Hump Day, here we come. Lots happened yesterday across the globe. Let’s talk about some of them.
Hopefully they’re not waiting on the city to solve their problems
- Hizzonor Bill DeBlasio plans to add 90 new homeless shelters to address the spiraling problem in New York. The plans don’t include where to build them or with what money. Hey, I’m just spitballing here, but maybe if you didn’t have rent controls, regulation of short-term living facilities, incredibly high taxes on everything and a “daddy knows best” solution for everything, the market would handle this.
- Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world and is likely to pass Christianity in numbers by the end of the 21st Century. Most of the difference in rate is birth rate for Muslims vs Christians. A smaller percentage of the change is due to infidels being chucked off buildings and being decapitated.
- A very well-written piece on the uselessness of the NEA. Hopefully the people holding the purse-strings will take notice.
- San Francisco area traffic ranked fourth worst in the world. The three ahead of it are Los Angeles, Moscow and New York. Two other American cities, Atlanta and Miami, we’re also in the Top 10. WINNING!
The software developer was not happy with his “quaint” $1500 a month “room”
- Taking a look at that list again, I see Los Angeles there at the top and Paris is number nine. Well, now that Budapest has pulled out of the running for the 2024 Olympics, those two places are all that’s left. So congratulations citizens of The City of Angels and the City of Lights. one of you groups will be the lucky winner!
- I wonder how many of the people profiled here have any idea what effect the strict government controls on rents, development. renovations, and every other aspect of their lives has on this. I suspect you’ll see more and more of these companies relocating to cities like Austin and Denver soon in order for their employees to feel the benefits of their efforts and not feel like they’re one step away from being a homeless millionaire.
Well that’s it. Go out and enjoy your day, friends. I know I will.
And of course, this happened.
2) So last night my wife was telling me about some recent alleged outrage by Betsy Devos, something about her making jokes about the free and reduced lunch program in public schools. (Facebook has changed her recently from her formerly reasonable self, but I’ll save that for a future Thought Not Sermon.) Anyway, my wife mentioned that according to this Facebook post, 31 million kids every year are on free or reduced lunch.
31 million!? That’s gotta be a huge percentage of all school-age children. That can’t possibly be right, can it? Oh yes it can! According to this NY Times article from early 2015, “51 percent of children in public schools qualified for the [free or reduced] lunches in 2013,” up from 38 percent in 2000. Yes, a majority of US kids get free or reduced lunch every day.
The gist of the NY Times article is that kids in America are so much more impoverished and food insecure than years ago, but buried deep in the article is this tidbit: “the federal Agriculture Department now allows schools with a majority of low-income students to offer free lunches to all students, regardless of whether they qualify on an individual basis or not.”
Yes, that’s right—if a majority of kids at your school get free or reduced lunch, then ALL kids get a free or reduced lunch. Even kids that don’t need it. Even kids that might come from wealthy families. What could possibly be the purpose of this, except to normalize getting free shit? Acclimate the kids while they’re young and impressionable, right?
I’ve seen this in action. The reason is so none of the truly poor kids feel othered when they get to the cashier and she says “oh, you get free lunches.” Same reason they changed from coupons to EBT cards for food stamps programs.
It’s also a great way to keep those federal funds flowing. That free lunch thing spills over into all kinds of other ‘services’.
It’s a profit center. Keep the cost of the lunch below the subsidy and you just padded your budget.
Additionally, the the National School Lunch Program is administered by the USDA, which treats that program just like it treats food stamps, as a bureaucratic empire that it wants to expand. More kids on school lunch subsidies, more budget for the USDA.
It’s perverted incentives all the way down. And the food is disgusting.
Yep, and if you have enough kids that qualify for the free/reduced lunches, you qualify for all kinds of federally-funded goodies. Diversity coordinators, technology, etc. etc.
And yet nothing changes.
Yeah, you’re probably right. I don’t recall kids at my school when I was kid on free lunch getting made fun of, but there was certainly a stigma attached. Which was a good thing! Not that it’s your fault as a kid, but there’s also no reason to be proud that your family can’t afford to provide your lunch.
I wonder at these schools with 100% free lunch how long it will be until you won’t be ALLOWED to bring a lunch from home.
A lot of schools out there are limiting what kids can bring. I can’t imagine there aren’t some districts already saying they can’t bring anything at all.
I’m sending my kids to school with peanut butter every day until I get an attempted murder arrest.
Here’s your lunchroom terrorist starter pack.
Awesome graphic.
The pop tart gun kind of looks like an HK. The artist must be a gun enthusiast.
I’m sure you’ve seen the list of ‘prohibited’ items for school lunches. Almost there.
Yep. that’s what many schools do here in NYC. Also annoying, sending my daughter (1st grade) through the hot-lunch line even though I make her a nice lunch every damned day then sending me a bill (the lunch-monitor thought she might enjoy the cafeteria food).
(the lunch-monitor thought she might enjoy the cafeteria food)
Who in thell emjoys that crap?
*the hell enjoys
English is hard
Which is ridiculous, since most schools have the kids have cards that their parents put money on rather than actually handling cash. So swipe the card and don’t say anything, problem solved.
#2? You restarted the count?
I’m hoping to get a sales boost by rebooting the series with a new #1.
JATNAS: REBIRTH
Jokes on you. We’re waiting for the cheap paperback edition so your royalties won’t be worth dick.
*rises to applaud vigorously*
Cant you just imagine the shame a child would experience if he was the only kid paying for his lunch?
“Look at rich boy Billy over here, able to spend a dollar fifty every day on school lunch!”
Why do you hate the children? Why do you hate Billy?
Billy Money bags
I think the rationale has something to do with fairness and keeping kids from classifying each other based on their lunches. Not that they don’t have other ways to do this.
We classified kids based on clothes and shoes, but I grew up at the beach in the 90’s were everyone was a skater, surfer, punk, grunge person or some combination thereof. Or you had the newest Jordans.
When I lived in the city, my son went to the local public school. And we were among the few parents who actually had to pony up for lunches.
The school also handed out free breakfasts… and even sack dinners that the kids could bring home.
Our current school doesn’t do anything but lunches – and I have no idea if there are anyone getting freebies. The suburb is very wealthy with only a few bottom clingers (like myself) who managed to get their kids in to one of the best school districts in the state.
There is no free lunch.
Free for me, not for thee!
*belch*
Live food is more expensive.
Having the kids try to chase down free-range lunch sounds too much like recess.
The lunch is a lie?
Fake Lunch!
Even crazier on this: the agency who does the school lunch program has a fairly large initiative to expand enrollment by auto-enrolling people who would qualify but haven’t applied. I was in a few meetings about this a few years ago. Something like they wanted to integrate income/demographic data from outside sources to find people who were not enrolled and then put them on the rolls without even asking them.
I work with schools at my job. There are other services that come with the “free lunch” status, like waiving fees such as textbook rental (we have those kinds of fees in Indiana). Also, the more “free lunch” kids in a school, the more state funding the school receives. So it is in the best interest of the school (monetarily) to have more of those students.
No doubt, that’s why so many of them are morbidly obese.
When I was signing my kids up for school outside of KC MO the lady got a little upset that I didn’t want to sign up
I told her just because your paperwork says I’m eligible, that doesn’t mean I need the govt to feed my kids
I was an active duty E-6 at the time and my wife doesn’t work, with two kids that puts you under the poverty line
Weird though, none of us were ever hungry, except the 14 year old, because he ate EVERYTHING!
Short version: the 14 year old was hungry, therefore your family wasn’t getting enough food. Put another tick mark in the Americans are starving category.
“Food insecure” seems to be the current preferred term of art.
If they did a survey on school he could have truthfully answered he was hungry everyday
My wife and I combine for a household income north of $160,000 and we meet the criteria as “food insecure”
I am sex insecure
This one really sticks in my craw. Not to be overly dramatic, but my number 1 duty every day when I wake up is to ensure my children have food to eat. Now, the fact that I have sweet skills, a winning smile, and legendary levels of resourcefulness allow me to meet that goal very easily, but c’mon folks. If you can’t find a way to scrape together the $10 a week it costs to make brown bag lunches for your kids, you suck.
The number of people who don’t understand how to make a $0.35 peanut butter (oh wait, that’s illegal now) and jelly sandwich is astounding. The fact that you could spend $25 and have a week of healthy lunches for your family is something that has been wiped from the social consciousness.
I saw that outrage, plus the meme which was basically “DeVos and/or Republicans are evil and wants to STARVE ALL THE CHILDREN!!!”
sigh.
“Most of the difference in rate is birth rate for Muslims vs Christians. A smaller percentage of the change is due to infidels being chucked off buildings and being decapitated.”
Although we’ve been trying to even that out with drone strikes on weddings.
Free birth-control from Uncle Sam!
“Demographic control unit 5 has Hellfires away!”
That figure was still some way short of the 2.2 billion Christians which comprised 31 percent of the population. However, by 2050 there could be near parity between the numbers of adherents of the two religions for the first time in history.
Well, barring any dramatic changes like Christ returning or the Middle East being turned into a hunting safari for drones.
Or the Middle East modernizing and the inevitable drop in birth rates that comes with it…
Yea, drone hunting safari is more likely
Austin is rapidly becoming San Francisco. So don’t count on the relocations there continuing.
“Austin: all the traffic at half the cost”.
Its a selling point people can buy!
I figured out quickly that getting downtown via 35 was going to be an exercise in frustration. Then I learned the secret: Red River. Now that I’m out of there, I can fuck it up for everyone.
Not everyone drives a DUKW.
Does this mean you took a boat to work?
I read that as “autism is rapidly becoming San Francisco.” and I was like, yeah, so?
I’m kinda surprised that we (Dallas) didn’t make the top 10 list. Everyone complains about our traffic, even the Californite refugees from LA.
Every time I peruse job listings in the Bay Area I wonder what it will take for me to move to such a place. I’m not sure what can make living in that clusterfuck worth it.
It’s very pretty, but the fact that the friend I was visiting was paying $1200 for a bedroom in a small apartment in Pacifica killed any desire I had to live there.
I’ve actually had companies try to recruit me to move out there. I laughed at them and told them unless they were offering $250,000 a year to start not to bother talking to me because I just couldn’t survive there for less.
I told the same thing to companies in Detroit that tried to recruit me for different reasons, namely to compensate me for having to live in Detroit.
“Hizzonor Bill DeBlasio plans to add 90 new homeless shelters to address the spiraling problem in New York. The plans don’t include where to build them or with what money. ”
I know when I read books or stories from the 19th century set in NY or London they talk about cheap, privately-run rooming hotels where you could get a cot for $.50 a night, or whatever. Whatever happened to places like that? Zoned our of existence, I suppose?
Pretty sure Guiliani started the process of eliminating them. Once developers got wind of the volume of property that’d be available, they made sure to donate to the right people so the program would continue.
To be fair, fifty cents then would be like $7.50 today.
All kinds of reasons those low cost hotels aren’t around anymore.
Probably zoned/regulated out. They had shared bathrooms, maybe shared bedrooms. Probably illegal at this point.
Govt aside, they might just not be feasible for most of NY these days for the private sector – even a tiny crap hotel room is expensive.
Christian girls need to start puttin out a lot more.
I wonder how many Muhamads will be on earth in 2100?
Everybody in our town seems to be named Jesus, so it’s a decent counterbalance.
Catholic girls – I love ’em so – were quite babymakers when I was a nipper.
When I was 16 I dated a 19yo girl who had given away her first child. My mom was freaking out about that!
Last time I saw her on FB she was on kid number four or five. Apparently with different dads. Again I dodged a bullet.
I think you got the stereotype wrong.
They get married and *then* have the kids.
At least in the old days. And even today, in our enlightened age, I see large catholic families – Mom, Dad, and several kids – in church, but not at stereotype levels.
Things ain’t what they used to be.
Yeah, you’re right. I’ve never heard of bastard Catholic orphans before or anything like Magdalene laundries.
*sigh* – I was referring to the stereotype of large Catholic families.
I grew up in a very Catholic area where if you were an only child you were considered weird. I still see big (bigger than average, rather) Catholic families. But, Catholics can’t carry the entire load. Those protestants need to pick-up their slack.
Catholics make sex dirty. People are attracted to being naughty.
Then why don’t more people refer to trans people by pronouns referencing their sex at birth? That sounds really naughty!
Yes xir.
Sorry, I disagree. I grew up Catholic. Lots of families in my church where the daughters had kids early (either before marriage, or had pregnancies, got engaged real quick, then had the wedding before the kid). But a lot of my classmates married (ew!) other classmates, and now have families that are pretty sizeable by today’s standards (3-5 kids, not the 8-10 kids their parents
I was discussing *stereotypes.*
+1 Frank Zappa
“Hey, she gave me VD”
She sounds like an unKemp woman.
+1 Reign Man
Google the Quiverful movement.
My sister is part of that, she’s up to 9 or 10 kids last I heard
Australian man pleads guilty to driving motorized cooler while drunk
“0.162, nearly three times the legal limit”
So the legal limit must be 0.06 in Australia? Holy cow, for someone who doesn’t weigh very much that could be like one mixed drink.
I think it’s .05. The math in the story doesn’t make sense though.
You journalists and math. It’s like oil and water.
What’s that in English BAC units?
Pints.
That is how I imagine all Australian men driving.
Housos as documentary.
Dazza and his Eskie-Wheels FTW (although the Sunnyvale junkies have all the worky bits)! “Ya wouldn’t read about it.“
I fail to see the problem.
NC Church Limits Married Couples To 30 Min. Of Sex And That’s Not All
sounds like a normal marriage, amirite?!!?!
I see that they deny the allegations.
I don’t know who’s right, but it would have been nice if the original article gave both sides. Would that have been “false balance”?
Oh, I see, there’s a longer version of the AP report.
Well, usually it takes years to get that point…
” leaders dole out condoms to make sure unapproved women don’t get pregnant.”
Kind of the anti-Catholics.
30 minutes seems like a long time…
It really does when you cant foreplay and only missiinary it.
Maybe they are including sammich time?
“fore”?
Shit I thought it was “four” as in she gets four minutes of fiddling with her bits before the fucking commences.
The more you know….
30 minutes is not nearly long enough. The wife needs an hour of sobbing just to get ready.
I thought the hour of sobbing happened after the sex?
How would that be useful as lube?
It’s both. For different reasons.
So basically on the 25th anniversary of his murder, David Koresh has been resurrected.
Well, it’s a self-limiting religion.
– a whole bunch of Shakers
Without reading the link I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess these rules were not crafted by women.
I dunno, but it says “leader Jane Whaley and other ministers.”
*quick GoogleFu*
Ah, Sam and Jane. It’s a husband/wife duel ministry.
I just assumed the ‘no foreplay’ rule had to have been written by a man. Maybe not. Maybe Sam really sucks at it and Jane needed an excuse to make him stop. forever.
duel ministry
In typo veritas.
Well shit. It makes for a good visual anyway.
“Jesus, Sam, those are supposed to stay attached.”
Jesus, Sam it’s a vagina, not a corndog.
Searching for ‘Singapore’s Bigfoot’: Step inside the city’s mysterious forest
STEVE SMITH HAVE DISTANT COUSINS IN EAST.
$400bn F-35 can only hit ‘stationary or slow moving objects’ new report reveals as military bosses claim fighter jet could battle ISIS in the Middle East ‘in a few years’
So we have paid $400B for a plane that couldn’t shoot down the Red Baron’s Fokker triplane. Good deal.
Splash the Zeros…
“Curse you, Red Baron!”
/Snoopy
Splash the Zeros.
Like “camel in the desert” slow? That’s all they have for travel equipment over there of the JV team, right?
So we can only deploy it against retards?
If you think the Air Force considers this to be a flaw then you don’t understand the Air Force.
In their opinion this just free’s more of them up for Air Superiority missions and other fun stuff
Frank will be along momentarily to explain why everyone is wrong.
This is true. The targeting “pod” (not a pod) doesn’t meet the fidelity that was required. I’ve been told that it’s a software fix and it’s in the works. All new jets have similar bugs.
And, to be fair, the ability to kill ground moving targets with legacy platforms is relatively new and was never very reliable until the Sniper pod was developed. And since pods hanging externally fucks up the stealth characteristics, they developed an internal solution.
This isn’t the end of the world issue that the author would like you to believe. It’s all software and all combat aircraft get new software drops on schedules between 6 mos and 2 years.
Longing for Obama as President — of France
He’s just the kind of narcissist to accept their offer.
And he’s the kind of narcissist who would blame the French when he lost.
::hon hon hon!::
According to Wikipedia, the President of France has to be a French citizen.
I hope Obama has another birth certificate handy…
I think that a Nobel Peace Prize can be presented in any country and they’ll just print you up an honorary citizenship.
They could make him a citizen if they wanted to. He may have a bigger problem with getting 500 elected officials to sponsor him.
I suppose this may be relevant
“Among the honorary French citizens, Thomas Paine displayed the most enthusiasm in embracing his new status. Paine wrote a spirited letter accepting citizenship and a place in the National Assembly while supporting the ideals of the French Revolution. Later, at the height of the Reign of Terror, the National Convention under the direction Maximilien de Robespierre would imprison Paine.”
Police receive more calls from Chuck E. Cheese’s than some Tampa Bay area gentlemen’s clubs
No surprise there. Where are the adult attendees more satisfied with the entertainment provided? At a strip club you’re not looking for someone to interrupt your good time. At Chuck E. Cheese, shit, I feel like starting a fight after five minutes.
Strip Clubs also have bouncers who look liked they just got out of prison. It usually puts a damper on most people.
Or they have moonlighting po-po working as bouncers.
No need to call them, they’re already here.
Also, you don’t go to the strip club with your ex-wife and her asshole brothers.
Also lets not forget parents “defending” their kids from other kids.
As Akira covered previously, this fangirling over Trudeau is making me reconsider women’s suffrage.
“Step aside Joe Biden. The internet has a new object of lust…”
Uh,…did I miss something?
Rule 34.
I wonder how many resources would be freed up for American citizens’ use if there weren’t a “sanctuary city” policy in place. Isn’t it weird that the Trump Administration is evil for deporting illegal immigrants, but Mexico isn’t for not helping its citizens using all the same plans Democrats propose for our country to help them to the detriment of our own citizens?
Sanctuary City NY releases another criminal illegal, deported 3X
Hmm, probably not the best plan.
::Kate Steinle’s ghost nods in agreement.::
Posted last night as well (with thanks to those who responded last night), the girlfriend and I are heading to Dublin for a week this summer. She prefers going on organized tours and museums, while I prefer finding the local hangouts and getting into the culture of areas. So I’m looking for suggestions/warnings for items to do.
As it is now, the pro list is:
1) Walk from pub to pub, drinking and talking to the locals – My personal favorite idea, the girlfriend is not as much of a fan of this.
2) Jameson distillery.
3) Day trip to Kilkenny or/and Killarney.
The avoid list is much shorter:
1) The Blarney Stone (which I was already planning on avoiding, but it feels good to have others back up my thoughts).
Other things that we’ve discussed include going to Queen Medb’s cairn, day trip to Belfast, and a day trip to Waterford. Obviously we can’t do everything, but we’ll fit in as much as we can. Any and all guidance will be appreciated.
See: Kilmainham Gaol
St Patricks Cathedral
Avoid: Derry.
Avoid any bar with a Guinness sign.
The Irish are big on the rounds system at pubs, so if someone buys you a drink make sure you return the favor for the entire group who is in the round.
I know enough to pay when it’s my shout, and not to be a filthy shelf jumper.
Temple Bar is the touristy bar zone. I had a lot of fun bar hopping and just being a dumb wanker tourist there when I visited with my sister. There was some pub that was very narrow with a bar on each of it’s three stories. On the top level some musician caravan had spilled out and we were drinking elbow to elbow serenaded by folk music. I liked it.
Thanks for the tip waffles, looks like we’re staying in walking distance of that area.
My family had a pub in Kilkenny that has some neat history. It sold a while back and looks like a hippie enclave now, but may be interesting enough.
https://www.facebook.com/fennellysbridgest/
If you can get to Galway..DO IT!
Don’t stay in Dublin the whole time. That is too much driving if you want to go to Kilkenny and Kerry. At least stay a couple nights in Killarney or nearby. The national park there is awesome and take the touristy jaunting car with the amiable driver who regale you with all kinds of blarney. If you want a cool ass castle I would highly recommend the Rock of Cashel, which is in Tipperary.
If the GF insists on doing something kinda formal a historical walking tour might do the trick.
My overall impression was that Ireland is the New Mexico of the British Isles. Stunning to look at, but a bit shabby overall.
Not shabby. It has its charm.
Now, Lisbon is shabby as shit.
Stop by the library at Trinity College.
Canadian metal.
Ex Deo: Ancient Rome LARPers.
Warning: NSFW (nudity and violence)
Canadian metal: Headbanging and screaming “I’m sorry!”
Some Canadian metal I like.
Beyond Creation
Archspire
Slammer! Last weekend I asked for good new (or new-ish) death metal and haven’t been back since. Did you get around to posting a list somewhere? Meant to follow up earlier but it’s been a busy week.
Yah. I put it in that thread. Here’s the list:
Abyssal- Denouement (2012)
Artificial Brain- Labyrinth Constellation (2014)
Asphyx- Deathhammer (2012)
Autopsy- After the Cutting (2016)- Compilation
Behemoth- The Satanist (2014)
Beyond- Fatal Power of Death (2103)
Blood Incantation- Starspawn (2106)
Bloodbath (Sweden) ANY album
Bolt Thrower- ANY obviously
Bolzer- Aura (2013)
Cannibal Corpse – A Skeletal Domain (2014)
Carcass- Surgical Steel (2013)
The Chasm- Farseeing the Paranormal Abyss (2009)
Chthe’ilist- Le denier crepuscule (2016)
Conan- Horseback Battle Hammer (2010) NOT death metal but heavy as fuck
Cruciamentum- Engulfed in Desolation (20011)
Dead Congregation- Graves of the Archangels (2008), Promulgation of the Fall (2014)
Diocletian- War of All Against All (2010)
Disma- Towards the Megalith (2011)
Dragged into Sunlight- Hatred for Mankind (2009)- amazing
Funebrarum- The Sleep of Morbid Dreams (2009)
Grave Miasma
Immolation- Providence (2011), Atonement (2017)
Incantation- ANY (favorite death metal band)
Mitochondrion- Parasignosis (2011)
Morbus Chron- Sweven (2014)
Nile- any
Portal- any… Extremely weird and heavy
Repugnant- Epitome of Darkness (2006). This is the singer in Ghost’s death metal band
Sarpanitum- Blessed be my Brothers (2015)
Sludge- Weird dm about giant snails
Spectral Voice- Necrotic Doom (2015)
Stargazer- A great Work of Ages (2010), A Merging to the Boundless (2014)
Suffocation (obviously)
Teitanblood- Seven Chalices, Death
Tribulation- ANY. Highly recommended
Ulcerate- Any. Death metal from New Zealand, incredible drummer
Vader- Classic Polish DM… Welcome to the Morbid Reich (2011), Tibi et Igni (2014),
Vermin Womb- Permanence (2014)
War Master- personal favorite, Bolt Thrower worship done right…bad assery from Houston, Texas…Pyramid of the Necropolis (2011)
You da best. You da you da best.
No prob.
Listen to that Blood Incantation album fo sho
Don’t sleep on Katalepsy.
Shit I forgot Defeated Sanity, too
Thanks for turning me on to War Master. I’ve been a GW fanboy since the late 1980s and, of course, fell in love with Jo Bench of Bolt Thrower.
Karl has the new band Memoriam to continue the onslaught. With former BT drummer Andy Whale
Been a lurker at TWWSNBN for…12 years or so. Registered here today to say thank you for reminding me to listen to Blood Incantation. I’ve been stuck listening to Light of Day, Day of Darkness because that album fucking hypnotizes me. Been listening to Blood Incantation all day. Thanks for breaking me out of my rut.
?
Awesome. I like BT, and Cannibal Corpse. It’s nice to have a list I can go through. ????????????
Well, now that Budapest has pulled out of the running for the 2024 Olympics, those two places are all that’s left. So congratulations citizens of The City of Angels and the City of Lights. one of you groups will be the lucky winner!
I saw something recently about this; don’t remember where, but the writer portrayed it as unalloyed good news. Because now L A can make oodles and oodles of money hosting the Olympics, while boosting California’s and America’s battered prestige among the more civilized nations of the world.
I guess that would help make America great again.
Although not on the same scale, the Commonwealth Games are having trouble finding host cities. Durban, South Africa is supposed to host in 2022 after being the only city to bid. Now city and national officials are suggesting they may have to drop out because they can’t afford it.
Actually, it would make the California Republic great again.
Another reason I want to see them secede. So the USA can kick their asses at the olympics.
To be fair, I think the 1984 Olympics were the only ones in the past several decades that actually made a profit.
Lot of difference in these things from 1984 to 2024 though.
I doubt they’ll let them use the dumpy old Coliseum for events. I also doubt LA will agree to build a dedicated track stadium. Between the new football stadium, that soccer stadium the Chargers are playing in, the Rose Bowl, USC, UCLA, and the Forum, they should be able to pull it off without much building,
This should be interesting.
Staples Center and The Honda Center too. I am sure they have a world-class aquatics center somewhere.* And they can just go up to the San Bernardino mountains for the kayaking and to Pyramid lake for the rowing (I think its long enough).
*aside: the pool at my son’s high school in Visalia was the practice pool for the 1984 olympics. They bought it and moved it up there 30 years ago.
They are about to start construction on a world class aquatic center in my neighborhood. Two Olympic pools, and an amazing diving pool. It will be the home of USA water polo.
Indoor or outdoor?
One olympic outdoor. One play pool outdoor. Olympic indoor, with an adjustable floor to change the depth. Indoor dive pool with multiple platforms up to 10.5 meters. A reataurant/bar. All on the sand, looking at the beautiful Pacific Ocean. It will be where the swimming contests are held. Probably water polo too.
Damn. I hope I get to see my son dive there someday in college.
Will they have the ability to set up the the boards for The triple lindy?
My understanding is the only new building required will be a velodrome, since the 1984 velodrome was replaced by the StubHub soccer/football stadium. The rest are either already built or approved/under construction (supposedly – I’m sure there are a lot of ‘improvements’ that would be necessary that aren’t mentioned). But we’ll see.
At the office, I’ve been tracking the day-to-day events of World War I on the white board in the breakroom, “100 years ago today.” On March 1, 1917, the contents of the Zimmerman Telegram were published in the American press. The telegram had been sent in late January, intercepted and decoded by British Intelligence, and handed to American diplomats in late February.
Mexico never seriously considered acting on the offer in the telegram; I particularly like this line in the Wikipedia article:
Did he admit to stalking and murdering Trayvon?
I thought is was a telegram to Woody Guthrie letting him know all his ideas were gonna be stolen and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it because names would be changed.
*fiercely narrows gaze*
This is the wild Swiss Servator. Observe how he pounds his chest and leans forward to impress the docile commentariat. The commentariat presents a pun, and if it is to Swiss’s liking, he indicates sexual interest by a fierce narrowing of his gaze.
*pounds chest, hoots*
Outstanding.
As always, the comments never fail to derp.
Is it just my imagination, or has the “post comment” button crept leftward? Is this some sort of outreach to the cosmotarians?
No, it’s done it for me as well.
I think it’s remaining seated in solidarity with the left side of the aisle because it didn’t like Trump’s speech last night either.
It’s part of the general redesign SP was working on last night, mostly to make it easier to use on tablets.
Kudos, I sez, on the redesign. Specifically blockquotes, the bold text was a little jarring. A little late, but let me say thanks and congratulations to the Glib-masters on the site, both in terms of content and presentation. I hadn’t realized what a morass Other Comment Threads had become until there was something to compare them against.
Following last night’s speech, Reason Foundation requests any and all pants donations be sent to their magazine’s Washington, D.C. office. There is a severe clean pants shortage in the city and its employees are in dire straits.
LIES! It’s all LIES! AAAHHH TRUMPPPP!
In this tragic case, a grand jury charged a mother in the death of her baby.
One interesting point is that the original charge was murder, but the grand jury rejected a murder charge and went with the lesser charge of manslaughter.
This is another example of grand juries providing a shield for regular defendants, not simply for cops as the “indict a ham sandwich but not a pig” meme would have it.
(And many of the cases of grand juries clearing cops represent the prosecution using grand jurors as human shields to buttress the prosecution’s own belief that no charges are warranted. I would say that the prosecutor shouldn’t go to the grand jury unless (s)he actually wants an indictment. If that were the rule, how many stories would we see of “grand jury declines to indict cop?”)
The kids and wife went to a Harriet Tubman play a couple weeks ago and was thinking about her life and what she did.
If she were alive today and was injured the way she was she would be most likely living on disability. Instead she continued on with her life and helped rescue many from slavery.
Did the production use white and Asian actors and actresses in place of the black people? Or does that only work for Hamilton?
I don’t they were charging enough for this show to signal their solidarity with the fight. They were just trying to put on a show.
What the fuck is that shit? You mean putting on a production for the mere joy of it (and hopefully a profit motive)? Don’t these people know there are injustices to be fought?
Random issue: Couldn’t connect here this morning until I disconnected from my VPN.
*begins to become paranoid*
*quietly browses through JB’s computer*
Grand jury rejects murder charge, perhaps because there was evidence of self-defense
The grand jury *did* charge him with evidence tampering and the prosecutor suggests it will bring the murder case back to the grand jury if new evidence turns up.
Speech, you say?
I think the last Presidential Address I watched from beginning to end was Nixon’s resignation.
I watched BOOOOSH in 2001, a couple years later, I got mobilized (and I wasn’t surprised).
You got a Hoveround?
-1 Rascal
I think the 1984 Olympics were the only ones in the past several decades that actually made a profit.
I have seen this claim made. I’m sure the IOC corrected whatever oversight allowed that to happen.
The oversight they corrected was allowing cities that already had the facilities in existence to win the bid. There’s much more opportunity for graft when the city has to build a few billion dollars worth of stadiums and arenas.
I thought Atlanta did too.
And the IOC cracked down on marketing after that.
As much as I bitch about some of ENB’s more recent idiotic statements, her article today on the Other Site is pretty good.
I won’t link directly to That Site, but here is what ENB linked to.
OK, just one more…
A grand jury indicted a man in the Toledo area for manslaughter. The grand jury had previously rejected a murder charge, which was what the prosecution seems to have initially sought.
Oops, here’s the up-to-date link
Only three months…until bikini season!
The truth is that they all had a traditional Chinese funeral to attend immediately afterward.
It’s time for everybody’s favorite comment, SJWednesday
Subtract the jargon, and aren’t husbands and wives told to support each other emotionally? Aren’t women “stereotypically” associated with being “nurturing?”
(Don’t ask me to read the entire article)
Why, oh, why, didn’t I listen to my own advice?
“the expectation for waitresses and airline hostesses to flirt on the job”
I may be going to the wrong restaurants – the last on-the-job flirting by a waitress I remember was a couple years ago, but (a) it was an expensive restaurant which I don’t customarily go to and (b) it may have been my imagination (she sure leaned over a lot, though).
“My boyfriend, though, says that the idea of emotional labor misrepresents the relationship between men and women by placing a monetary value on interactions that are priceless. He says that women give the gift of their love and attention to men, just as men do to women, and trying to compete over who gives more is pointless and creates unnecessary conflict.
“(I should give the disclaimer at this point that my boyfriend is a truly wonderful guy, and I love him deeply – partly because he challenges me so much.)”
I guess it’s noble of her to ignore that major character flaw of his, expecting men and women to support each other without dragging feminism into it.
“Now I can see him getting uncomfortable. He doesn’t mean to upset me. He doesn’t want to be “that guy” making his girlfriend cry on the metro. I can see the question in his eyes: Why am I putting him in this position?
“So I swallow the feelings, push back the memories, sit up straight, and smile. I change the subject. Nobody likes an oversensitive girl.
“And privately, in the place in the back of my mind where my stories live, I think about how I learned to do this work of caring for others’ feelings at the expense of mine.”
So I’m guessing he’s going to pay for this later. Or maybe this article *is* the making him pay part.
“So I swallow the feelings, push back the memories, sit up straight, and smile. I change the subject. Nobody likes an oversensitive girl.
If she’d spend more time swallowing something else instead of worrying about this idiocy, both she and her boyfriend would be better off.
I retract this statement in light of the new facts that have come to light.
“Was she a big girl?”
No, she was a dude.
“Was she a big dude?”
Strong men also swallow!
Other than being in a relationship with this girl, the guy seems pretty smart.
They’re both men.
Well there I go other people again…
*othering
You know it’s sad that I’m using that word. Even my phone doesn’t recognize it as a word.
5 bucks says he doesn’t actually exist.
Again, I am beginning to question whether Canadian women should be allowed to vote.
She better be really, really hot.
She was born with a penis, so I’m going with “no.”
Lol.
Ok, then. He better be really, really hot.
Um, no.
That’s a man, baby.
That’s a manbaby.
So fierce!
So this is gay man talking to trans-woman? I need a chart or something.
It’s a derp puzzle.
That actually raises an interesting question: Can a biological male dating an ersatz woman be considered still straight?
I mean, it must indicate a certain level of flexibility in his sexuality, right?
It must be what they discuss on the ride home.
Dee: Uh, I got a question for you. One’s a girl… One’s a guy… Yeah. And how is that gay?
Mac: Well, for starters, clearly, her husband is a homosexual, okay?
Dee: Why are you making that assumption? Because he’s with a tranny?
Charlie: You were with the tranny. What are you saying?
Mac: No, Charlie, that is completely different, and you know it.
Dee: Yeah, no, he’s right. That’s different, ’cause this new guy, if I’m hearing correctly, he waited until she got her dick cut off before he banged her.
Gender and sexual orientation are social constructs and flexible to the point of changing in realtime as feelz warrant.
Race is a social construct but is totally inflexible barring sudden “discovery” of one drop of variation in the distant past.
Guess it depends what aspects you’re attracted to and the transwoman involved.
Then again sexuality is rarely logical, as is true for most of the more analog aspects of humanity.
You’re right, I hadn’t read that far!
Well this certainly complicates my women’s suffrage position.
Relax, how much damage can anyone do voting in a *Canadian* election?
What the fuck does this person have to do with women’s suffrage?
Nothing, and I was mentally putting it on the ‘Cons’ side of the Women’s suffrage question until I found out about the sex change. Hence the problem.
I’m just getting slightly cynical about women voting as a whole after seeing far, far too many women talking about how they voted for Trudeau because he’s ‘hot’.
But remember all those English lads who voted for Thatcher because she…no, wait, never mind.
(I should say “voted Conservative during the Thatcher administration”)
I was mainly questioning what impact a dude has on women being able to vote. I wasn’t in any way critical of you questioning women’s right to vote. Its a valid question.
I’m just spitballing, but perhaps a solution would be to have voting open for a month and women not allowed to vote when they’re having their monthlies. That would give them three weeks to pull the lever, which is a reasonable compromise. Chicks with dicks and women in their autumn years would be exempt from this requirement, obviously.
I think at least raising the voting age to 25 would solve a lot of problems (for both sexes). Rapid neurological changes in the human brain tends to mellow out around that point in time. Less idiotic youth political culture, less extremely patronizing and emotionally manipulative campaigning for the youth vote.
Alternative proposal: when you’re 18, your vote is counted 18 times. 19 times when you’re 19. 20 when you’re 20 and so on. Until you draw social security. When that happens, your number is reset to 18 and it starts over.
Imma say that at SS age, your # should start counting down, because it ain’t like you’re gonna get more cognizant.
I prefer resetting the tally to 18 once people start collecting SS. Diminish their voting power to square once they start being net takers so they can’t control politicians nearly as much.
I’m OK with 18, but you still need to count down from there.
Young folks don’t vote anyways. Not in significant numbers, so your proposition is actually closer to reality. See, the market works!
women’s suffrage position
Is that the one where she chooses the best of a bunch of bad options and pulls the lever?
It’s more like ‘doggie style’ only a lot less comfortable.
Are you a bottom?
All they need is a Feminist Central Committee to determine value and pricing
Always a funny one for me. I wonder if women should have to pay men (and each other – I’m all about equality here) for all of the fucking drama some of them start in offices too, like putting a feminist spin on everything and driving their coworkers crazy.
It’s telling that she thinks about interacting with other human beings as ‘labour’ that she needs to either be constantly acknowledged for or paid. I’ve had some exs with…issues and never once did I think of providing them with emotional support as anything but, you know, emotionally supporting them. But apparently I’ve just been socialized to treat personal relationships as human beings and not labour transactions.
Your last sentence nailed it. Hell I studied economics and I can even see that not everything is a market transaction.
To say that I don’t expect moral support from my wife is ridiculous. To say that I don’t provide the same is also ridiculous. The thing some femenists don’t get that normal happy people do get, is this: in a happy relationship there is give and take and sacrifice. You don’t get through keeping close account of who owes who emotionally. That’s childish (almost in the literal sense, where a child takes and is not expected to give emotional support (
This poor girl obviously hasn’t read the proper studies.
That kind of thinking is common in feminist epistemology.
I do enjoy this SJW-ifying of arguments, where they state that other people only “Claim to Believe X” – as though they are actually *lying* and being disagreeable only because they’re assholes or something. Its instantly revealing that you are an unpleasant petulant cunt who instantly takes any disagreement and personalizes it and attributes it to some suspicious unseen motives, because its simply not possible for anyone to agree with you in good faith!
Oh, and “she’s” a dude. of course she is.
its amazing how a man can transition to a woman and immediately start bitching about the problems of womanhood as though these are social problems foisted upon them by nature.
Happy Birthday, Nebraska!
Outstanding.
I don’t even know who Lauren Southen is, but she evidently has a mob of “OMG libertarians are, like, ICKY” trolls in her wake, wherever she goes.
Lauren Southern, notorious alt-right web persona, according to our good friends over at the Other Site.
Tom Woods is an alt-right leader to the other site (or at least some members there of).
The worst thing to me about the alt-right scare is that some libertarians use it to try to oust others from the group. Sure there may be a few faux libertarians turned alt-right, but to use it against genuine libertarians to score points in an internal dispute… It’s silly.
No way. Tom Woods? Seriously?
Yeah, I haven’t seen any shots at him, and going after the AnCaps for unlibertarian thought is a battle the cosmos won’t win.
Sure they will. Their alliance with the progressives is almost complete. Once that happens…libertarian moment!
If they keep it up what is going to happen is a general Schism, where the moderates, AnCaps and yokels break off from the hardline cosmos and just continue on. The hardline cosmos are collapsed into bottom rungs of the progressive movement, where they have no influence and are only moderately tolerated and become the next generation of Bill Maher ‘libertarians’ and ‘civil libertarians’ who compromise for group solidarity.
And that’s the closest thing to a victory they can expect.
That’s already underway. The moderates, AnCaps and yokels are becoming more closely aligned with the GOP ( a party that actually gets people elected) and are gaining footholds of influence there. The hardline cosmos, buoyed by GayJay’s terrible stances on private property rights and his running mate’s dumbfuckery on guns, are pretty much pushing the LP back into irrelevancy and are lining themselves up with the progressive wing of the Democrat Party on issues like drugs, immigration and trans rights. Issues that are either not that important (trans rights) or are out of line with (drugs, immigration) the majority of America.
It’s going to end with cosmos being absorbed by the far reaches of Team Blue and then cast off when they’re no longer needed. And with much of the moderates yokels being absorbed by Team Red, happily, and the AnCaps being all that’s left on their own.
I would add the hope that, one after another, the cosmos will be so mistreated by Team Blue that finally they’re write a public break-up letter and decide that progs are, indeed, opponents not allies.
But I said “hope” not “expectation.”
If the couple of general culture splits that have happened recently over social justice concepts are any indication (Gamergate, Atheism+, SJW attempts to change the Metal culture) a small percentage realize the error of their ways and jump back over, while the rest double down and go off to form their own enclave.
That’s the idea. Trigger ’em all. Divide and conquer.
But this feels more like a split over founding principles like private property rights, free association and self-defense than it does over social justice.
You are either for private property rights and free association or you’re willing to throw somebody in jail because they don’t want to provide a certain person or group of people their labor. That’s where the split is largely occurring, IMO. I don’t know how people with such diametrically opposed views can ever come back together unless one abandons their position.
I’m using social justice more as an example of progressive positions splitting up a group. As you note, a lot of the division comes from positions related to things like free association. Although not directly social justice, it does represent a split based on progressive political positions left festering in libertarian discourse.
Not Tom, yet, but you see the way the Jacket treated Walter Block in that debate?
From the write up on reason that I read about it, Nick was nothing short of a gentleman.
Gillespie acting like the general garbage person he tends to be is a bit different than actively attempting to purge people for bad-thought. Which seems to now be the general ‘hardline cosmo’ logic now.
That debate really left a bitter taste in my mouth. Block takes on subjects which even Ancaps are reluctant to take on.
Hyperbole on my part… It’s more the fact that he’s willing to interview ‘icky’ people that will probably get him the shaft some day by the Shikhas of the libertarian community.
My favorite Lauren Southern critique is that she pays for people to false-flag troll her. Because the left would never eagerly do that shit for free, of course.
Youtube enters cordcutting/TV game with very underwhelming offering:
Finally, live TV made for you
We have Playstation TV and it looks like a clone. It works well enough for us. I’d prefer antenna only, but my wife demands some stations we can’t get so I suck it up and pay $30/month. The PS DVR works great and there is no storage limit. No add on cost for dvr service, HD service and all the other BS you have with cable or satellite.
I have Vue too because I hate Comcast and will experiment with other offerings so I can avoid them (unfortunately, I still have to use them for internet service).
I think Vue overall is great too, only complaint being the menus are painfully slow.
None of you guys have tried Sling TV? I’ve heard good things.
They’re close in offerings and price. I went with Vue because it streamed better when I was testing both of them out.
I went Vue because they have DVR and Sling does not.
Agree. It’s better on the newer fire stick, but still too slow. And I don’t like that when you click to a station, it makes you select again to change the channel.
I must admit, I am very happy with Verizon Fios here in NYC. 500up/500down internet, 1500 television channels, POTS landline, and 2 mobile phone lines for a wee bit under $180 per month.
I signed up for Directv now. Prepaid 3 months and got a free Apple TV. They are still working the bugs out, but I’m happy so far. By signing early, I have the $60 package for $35 a month
my boyfriend and I are arguing about feminism on the metro
“Hey, here’s my stop. I’ll call you. Bye, Honey.”
It’s telling that she thinks about interacting with other human beings as ‘labour’ that she needs to either be constantly acknowledged for or paid.
These are the people who believe evul kkkorporations are “stealing” from them by providing goods and services for which they voluntarily exchange money.
You know… morons.
These are just simple bloggers. People of La La Land.
Should I even bother watching Trump’s speech?
Not unless you feel the need to see him clear the low, low, low bar of basic coherence.
I just want to see a swinging dick. Wait, uh… Oh, you know what I mean.
That you want to see him swinging dick?
Mushroom tattoos for all.
Splud. I can’t make it any further. Made it 15 minutes.
Check it out, Glibs is unbanned at work. Happy three week anniversary or whatever.
*throws confetti and cheers*
In unrelated news, productivity drops 20%
(Just a little joke…it implies that people here are so productive that when they take time off to view this site the economy is hurt)
The meme economy is strengthening daily.
remov kebab
…of the death-grip that the NEA has on their testicles? oh, they know.
Saw an article that tells you a lot where we are as a society nowadays in La Presse :
http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/education/201703/01/01-5074372-la-csdm-condamnee-a-verser-7500-a-la-mere-dun-enfant-trisomique-discrimine.php
The article is in French, so I’ll try my best to translate the important part :
Montreal School board sentenced to pay 7 500$ to the mother of a Down Syndrome kid that was discriminated against.
The kids, who has Down syndrome and an average mental disability, was integrated into a normal class when he got to middle school, even tough his mental capabilities are the ones of a first grader. The mother sued because he apparently didn’t get the support he needed.
What the hell is that kid doing in a regular class in the first place!? Isn’t that impeding on the education the other kids are supposed to get?
The day before that, they had another article about public colleges asking for more resources to deal with the ever growing wave of students with learning disabilities that are showing up. More and more young adults have problems with dyslexia, dysorthographia, discalcula (never heard of those last two before either) and have ADD or ADHD. So I guess that means they are now admitting into college people who can’t read, can’t write, can’t count and can’t be bothered to make the efforts to learn it by themselves. WTF ARE THESE PEOPLE DOING IN COLLEGE!!?
So I guess that means they are now admitting into college people who can’t read, can’t write, can’t count and can’t be bothered to make the efforts to learn it by themselves. WTF ARE THESE PEOPLE DOING IN COLLEGE!!?
Turn on the SEC Network every Saturday at noon in the fall if you really want to know.
Zing? Or just reality?
Yes.
WTF ARE THESE PEOPLE DOING IN COLLEGE!!?
[insert Scrooge “workhouses” quote]
1) yummy yummy bullet points yummy
2) the updates to Monocle are pleasing
3) traffic in NYC is really not that bad, especially if you just yell at your cab driver to go crosstown and take second avenue, or stay the fuck away from Times Square.
4) over at the other place, they’re “fact checking” things like ‘The Children Are Our Future’.
5) since its a story i’ve been following, the Drunken Yokel Who Shot Those Indians is being evaluated as a potential Hate Criminal by the FBI. I don’t know how his confession where he admitted he’d “Shot some Iranians” factors into that.
“traffic in NYC is really not that bad, especially if you just yell at your cab driver to go crosstown and take second avenue, or stay the fuck away from Times Square.”
But it might take longer if the cab driver observes arbitrary rules like “stay off the sidewalk” and “obey traffic lights.”
/jk
Cab drivers are, for the most part, timid pussycats who are trying to save gas.
the only thing they do which makes out-of-towners go, “Jesus he drives like an asshole” is how they will mercilessly nose their vehicles through traffic to get from one side of the avenue to the other. its not even like they stick their arms out the window and go, “hey yo, trying to get over there”, they just bull right across 4 lanes of traffic from right to left (or vice versa) while gabbing at 100 miles an hour to their cousin in Bangalore.
but while actually moving at speed? they don’t try to run lights or aggressively split lanes. they often care more about conserving gas. although occasionally you meet some dude that is trying to get home to his 10 children so wants to get rid of you ASAP.
One of my fondest memories after visiting New York was my cabbie jamming the car into a packed avenue and being perpendicular to a street full of very angry drivers.
Some of NYC traffic problems are caused by the city. The last mayor was so angry that he didn’t get his ‘congestion pricing’ plan implemented that he appointed one of those car-hating bike NAZIs to head the DoT and she immediately went about installing ‘traffic calming’ measures like reducing 2 lane roads down to 1 lane and a giant concrete median full of potted plants all over the city. Now, our Commie Shit-heel of a Hizzoner has lowered the speed limit to 25mph and is spending so much tax money on new signage and those evil British average speed cameras that the DoT blew through the entirety of their 2016 budget by the 1st week of March and had to suspend graffiti cleanup and roadway maintenance.
Could someone post the monocle link?
Go to the FAQs/Resources page. Its on the right side.
Thankee sai. And yes, it’s coming along very nicely.
Thank you! I have some new features on the horizon, but dynamically loading new comments has interweaved all of the existing functionality together, creating a shit stew of interoperability bugs to fix. It’s really awesome to have the new comments just appear on the page, but it really sucks when you click in the wrong order and Monocle completely crashes.
Thanks for the Back to Top arrow?
And of course, this happened.
And here I thought they were doing it to honor the legacy of their party’s paramilitary arm.
What happened?
This.
The first line should have been in italics. See the OP.
Or, right, the photo.
A Google image search simply produced the “yu no guy,” which doesn’t seem to be the same thing.
Oh, I see, Dem women wearing white.
They look like members of a 1960s cult. All they needed were flowers in their hair.
It does look cultish.
Especially after Melania got tagged “racist!!” for her white outfit at the inaugural, it makes the double-standard that much more glaring. So good job on that, Women’s Caucus.
Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world and is likely to pass Christianity in numbers by the end of the 21st Century. Most of the difference in rate is birth rate for Muslims vs Christians.
So, this is talking about cultural Christianity, which is already giving way to cultural secularism.
Mrs. Dean wanted to watch the speech, so I was exposed to the Trumpening last night. Honestly, about what I expected. The gushing by some over the speech struck me as a recognition of the triumph of mediocrity over low expectations. On the plus side, I noted that he really does have small hands, which Mrs. Dean had never noticed before. She’s now obsessed with his hands whenever she seems them.
We also pondered the fact that he must wear custom or even bespoke suits, but man, they hang on him like something off the rack from Goodwill. And why were Ryan and Pence dressed completely identically behind him, right down to their ties?
As for what he said? I don’t have a clue.
And why were Ryan and Pence dressed completely identically behind him, right down to their ties?
For the same reason Christie got the meatloaf, probably.
Watching them stand or sit on every other sentence uttered just proves that public choice theory ruins the best Kabuki.
My wife watched it too. I was at my computer desk engaged in this here chat room, so I have no idea what Trump said. There’s no way I’m watching that. Anyway, why are they all wearing white? What is that supposed to mean?
According to this, it’s “to show their commitment to protecting women’s rights. White was the official color of the suffragette movement…”
Women’s rights seems to mean “the prog agenda.”
Maybe they are surrendering to Trump’s alpha maleness?
*opera applause*
I just want to say that this is why no one takes libertarians seriously
http://i.imgur.com/8ruE6qd.png
I’m pro legalization, but four “dude weed lmfao” mentions on the front page? Jesus Christ. There are literally 100 other more pressing issues at the moment. Most normies aren’t even anti-legalization. They just see it as a juvenile fucking issue to care about in the first place. Fuck, my DA barely enforces marijuana laws anymore to begin with.
Three of those are the same article, though. There’s also the “double down on attracting liberaltarians” which seems to be working splendidly.
Nope… three of those are different articles. Only two links are the same article.
Btw, were you the one who gave the rundown about /pol/ last week? If that was you, holy shit you were spot on. A+ assessment. (t. old-fag here)
It’s weird that it’s both so out-in-the-open but also somehow a secret to so many. I was told a small bit of it and then started pulling on the thread until I unraveled a lot more and got what I hope is a fairly complete picture.
Combines the chans’ ability to mess with the media and get headlines, their already completely misunderstood sense of humor, and a deep loathing of proggies.
I think it’s absolutely the most accurate assessment of /pol/ I have ever read. I saved it and intend to share it with anyone who doesn’t seem to understand /pol/ and literally think its some sort of nazi underground. In my opinion, you literally have to lurk around /pol/ a significant portion of the day for several months to even begin to understand it. I do think if people read your assessment before lurking, it would certainly accelerate that understanding. People could “get it” in weeks instead of months.
A shorter way of saying that is, “No one really cares”.
Because, like Reason magazine, you’re talking about a tiny corner of the internet frequented by a minority.
A small amount of people are driving a culture for a much larger group. It’s an intentional push to affect politics downstream.
They’re separating Berniebros and proggies off from the mainstream using different tactics. Trigger the proggies as hard as they can to get epic meltdowns in public (causing moderates to distance themselves from the insanity), while simultaneously giving comfort to Sanders supporters who were thrown out in the cold by the cankled one and her army of co-conspirators.
And what is most important to the strategy is that memes and quips have incredible virulence and range of reach, far beyond anything we or Reason or anyone else can achieve right now, and they’re the sort of substance generation Z can dig because they’re so counter-culture.
Dismiss it if you like, but once you actually look around a bit I think you’ll start to see that it’s everywhere now.
I think when you say, “Look around a bit”, you’re actually looking in other tiny corners of the internet and seeing confirmation bias.
a pew poll from december showed that 80% of the public had either never heard of the “alt right”, or had only heard about it from the MSM.
No one cares about the meme-wars dude. Its not counter-culture at all, because the wider culture has no knowledge or concern for its existence. Real counter-culture actually confronts people in the real world. Milo is probably the only example of it that has risen out of the 4chan /pol/ swamps
i wasn’t really trying to get into a disagreement with you, just pointing out that the above “its weird that…..”-statement wasn’t at all weird if you actually step back for a moment and realize that “Internet Stuff” lives in a cloistered and compartmentalized world that is only relevant to a small minority, and is not as culturally influential as you might imagine, swimming in it all day.
^This. All of it.
If you don’t think /pol/ has any influence, then why the hell were CNN and MSNBC spending prime time segments talking about Pepe the Frog? I still chuckle every time I think about that. Kek.
Because it was a minor, irrelevant cultural phenomena which they were happy to use to deflect attention away from Clinton’s + the DNC emails being leaked by Wikileaks?
Again = see the above pew poll, and sober up. “internet stuff” has very little traction in the real world.
why the hell were CNN and MSNBC spending prime time segments talking about Pepe the Frog?
Why was the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight?
CNN and MSNBC wanted to paint the right as a bunch of bigots, so they went to what they perceived as the source of bigotry. Pepe became the ringleader for Trumpian politics, Milo became its spokesman, and despite never having heard of the term or the stupid frog, Republicans became the alt-right.
“Tiny corners.” 😉
My own reach just this last month has been 150,000 impressions, and I’m not even trying all that hard. There are many, many more out there, and they’re all over the place. I’m just a peon, a foot-soldier at best.
My guess is, that like most, you probably don’t encounter them because you’re avoiding annoying prog havens (can’t blame you). I, also, don’t want to get into an argument about it. My entire point is, this is all about force multiplication. Believe what you like, it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.
You’re stealing my line.
First of all, alt-right does not equal /pol/. That’s a label the media/left has tried to force on /pol/.
Second, even if alt-right = /pol/, the poll is still irrelevant, because my point and Zero Sum’s point is that /pol/ is influencing things WITHOUT PEOPLE EVEN REALIZING IT. Thus, no poll like that would be able to show an accurate reflection of /pol/’s influence.
Third, it’s clear you don’t understand how influential memes are to social media and consequently to culture (social media use and culture are basically the same thing to younger people). And Breitbart was absolutely right about politics being downstream from culture. We’re pulling people right every day, and we’re doing it by influencing culture. YouTube stars get jokes and ideas from /pol/ and then unintentionally redpill millions of future voters, who have all of a sudden rejected safe spaces and turned into “edgy” free speech warriors (see: PewDiePie). Look, it’s completely fine. I don’t expect anyone over the age of 30 to understand that “culture” of younger millenials or Gen Z, or how important memes are to influencing said culture.
@commodious
See, you’re missing the point.
CNN and MSNBC spent time telling millions of people that a meme loved by millions of younger social media users is actually a racist hate symbol. Millions of younger social media users know this to be inherently untrue (after all, people like Katy Perry had retweeted Pepes in the past). Now, younger people start to become distrustful of the media. “If they lie about dear Pepe, what else do they lie to me about?”.
You see? /pol/ did that. And that’s just one example. There are countless others, and you don;t even realize it.
@A Fuggin White Male
you’re doing an excellent job convincing yourself. keep up the good work.
Now, younger people start to become distrustful of the media. “If they lie about dear Pepe, what else do they lie to me about?”.
I’m mostly just observing this conversation, but I had lunch with a 26-year-old acquaintance last week that kind of “red pilled” himself based on his own observation that the media outlets he was accustomed to reading and watching had characterised Trump’s last press conference as “unhinged.” He decided to actually watch the press conference with his own lying eyes, and spake: “At this point, I don’t even know what media outlet to trust.”
Anecdotes is anecdotes.
Your confusion here is you think “pepe” is somehow significant in the context of, say….
…. oh, predicting the 2016 election to be “99% in favor of Clinton”
… or a million other examples of media-mendacity that have occurred in the past few years.
Meaning, if young people are ‘distrustful of media’? its not because of the prevalence of a cartoon frog = its because there are thousands and thousands of other reasons piling on top of it every moment of the day.
You’re confusing an argument that “you’re not as significant as you think” with “you’re wrong”. You’re not wrong; you’re just vastly over-weighting the significance of your little niche culture-war.
sure, trolling has some effect on *internet* culture; but internet culture is still only a small fraction of most people’s lives, and even though it has some influence on teh yoots, …
….young people are stupid, their minds easily change, and they don’t vote or have money.
Meaning, to whatever degree its influential, its influential w/ people in ways that are already ephemeral and inconsequential.
Meanwhile, the same things you’re taking credit for are being influenced by myriad other things.
that said… need to get back to real work.
I’ll try a different tack. Can you draw this? How about Kilroy? Depending on how old you are, my guess is you can draw one or both of those without much thought. Go back to practically every yearbook from my generation and you’ll see some very recognizable memes scrawled in the back by various friends of any given kid.
Pepe is no different. He’s easy to draw. He’s easy to expand upon. He’s shared virulently. Probably most everyone has seen many variants of the drawing by now.
Then make him carry political messaging, something that clearly irritates adults and gets a rise out of them. Spread the ones that get the best reactions. It’s all a game to you as a kid. Start getting interested in why those messages work so well at pissing people off. Now you’re down a rabbit hole that is more interesting than what everyone is telling you. You’re seeing the world through new eyes.
A lot of people involved in this are libertarians and anarchists and they know exactly why they’re doing it. If you can’t get into the heads of the next generation because the left has captured all the schools, captured many of the parents, captured the news, etc. then get into their heads the way they understand best, and let them get into each other’s heads and under everyone’s skin. Laugh as some meme you drew appears on the fucking nightly news and adults are running around with their hair on fire like it isn’t just a gag you whipped up for fun. They don’t get it. They don’t get you. Adults are so boring and lame and stupid. They’ll fall for anything. This is so hilarious, let’s do it way more.
If you don’t think that has reach beyond the Internet, I don’t know what to tell you. Go back to that image I drew at the outset. Perhaps that is the dollar sign for “Micro$oft” and it’s now in your head that way. Even if you disagree with it, you can’t really forget you’ve seen it. And if you do agree with it, you’ll probably spread it. It’s easy.
My point exactly = you don’t need ‘Frogs’ to convince people that the MSM is hideously partisan. People are coming to their own conclusions without ever needing any prodding from the meme-slinging internet trolls
I’ll try a different tack. Can you draw this?
I recognise this to represent the Stussy brand, an apparel and gear line I’m only familiar with because I was immersed in skater culture. I don’t know that I could definitively say that other subcultures of kids in different cliques at my school know that symbol. Certainly when I moved to a different school 2000 miles away when I was 14, the Stussy symbol was something I never saw again.
To me, if I had to make a prediction today, I’d guess that Pepe will have a little bit more long-term staying power than say the Obey giant. Almost nobody I know knows WTF the Obey giant is.
I will watch with interest if Pepe is a thing anybody even remembers 5 years from now.
Except telling people that the MSM is hideously partisan wasn’t working. Not by a long shot. Their cognitive dissonance was preventing it.
But demonstrating beyond all doubt, that is power.
The President of the United States, a singularly powerful individual, has tweeted that cartoon frog you so quickly dismiss. His opponent, someone who came very close to the same seat of power, condemned that very same cartoon as racist, which it clearly is not. It’s just a picture, one of a dizzying array of variants. It’s beloved by many. Attacking it out of sheer stupidity breaks the dissonance.
And that’s just one meme (of the Richard Dawkins variety). There are many. Shared quotes and quips appear everywhere and are copied relentlessly.
Lovely as it was, Heroic Mulatto’s article last night will be seen by few, comprehended by few, spread by few. It has no reach because it is too long, takes too much time to digest, is written with language that too many simply don’t understand. It is good for its audience, but it will never break dissonance if it doesn’t get read. It will never affect enough people if it doesn’t get spread. The easier the meme, the simpler to consume, comprehend, and share, the greater its virulence.
@Zero Sum
“Can you draw this”
No. And i don’t know why i would.
You’re not convincing me that Troll culture has any broader effect on society other than as “something people in their 20s might talk about”; if it has an effect in some amorphous longer term way, “yay”. But pretending that its either visible or measurable or significant in any tangible sense is just self-aggrandizing nonsense. in the context of other forces producing the same effects… its just noise.
Pomp,
That drawing is decades old now and was very popular all over the US, and when I lived in Germany every kid could draw one (probably blindfolded). It wasn’t just a brand icon, it was a meme, just like Kilroy or the 7-Up Spot. Which exact memes were drawn in your yearbook by your friends (and you drew in theirs) vary by generation.
Because you don’t want to be convinced, or because my argument isn’t convincing?
I can only ask if anything you’ve ever drawn has irritated anyone so badly that it gets press coverage, worldwide recognition and two Presidential candidates used it in a heated campaign, trying to commandeer its meaning for their own purposes?
Your argument is not convincing
(if you addressed points i’ve already made, or stopped simply repeating the same claims, it would help)
If it’s too loud, you’re too old.
That is also a meme. 😉
Plant the seeds. The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon will take care of the rest.
its also a stupid excuse for clinging to arguments that you can’t substantiate further than “but muh feels”
its not “too loud” = its just an observation that the Kek-mongering isn’t actually doing much more than giving you an overblown sense of self-importance.
I tend to agree with Gilmore. There may be some sort of small effect within society, but the idea that meme culture is some widespread ideological vehicle bears a heavy burden to convince me. Being one, I know plenty of older millennials (age 25+), and most of them are more obsessed with smug podcasts than pictures with text on them. They fucking love science, they listen to TEDtalks, and they spend all their time sharing poorly researched articles on their social media. To the extent that my millennial friends are immersed in meme culture, they tend to be hipsters who float from social trend to social trend.
I think I see what is not making sense to you guys.
You think that some images spreading around are the extent of it. That’s not it at all. I’m talking about the Richard Dawkins definition of “meme”: “a unit of cultural transmission.” I’m talking about a pattern of behavior, speech, flow of ideas, etc.
Every particularly crazy SJW who freaks out and screeches because it becomes too much for them spreads the desired effect. Every protest at Milo’s speaking events spreads the effect. Every person who has unfriended you on FaceBook or blocked you on Twitter or closed an Instagram account because it affected them spreads the effect. Every time the media tries to define the nebulous “alt right” and tries to tie everyone not left of center to fascism/Nazis spreads the effect.
This isn’t about pictures with words on them. Those are just a vehicle, and there are many varieties of those. I have never once made a Pepe image. I have never once pretended to be a Nazi to piss people off. My version of the pattern is to act like an SJW, irritate people until they realize that I’m trolling, and then they spread the most effective trolling I do without my assistance extremely far because they know other people will be fooled by it like they were, and that is the whole damned point. I want people to believe I’m a batshit feminist, for example. The more I sound like one and the angrier my rhetoric makes people, the more irritated they’ll be at people who actually are ultra-feminists and sever ties with those people.
I have intentionally divided Bernie supporters from the mainstream dems. I want them to stay reminded how they were betrayed. Division is destruction, and destruction is the only goal, by any means possible.
When I give specific examples, it’s to help you to see the big picture, not to get mired in the details. As another example, imagine that some of the people you know start to (convincingly) pretend to get really into Insane Clown Posse. They talk about it constantly. They know it pisses you off. Eventually you think you’re seeing juggalos everywhere. You cut ties and continue to bitch about it among your friends. Now they start seeing juggalos around every corner and they hate them as much as you do, and they start unfriending everyone they think might be a juggalo. But some of your friends start to suspect that there really aren’t as many ICP fans as you’ve made it seem and your constant blathering about them looks like insanity. They tell you so. You cut ties with them, or they cut ties with you. The news picks up on this and starts a new clown panic (heh). People who otherwise would never have heard about it, are now hearing the bullshit out of the mouths of journalists they respect. It’s become distorted, but it’s also a weapon (they think) against their political enemies. I don’t like your politics, therefore you’re secretly a juggalo. More people tune out from their bullshit.
As I said before, it does not really matter what you personally believe. The people instigating all of this absolutely believe it. We could quibble over its effectiveness all day, but at the end of the day, the goal is to live inside people’s heads, to make them shadowbox fake Nazis every day, freak out and destroy friendships until they isolate themselves enough to be conquered completely.
Ah, I see what you’re saying. I think that goes way outside the original topic of this thread, which was 4chan’s ability to sway the national discourse. It seems that you’re talking tactically while Gilmore and I are talking about a specific phenomenon.
Now you’ve got the idea. The only reason /pol/ even comes into this at all was because they started doing this on purpose. After a number of successful hijinks in getting in the news, they started to realize what it was they could do with those techniques.
The vast majority of people participating in this probably have the vaguest notion of their involvement. Kind of like a few brains create an effective hack and distribute the hack itself so that a zillion script kiddies can use it to launch botnets and wreak havoc, but instead of doing it with software, they’re doing it with virulent ideas. And kids/young adults especially love that shit because it all feels taboo, counter-culture, it pisses off authority, and anyone can participate.
On the other hand, it’s refreshing to see actual legit criticism of the Trump administration rather than constant hysterical pantshitting and outright fake news about dead grandmas.
In my opinion you are very much underestimating the importance of legalizing cannabis and all drugs as far as that goes. The war on drugs is destroying people’s lives every day and wasting billions of dollars in the process. It’s hardly a a juvenile issue.
They can both be true. I’m sure some of us underplay the importance of ending the drug war, but there are a boatload of other issues where you can reach people that are still opposed to drugs and accomplish the same goal: private property rights and freeedom of association.
You can sell SoCons on that. Base it on religious freedom if you want.
They’re an easier target market than people fundamentally opposed to profit motives, religious convictions and the right to not provide one’s labor against one’s will.
The sooner cosmos get that through their heads the better.
I agree wholeheartedly you need to sell people first on the “core” stuff = self-ownership, individual rights, limited govt…
..before you can push your hobby horses like ‘free weed’.
The average conservative will recoil at the constant “Mah weed” stories if they don’t have it constantly drummed into their heads that its just a proxy for “the most common victimless crime people have been arrested for over the last 40 years”
IOW, the “Weed” issue really isn’t about ‘weed’ as much as it is changing a fundamentally fucked up relationship between law enforcement and the populace. Weed has been the excuse for authority to run amok for decades, and has only recently been mildly pushed back due to rapidly changing attitudes.
I don’t think it should be belittled as an issue. But at the same time, I think the people who moan about the libertarian focus on Weed + Mexicans + Fags have a point = its a bad sales pitch when you’re constantly preaching about that shit to the already-converted, instead of maintaining a steady focus on the wider range of issues where libertarians and “everyone else” actually might see eye to eye.
The average conservative will recoil at the constant “Mah weed” stories
FWIW, two of them on the front page of NRO this morning.
sure. NRO online is going to skew their stories at a younger-audience.
When they start running Weed-Legalization on the cover, call me back. (actually a better proxy would be Fox News running a special on the benefits of Weed Legalization, but whatever)
My point was that if you asked self-identified conservatives about their legislative priorities, Drug Legalization isn’t one of them. If you want to get through to them, you need to talk about the problems of the police-state writ large, and point out that the “enforcement approach” has put millions of people in jail and created vicious cycle of criminality. Approaching that subject from the point of view of, “HIPSTER WHITE GUYS WANTS OUR WEED DISPENSERY” (see: Reason), they look at you as a douche.
Also:
http://blog.austindefense.com/National%20Review%20War%20on%20Drugs%20is%20Lost.jpg
That’s awesome.
What year/month was that, or is that a mock-up?
Buckley was for decriminalization decades ago. NRO might not be a great example.
The perception is, “All you libertarians want to do is get high without getting into trouble.” And it’s hard to persuade the average person that it ties into a much more important principle.
Suggested talking point in reply: Of course drugs can get you in trouble under a regime of freedom…you might get fired, develop health problems, your family may hassle you, and if, with the loosening of restraint associated with some drugs, if you commit a crime against another person a regime of freedom will put you in prison.
Suggested talking point in reply:
I think that’s a good one, but I find that I get more traction with the “which causes more suffering? Drugs? or throwing people in jail for doing drugs?” Attacking it from a decriminalization standpoint ropes in the “drugs are bad” folks much more quickly than attacking it from a “liberty above all else” standpoint.
I expect the response to that would be “well, of course we want to treat the addicts leniently, but the pushers and dealers have to be locked up for a long time.”
My go-to response is that you shouldn’t fight wars against your own people.
Absolutely… when converting people to libertarianism, you don’t lead with the drug issue. That’s one of the last things you bring up. You do so, only after they seem to fully grasp the most important principles of libertarianism.
Especially when people are dropping dead left and right from heroine/fentanyl ODs, the last thing normies are willing to listen to is the argument that if Billy Bob could have just gotten oxy over the counter, he’d have never stepped it up to heroin, and he’d be alive… I mean, he’d still be a pill junkie and a burden to those around him, but he’d probably be alive.
I usually point out that most of those ODs are because of all the cutting that dealers do. So the strength from dealer to dealer varies wildly, so a quantity that might give an addict a bit of a buzz from one dealer, might be enough to cause an OD from another dealer. It’s kind of like the difference between beer and vodka, they both have alcohol, but if someone tries drinking vodka like beer they are going to get really fucked up.
If heroin were legalized, addicts could go buy some Bayer heroin, know exactly what they were getting, and that would go a long way towards reducing overdoses.
My biggest fear with legalization is that it goes the route of typical state oversight of anything and becomes heavily regulated, heavily taxed and incompetently managed.
My biggest fear with legalization is that it goes the route of typical state oversight of anything and becomes heavily regulated, heavily taxed and incompetently managed…
…thereby keeping alive the blackmarket and all the problems associated wit it.
While that is a definite concern, I prefer not to to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Even the most asinine of liquor laws are still preferable to prohibition.
Of course, heroin legalization is so far from popular approval that by the time it happened we’d probably already be living in a libertarian paradise.
Especially when people are dropping dead left and right from heroine/fentanyl ODs
I have an article in process about that. Spoiler: it ain’t exactly the pants-shitting epidemic it’s made out to be.
Why
“Well, all the drug warriors want to do is ruin people’s lives over nothing, which seems like a lot worse than getting high without having your life ruined.”
isn’t an adequate response is a mystery to me.
If we’re trying to change the minds of the ‘OH MUH GAWDS THEY WANT TO LEGALIZE DOPE AND I HAVE CHILDREN!’ crowd, you may as well forget it. It’s not happening anymore than convincing the left that free markets are the best solution to lifting the poor out of poverty. Those people are lost. But there are a lot of people who refer to themselves as conservatives and who vote GOP, who are definitely open to arguments about legalizing drugs, and we, as libertarians, have a responsibility to communicate the WHY to those people.
I typically start with arguments about self ownership and how prohibition always fails as evidenced with alcohol prohibition. As soon as the person goes into the all caps rant in the first sentence of this post, I’m done wasting my time. There are actually open minded people out there who are possible to reach with a good approach.
We also pondered the fact that he must wear custom or even bespoke suits, but man, they hang on him like something off the rack from Goodwill.
I want him to start wearing velveteen “sweatsuits” like some video store impresario from Islip, Long Island.
So, regarding the picture above of Democratic Congresswomen wearing white…
Here are some of their predecessors
I haven’t seen so many dunces in one place since I was a substitute teacher.
Well, both are pictures of Democrats.
Incidentally, I notice that that ladies’ Klan meeting took place at the church of Anna Bridwell White, a prominent suffragist* and Klanswoman.
She was also the first woman in the United States to become a bishop (or as we Papists would call it, a “bishop”).
Let’s see – suffagette, founded her own denomination, first woman bishop…an excellent role model for those Democratic ladies!
*At least a suffragist where white women were concerned
alma not anna
She was a feminist pillar of fire.
But, sadly, not a role model for the Democratic women. From p. 115: “Alma generally voted a straight Republican ticket, and she lamented the Democratic victories at the state level in 1934 by writing that ‘Satan has the reins now.'”
I tend to agree with Gilmore. There may be some sort of small effect within society, but the idea that meme culture is some widespread ideological vehicle bears a heavy burden to convince me. Being one, I know plenty of older millennials (age 25+), and most of them are more obsessed with smug podcasts than pictures with text on them. They fucking love science, they listen to TEDtalks, and they spend all their time sharing poorly researched articles on their social media. To the extent that my millennial friends are immersed in meme culture, they tend to be hipsters who float from social trend to social trend.
Well, I really screwed up the threading on this one.
For a moment I thought I’d provoked some comments.
You can take the troll out of the other site, but you can’t take the other site out of the troll.
TED talks strike me as the ultimate thing for people who want to seem smart around other people. In other words, it’s a video that you leave on the computer so that when your friends drop by, you can just say, “Oh, I was just hanging out and watching this TED talk!” and then drop little factoids from the video in your conversations with others.
I saw a Libertarian bumper sticker for the first time today. I lead a very interesting life.