester Presidency. Otherwise, you might find yourself out on the window ledge, leaning into the Abyss, with an anguished tearstained suicide note fluttering like a wounded bird on the desk behind you.
Well-said, P Brooks.
Giggled like Ron Swanson, that’s what I did during the Trump presidency.
I am glutting myself on prog tears. I get so much pleasure watching shit stains like Brooks squirm.
WTF is this bullshit? Flake’s not compassionate conservative enough?
the Trump/Scaramucci/Bannon administration dropped a nuclear bomb on the basic standards of decency in public life
Nah. They are just bouncing the rubble left by your fellow travellers, you insufferable piece of smug garbage.
Those damn libertarians are always fucking things up.
Solution to people becoming unemployed by tech. Jack up the min wage and more handouts. And more regs to drive companies overseas
No. I’ve never had that feeling, I don’t have that feeling now, and it’s a virtual lock that I will never have that feeling for the rest of my life. Historians won’t ask me anything because they’ll be too busy figuring out how to slot FDR/LBJ/Clinton/Obama into the top four slots of the presidential rankings. In the event that I had kids and grandkids, none of them would be stupid enough to think this stuff matters even a tenth as much as David Brooks does. If elderly me is at the rest home and a bunch of the other fogies start asking shit like this, I’ll call every Chinese organ harvester I know and my end of that conversation will go, “It’s time. (beat) Yes. (beat) Yes, me too, goddammit!”
This has to be one of my favorite posts ever.
And the cbo has consistently over estimated the impact of the mandate to buying a plan. The difference is so large that the mandate is kind of meaningless. Thus cbo is operating on unrealistic terms
I have no more faith in the CBO’s models than I do in the Global Warming Cultists’.
Pretty sure the CBO explicitly and by policy only does “static” analysis, and never factors in people responding to the incentives created by new laws. IOW, they use a method of forecasting which is 100% guaranteed to fail.
I want you to guess the website. No linky. Bonus points if you suss out the author.
I’m not participating because I already saw it, but I am laughing. Is that a clue?
Based on the hint, I’m guessing Cass Sunnstein.
And I’d bet that sadbeard would jump at the opportunity to print Cass. So the venue is Vox.
LOL, I thought it had been cited here already, and therefore guessed Salon. WRONG.
Why do they employ her again?
Who was it?
Reason?
This article came up when I cheated and Googled the text: Why the Left Can’t Solve Global Warming
Greens are more interested on assigning blame than looking for fixes.
Shikha Dalmia | July 28, 2017
Reading the text, it’s not as bad as I feared. It’s basically a paean for technological solutions to AGW—sunshades, deep carbon sequestration, etc…—instead of cutting fossil fuel use. Still a waste of money, but not as society-crippling as the typical Green solution.
SD at HitnRun.
So I had a bit of a getaway this week and went to LA to see a soccer game. I am a slightly more than casual fan but to be fair I only went to the game because my wife somehow got into it and her team was playing (Man City). I anticipated the crowd in LA was going to follow the other team playing so I picked up a Real Madrid jersey in part to troll my wife but also to help avoid getting our asses kicked. Boy was I right on that one, that crowd was overwhelmingly for Real.
When I went downstairs to wait in line for a beer I witnessed something that disturbed me for some reason. A guy was walking in the LA Coliseum concourse smoking a cigarette. It’s open air and I like to think of myself as reasonable, so I thought nothing of it. Until somebody in security stopped him:
“Sir, this is a non-smoking venue. Give me your cigarette.
“What?”
“This is a non-smoking venue. Give me your cigarette.”
He did not ask him to put it out, but to forfeit a lit cigarette. What disturbed me more, is that poor futbol fan went and did it too. Almost as if the moral busybodies have completely flooded the city and he wasn’t even going to try and question the orders of a very questionable authority.
If a security guard asks me to do something politely, I’m liable to find accommodation.
When ordered to do something, I go into “fuck you, rent-a-cop” mode.
Yeah, I don’t advocate flicking the cigarette at the guy. Surely, there’s a happier medium than confiscating it.
Extinguishing and stowing it would be the apropriate middle ground. Not personally a smoker, but reading the anecdote, my response was “I’m surprised he didn’t extinguish the cigarette using the guard’s face.”
Did he hand it to him lit-end first?
From the article on the DOJ reversing course on gay rights:
The Justice Department has filed court papers arguing that a major federal civil rights law does not protect employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation,
What the statute says:
You know what’s in there? Sex. You know what you don’t see? Sexual orientation. And “sex” is defined as follows:
Nope. Still no “sexual orientation”. Concluding that the statute covers “sex” but not “sexual orientation” is something that any literate 5th grader could do.
I keep hearing people debate about the health care law and so far everything I have heard is a waste of breath.
This isnt about health insurance. It isnt about healthcare. This is about socialist bastards wanting to get a stranglehold on the single most powerful tool for control that there is. It is also about 1/6 of a multi-trillion dollar economy. There is no possibility that that snake pit in DC is going to let that kind of money change hands without them getting their cut.
The insurance industry and the medical industry are populated by people 100x as smart as the smartest pol. Can anyone give me one good reason why we need pols mixed up in this?
To award monopoly privileges to these industries and the drug companies?
I like to bring this up to all the people I know who want single payer and shit.
or bring up that the FDA has put tons of drugs they don’t thing should be legal out into the public, while keeping others from the market that they do like.
they assure me it’ll go great with the right guy in charge.
Me, webmaster for the company. The only webmaster.
Colleague, via email: “Do you know to contact to update a page on the web site?”
Reply e-mail: “Yes.”
or perhaps…
“We have a web site?”
Charlie Gard has died. 🙁
And the British establishment couldn’t be more pleased.
Some bitch Tweeted “People die, even with the best of care”
I’d say his care was thoroughly apathetic and mildly adequate. Certainly not even in the ballpark of “best”
People also die when a bureaucracy spends precious months dragging out the appeal process until the kid’s condition has deteriorated to the point that there’s no hope left.
Louisiana’s public defenders receive funds from traffic tickets. So now people are being encouraged to write fine checks directly to the DA in exchange for no court and no points.
H/T Balkoooooooooo!