ZARDOZ’S SUNDAY EVENING LINKS

ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU HIS CHOSEN ONES. ZARDOZ IS PUZZLED. HE RECEIVED A TRANSMISSION FROM THE TABERNACLE…

Caution: You are approaching the periphery shield of Vortex Four. Caution: You are approaching the periphery shield of Vortex Four.

THE IMAGE ZARDOZ WAS SENT APPEARED TO BE SIMILAR TO FRIEND STEVE SMITH.

NIGHT VISION IMAGE SENT TO ZARDOZ

YET THIS APPEARS TO BE MUCH MORE … SOPHISTICATED THAN FRIEND STEVE SMITH. ZARDOZ WILL SEND A PRIORITY INQUIRY TO THE TABERNACLE TO FIND OUT THE SITUATION. IN THE INTERIM TIME INTERVAL, ZARDOZ WILL GIVE HIS CHOSEN ONES THE GIFT OF THE LINK. GO FORTH AND COMMENT. ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN

  • BRUTAL NATION OF JAPAN RE-ELECTS PRIME MINISTER WHO WANTS MORE ARMS. ZARDOZ WONDER IF THIS HAS THIS HAPPENED BEFORE?
  • ZARDOZ DOES NOT BELIEVE W.H.O. HAS GONE FAR ENOUGH. A DISTINCT LACK OF CLEANSING IS NOTED.
  • AGAIN, ZARDOZ IS DISAPPOINTED BY THE LACK OF KILLING IN THIS INSTANCE. HOWEVER, ZARDOZ BELIEVES THAT THIS CAN PROVIDE ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR HIS CHOSEN ONES’ FICTION EFFORTS.
  • ZARDOZ ALWAYS FEELS THAT TOO MUCH IS SPENT ON HEALTHCARE OF BRUTALS.

Comments

292 responses to “ZARDOZ’S SUNDAY EVENING LINKS”

  1. Lachowsky

    I believe in the unholy trinity of Zardoz the father, his son Steve Smith, and the Holy Ghost of Cthulu.

    1. What about their mother, Hillary?

      1. MikeS

        *shivers*

      2. Lachowsky

        The unholy mother is Lena, of the Dunham clan. Her loins burst with the sins of humanity and her offspring shall forever infest the world with cellulite and Kankles.

  2. Winston

    You know which other Jap Prime Minister wanted a more adventurous foreign policy?

    1. straffinrun

      Your mom?

      1. Winston

        Where’s my zaibatsu?

        1. C. Anacreon

          Why is everyone speaking Pidgin all of a sudden?

  3. Winston

    So a Tyler Perry movie will beat the other ID4 guy’s answer to global warming alarmism at the box office. Har har.

    1. The new Tyler Perry flick does have some apparently funny moments in the trailer at least. I’ve never watched one of his before, but there appear to be some genuinely good gags in this one.

      1. Winston

        Why do the sjw’s hate Tyler Perry so much? Shouldn’t he win all the Oscars?

        1. Urthona

          Because the movie’s wind up affirming decent family values, which they are opposed to.

          1. Winston

            As opposed to Proper values like Harvey Weinstein values…

        2. Rope Snake

          Despite praising Perry in 2006, director Spike Lee criticized his work in 2009, stating “Each artist should be allowed to pursue their artistic endeavors but I still think there is a lot of stuff out today that is ‘coonery buffoonery’.”[61] When asked if Perry’s success among black audiences was a result of just giving black America what they wanted, Lee responded, “the imaging is troubling.”

          GASP! Giving people what they want?! Obscene.

          In an interview with Hip Hollywood, Perry responded to Spike Lee’s comments by telling him to “go to hell.”[64]

          lmao

          1. telling him to “go to hell.”

            I may have to watch one of his stupid movies just because of that

          2. westernsloper

            No kidding. Who is Tyler Perry was my question.

          3. Rhywun

            He’s put out like dozens of those fat black lady movies in drag that I’ve never seen. But I do recall some things that implied he’s not as woke as someone like Spike Lee pretends to be.

          4. westernsloper

            Ok, that makes sense now.

          5. totally_not_an_escaped_ai

            I only know from The Boondocks parody they did of him:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJf4dmRKMwU

            The whole episode is great.

    2. one true athena

      But I’m definitely watching the Disaster Porn when it hits streaming. It’s so much fun. My favorite is still Volcano: the La Brea Tar Pits BOIL. There’s LAVA. Beverly Center collapses! It’s personally tailored for me to find it hilarious.

  4. straffinrun

    A naked Weinstein ended up chasing her through his apartment, forcing her to use a broken glass to keep him at bay, De Paula said.

    She was going to give him a Brazilian cut.

    1. Might have been better for all if she had swung and made him a castrato.

    2. Mr Lizard

      STEVE SMITH THINK NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS. AND BY BUSINESS MEAN RAPE

      1. I…I..would have to agree.

        1. Chafed

          OMG! Harvey Weinstein is Steve Smith!

  5. Rhywun

    “Join us,” says the Democratic Party, “and though your actual wounds cannot be healed, or even eased, by our policies and programs, they can be covered with the cloak of righteousness.” This is the stuff of religion, not normal politics.

    Interesting thought-piece on Democrats.

    1. straffinrun

      Democrats have favored everyone but the middle class, granting privileges, for example, to the wealthy in the form of crony capitalism, in which large companies often benefit from trade agreements and regulations at the expense of smaller competitors, which cannot absorb the compliance burdens

      My Democrat friends are always going on about how they hate chain stores and how they support mom and pop businesses, yet you point ^this out and you’re accused of wanting customers poisoned.

      1. Winston

        How about how they used to hate mom and pop stores until the big box stores arrived?

        1. straffinrun

          That’s when mom and pop were da man.

    2. leonadasiv

      Couldn’t read it all, but very interesting, and damning. Of course no one on the left will take heed

      1. Rhywun

        I think he’s a little easy on the Democrats in places – I mean, they are unmitigated evil – but the analysis of identity politics is spot-on.

        1. AlmightyJB

          Yeah, very good analysis of identity politics and guilt with no possibility of retribution. They’re like the bug aliens from Independence Day, the only thing the guilty (white, hetro, men) can do for them is die, and as we’ve seen with the monuments fiasco, even that isn’t good enough.

    3. Chafed

      Good article. Thanks for linking it.

  6. DEG

    ZARDOZ DOES NOT BELIEVE W.H.O. HAS GONE FAR ENOUGH. A DISTINCT LACK OF CLEANSING IS NOTED.

    Mugabe can’t die soon enough.

    1. Winston

      Is Ian Smith forgiven?

      1. DEG

        Ian Smith has been out of power and dead long enough that he is irrelevant.

    1. DOOMco

      that’s a beautiful troopy.

      1. westernsloper

        That is a beauty. I tried to get a job with an outfit that refurbishes old cruisers right down the road from me. No joy. They do some cool work in spite of passing up an exceptional hire such as myself. Their loss.

        1. DOOMco

          That is too bad. That would be a fun gig.

          1. westernsloper

            I don’t blame them. They were looking for a young do it all to train up. I got over my bitterness of middle age job search rejection. Still their loss, but whatever. I should have sent you the job posting, but it is boring over here compared to your big city ways. I got a job with the county. I am in my evaluation stage now. I hope to become a government maggot for awhile. At least keep the heat on for the winter anyways. Maybe even ski a few days.

          2. DOOMco

            congrats!

          3. westernsloper

            Thanks, but it is not congrats worthy. Trust me.

        2. Mustang

          I wish I could get a job in motorsports but I’m at about the same point. I’ll probably volunteer on some local teams when I get a chance just for fun and experience.

          Laid out a plan to drop about 100 pounds off the front of my car while keeping it street-able (required for the events I try to compete in). That will be nice.

          1. DOOMco

            I still want to open a rally course around here to get all these W’s into their natural environment.

          2. westernsloper

            I am commuting now and need to get a reasonable mpg vehicle. I thought it would be fun to get a 4wd rally worthy car (not for racing) and trick it out mountain ready. Lift it, larger tires, more clearance, beefier suspension, more HP…… and then rip around on the 4wd roads in it one day.

          3. DOOMco

            forester or outback XT. the forester XT from 04-08 is basically an STI, and STI and impreza parts bolt on from the same period. The forester sits a nice 1 or 2 inches above the STI. you need the STI top intercooler and turbo, but if you do that and an exhaust, you have more power than the STI with less weight and more ground clearance stock. there are also a few rally spacers or struts you can use to add more.

          4. Mustang

            This. A lot of the STi parts will fit on those things so you can get a cheap base model and go to town with used STi parts.

          5. DOOMco

            you also need the STI scoop I think. maybe just the WRX one. The XT is a bastard STI block with WRX parts attached.

          6. westernsloper

            Thanks, I will keep my eyes peeled for an 04’ish forester XT.

          7. westernsloper

            you also need the STI scoop

            You mean the hood?

          8. DOOMco

            yeah, if you put the bigger intercooler up there, the hood scoop needs to be bigger.

          9. Michael

            Laid out a plan to drop about 100 pounds off the front of my car while keeping it street-able (required for the events I try to compete in).

            The best way to shed weight from the front of the car is to neutral drop it into reverse at high RPM. The greased up bikini model just slides right off.

  7. robc

    North London vs City of Liverpool did not go well today, 9-3 aggregate.

    Koeman is done, I doubt he makes it to December.

    1. Rhywun

      I’d be surprised if Klopp makes it to December.

      1. robc

        I dont care about that side of the park.

        1. Rhywun

          I don’t care about Goodison. Wanna take this outside?

          1. robc

            i can punch you without my kid in my other arm.

        2. Most of us don’t care about the EPL at all.

          1. peachy rex

            The Championship is where it’s at, baby! (At least until the team I follow gets promoted again, at which point… the EPL is where it’s at, baby!)

          2. Rhywun

            I am pissed that the Championship is no longer shown in the US. WTF?

          3. peachy rex

            Perhaps that was done to spare Sunderland’s blushes? Pretty rough to from the EPL straight to the drop zone of the Championship…

          4. Rhywun

            Ouch. Yeah, the bottom of that ladder always seems to fill up with EPL rejects. But I’m more into Newcastle myself. Too bad they’re not both up – the league would be better for it.

            Oh, I see some games are on “ESPN3” now. Thanks but no thanks.

          5. peachy rex

            I’m a Villan myself – last year was a bit rough, but things are looking halfway decent right now… just slipped into the playoff spots this weekend. Though there’s a bloody long way to go.

    2. juris imprudent

      And the rumor is a return of Moyes to replace Koeman.

      1. robc

        NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

      2. Rhywun

        Looking at rumors… LOL, the Men in Blazers have been riffing on this for years.

  8. Winston

    How can a country that is no. 3 on the Heritage Freedom index be run by someone who thinks capitalism failed?

    1. I don’t know, Winston.

    2. kbolino

      The same way a company can be run into the ground by the founder’s heirs. People who grow up in prosperity tend to take it for granted and not know what it took to build it.

      1. Winston

        So how do we stop that? It was a big flaw of classical liberalism and libertarians have yet to solve it.

        1. wdalasio

          Put a stop to “thick” libertarianism, for one thing. That’s the cancer that will ultimately destroy libertarianism. If you start pretending libertarianism is about things like equality, cosmopolitanism, etc., actual libertarianism winds up dying on their alter.

    3. Raven Nation

      Similar to Obama: young, attractive, good speaker; previous government had been in power for 9 years; perceived major national crisis (housing) that their opponents couldn’t “fix.” Plus, NZ has a long history of social planning.

  9. straffinrun

    Christina Sommers explains to students how free markets lifted people out of poverty. Right as she’s making her point, a student interrupts her with…any guesses?

    1. AlmightyJB

      Racist?

      1. straffinrun

        Close. Go even derpier.

        1. AlmightyJB

          Slavery. Which was invented by the United States.

          1. straffinrun

            Did you peek?

          2. AlmightyJB

            Yes, I knew it had something to do with racism.

      2. Rhywun

        That was my guess.

    2. Black Lives Matter?

    3. You’re not a real woman?

      1. ^THIS^ or “Nazi”

    4. kbolino

      King Leopold II’s murderous reign over the Congo “Free State”?

      Seriously, that one gets dug up from time to time as an example of laissez-faire capitalism. Because nothing says laissez-faire like autocracy.

      1. Gilmore

        i watch it on a loop and it keeps making me laugh exactly the same way. its the sound of the SJW voice, combined with the posture of CHS just going, “oh, fuck, why do i even bother”

        1. Rhywun

          This is exactly what the identity politics article I linked to was about. The left can never, EVER let this shit go because it’s what defines them.

      2. straffinrun

        Which ring of hell is that? Christina literally, literally, gets knocked back physically by that comment.

        1. westernsloper

          It’s the squeaky nasal ring of hell. Probably muffled/altered by a piercing.

  10. westernsloper

    ZARDOZ ALWAYS FEELS THAT TOO MUCH IS SPENT ON HEALTHCARE OF BRUTALS.

    Interesting article. I would be interested to know how much the US spends on all elective surgery including joint reconstructive surgery so people can continue leisure activities such as skiing. There once was a time when if your knee was mangled you gave up skiing because that was how life worked. Those are times of yore.

    1. Bob

      I once saw an analysis on premature babies. Wish I could find it. Moral of the story was something like of the 20 most premature babies to survive all were born in the US. Other countries don’t expend resources on something like that, nor do they have the technology.

      1. westernsloper

        Playa pointed preemies out earlier. I wonder how that fits in as well. How much is spent on keeping babies alive that other countries would let die or out right murdered before the chance of life?

  11. I have spent the last 2 months slowly fixing my home frame’s structure rot in a couple places. Today I’m pretty sure I found the root cause of all of it: the master carpenter that did my a roof replacement job for me 5 years ago was badmouthing the last guy who did the roof work for the previous owners of my house.

    Everything was cool until I found this dude had put ZERO sealant or flashing at the junction between the angled plywood of the roof and the vertical plywood sheets of the outer wall. I popped off some pine siding panels directly below the eave, and twouldn’t you know god dammit: granules from the asphalt roof shingles between the pine siding and the tar paper. Mother FUCKER.

    I wouldn’t be nearly so pissed if this guy hadn’t been such an overconfident dick by badmouthing the previous roof work that lasted for ~20 years. Total dick. Never hiring that guy again.

    1. Have you thought about badmouthing this guy to the people in your area?

    2. westernsloper

      Take pictures and send him a bill for your time. Make it lawyering wages. That should get his attention. If I did that, I would fix it all free of charge if the homeowner let me know I fucked up. I only do roofing for family and friends though. I am not a roofer. That is a specialized trade imo.

    3. One thing I learned long ago, the guys who talk shit about their competition are the ones to avoid. It’s some sort of corollary to not trusting the guy who keeps telling you that you can trust him.

      1. straffinrun

        That narrows my vote down to *Checks list of candidates*…..Oh, this guy. Me.

  12. Winston

    NEEDZ MOAR JOHN BOORMAN REFERENCES BESIDES DELIVERANCE.

      1. Winston

        He directed Zardoz. And the only other movie he did people know of is Deliverance.

        I didn’t know he was still alive until I looked it up, lol.

        1. THERE ARE NO OTHER MOVIES BESIDES ZARDOZ!

          1. Sean

            Lies. There are’plenty of movies with Winston´s mom.

          2. Winston

            Leo the Last sounds interesting:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_the_Last

            The movie turns Marxist parable as Leo becomes the unlikeliest of revolutionaries, rallying the denizens of the slum with the aid of Salambo and her charismatic working-class hero boyfriend Roscoe. The intellectual and professional class (in the person of the socialite, the doctor, and the lawyer) is quickly overcome, but the capitalists and petit bourgeoisie (pimp, rent collector, shopkeeper, and real estate shareholders) prove tougher, fortifying themselves in Leo’s mansion.

          3. I’d like to see a ZARDOZ remake with Tyler Perry.

        2. juris imprudent

          Shit, he produced a lot of stuff, including Excalibur (the less funny version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and Emerald Forest.

        3. You need to see Point Blank.

          1. Winston

            Mel Gibson > Lee Marvin

            I kid. ;P

          2. Winston

            Jason Statham and Chow Yun-Fat also did versions? Huh.

          3. Mel Gibson actually had potential. Watch The Year of Living Dangerously.

          4. And yes, I meant the one with Lee Marvin, since it too was directed by Boorman.

          5. egould310

            I’ve posted this before, but the penthouse scene where John Vernon takes a header off the balcony, wad filmed at the Hundley Hotel in Santa Monica. Back in 1999, it was a Mexican restaurant. Now it is this https://www.thehuntleyhotel.com/m/penthouse

            Anywho, one evening after a happy hour of free nacho bar, and sbout 3 pitchers of margaritas, and dragging some broad 11 blocks to her car and then driving her home… I fell in love with that broad. We’ve been married 14 years.

          6. CPRM

            Sounds like date rape to some fiery young attorney who imagines themself the lead in a John Grishom novel. Better hope you never get divorced.

  13. Sean

    New Walking Dead tonight. Please Jesus, don’t let it suck.

    1. Just assume that it will suck, set the expectation, and that way it’s win-win: if it only kinda sucks, it won’t be that bad. But if it sucks-sucks, then you REALLY will know it had sucked.

  14. CPRM

    HOWEVER, ZARDOZ BELIEVES THAT THIS CAN PROVIDE ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR HIS CHOSEN ONES’ FICTION EFFORTS.

    I’ll have to see if I can fit it into part 5, I don’t think it’ll fit into what I have plotted for part four.

    Anyone who wants to take the baton after part four, let me know.

    1. ZARDOZ

      ZARDOZ IS PLEASED.

      1. DOOMco

        well yeah, look at that head.

  15. The Late P Brooks

    You need to see Point Blank.

    Is that the one with Lee Marvin? Later remade with Mel Gibson?

    1. Yep. But if you watch Payback, the Director’s Cut is very different from the original – completely different tone, score, even color filters. BIg improvement in character too IMO.

  16. The Late P Brooks

    new plan for eventual engine swap.
    2H turbo is very easy.

    What a godawful racket.

    1. DOOMco

      Just because you hate diesel!

      1. Who could love this?!

        1. Rhywun

          Zardoz on rails?

        2. Juvenile Bluster

          The Island of Sodor is truly a fucked up place.

  17. DOOMco

    I feel bad for Carson. That broken arm seems like a fluke, even at his age.

    1. MikeS

      The fuck you mean “his age?”

      Get off my lawn!

      1. DOOMco

        in the context of QB.
        how was your 4pm dinner?

        1. I WAS SUPPOSED TO GET TAPIOCA PUDDING WITH THIS! WHERE IS MY PUDDING!

        2. MikeS

          Delicious. It was pineapple, crunchy peanut butter, and avocado free.

          1. DOOMco

            delicious indeed!

          2. Sounds like a horrible pizza. Next you’re going to tell us it was deep-dish, too.

          3. peachy rex

            Nah – that was *my* dinner. But it had bacon, so I think I’m exempt from any criticism.

          4. MikeS

            Let me rephrase in case there was any confusion

            It was:
            Pineapple free
            Crunchy peanut butter free
            Avocado free
            Also; obviously not deep dish because deep dish is not pizza

    2. robc

      what stupid rule will the NFL make this time? Last time he was injured they created the no hitting qbs below the hemline rule.

      1. DOOMco

        I hope they don’t. I think both hits were fine, just unlucky for the injury that resulted.

  18. The Late P Brooks

    I watched bits and pieces of a couple of football games, today. I couldn’t help noticing a lot of empty seats.

    Also, Lewis Hamilton won in Texas.

  19. Derpetologist

    today’s history lesson
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biscari_massacre

    ***
    The Biscari massacre was a war crime committed by members of the United States Army during World War II.[1] It refers to two incidents in which U.S. soldiers were involved in killing 73 unarmed Italian and German prisoners of war (POWs) at the Regia Aeronautica’s 504 air base in Santo Pietro, a small village near Caltagirone, southern Sicily, Italy on 14 July 1943.

    On 14 July 1943, soldiers with the U.S. 180th Infantry Regiment were facing stiff enemy resistance near the Santo Pietro airfield, and by 10:00 hours had taken a number of prisoners, including 45 Italians and 3 Germans. The executive officer for the 1st Battalion, 180th Infantry Regiment, Major Roger Denman, ordered a noncommissioned officer (NCO), Sergeant Horace T. West, 33 years old, to take that group of prisoners “to the rear, off the road, where they would not be conspicuous, and hold them for questioning.” The POWs were without shoes and shirts, which was common practice to discourage attempts to escape.[7]

    After Sergeant West, with several other U.S. soldiers assisting him, had marched the POWs about a mile, he halted the group and directed that eight or nine of them be separated from the rest and taken to the regimental intelligence officer (the S-2) for questioning. West then took the remaining POWs “off the road, lined them up, and borrowed a Thompson submachine gun” from the Company First Sergeant (the senior NCO in the Company). When the First Sergeant asked West what he wanted it for, West responded that he was going to “kill the sons of bitches.” West then told the soldiers guarding the POWs to “turn around if you don’t want to see it.”[8]

    He then killed the POWs by shooting them with the Thompson. When the bodies were discovered some thirty minutes later, it was noted that each POW had been shot through the heart, which indicated shooting at close range. Investigators later learned that after West had emptied the Thompson into the group of POWs, he “stopped to reload, then walked among the men in their pooling blood and fired a single round into the hearts of those still moving.”[9]

    The next day, the 37 bodies caught the attention of a chaplain, Lt. Col. William E. King, who reported the event to his senior officers.

    When he was informed of the massacres, General Omar Bradley told General George S. Patton that U.S. troops had murdered some 50-70 prisoners in cold blood. Patton noted his response in his diary:

    I told Bradley that it was probably an exaggeration, but in any case to tell the Officer to certify that the dead men were snipers or had attempted to escape or something, as it would make a stink in the press and also would make the civilians mad. Anyhow, they are dead, so nothing can be done about it.[15]

    Bradley refused Patton’s suggestions. Patton later changed his mind. After he learned that the 45th Division’s Inspector General found “no provocation on the part of the prisoners . . . . They had been slaughtered,” Patton is reported to have said, “Try the bastards.”[16]

    The U.S. Army charged Sergeant Horace T. West for “willfully, deliberately, feloniously, [and] unlawfully” killing thirty-seven prisoners of war in the first incident.[17] At his trial, which began on 2 September 1943, West pleaded not guilty. Although he admitted the killings, his non-lawyer defense counsel raised two matters in his defense. The first was he was “fatigued and under extreme emotional distress” at the time of the killings and was essentially temporarily insane at the time of the commission of the acts. However, First Sergeant Haskell Y. Brown testified that West had borrowed the Thompson plus an additional magazine of 30 rounds and had appeared to act in cold blood.[18]

    The second defense raised by West’s counsel was that he was simply following the orders of his Commanding General who, he testified, had announced prior to the invasion of Sicily that prisoners should be taken only under limited circumstances.[19] West’s regimental commander, Colonel Forrest E. Cookson, testified that the general had stated that if the enemy continued to resist after U.S. troops had come within 200 yards of their defensive position, then surrender of those enemy soldiers need not be accepted.[20] The problem with this defense was that the POWs in this case had already surrendered and the surrender had been accepted.

    The court-martial panel found West guilty of premeditated murder, stripped him of his rank and sentenced him to life imprisonment. On 23 November 1944 the remainder of his sentence was remitted and he was restored to active duty and continued to serve during the war, at the end of which he received an honorable discharge.[21] {West died in Oklahoma in January 1974}
    ***

    1. MikeS

      On 23 November 1944 the remainder of his sentence was remitted and he was restored to active duty and continued to serve during the war, at the end of which he received an honorable discharge.

      This seems…fucked up.

      1. Chafed

        At the very least.

    2. So he’s the original antifa?

  20. The Late P Brooks

    Just because you hate diesel!

    Guilty as charged.

    1. westernsloper

      I hate diesel too. It is too expensive. Hence why I sold the last truck and bought the current one. $50 a barrel for oil and we have close to $3 a gallon diesel? Fuckers be playing us as fools.

    2. Lachowsky

      As fat as I am concerned, the only problem with diesel is the engine. There is nothing inherently wrong with a diesel engine. They are more efficient and run longer than a standard gas engine. Where the trouble starts is when things go wrong. I can fix a lot of gas engine problems. I know a lot of people who can fix much more complex gas engine problems than I can. When a diesel engine ceases running correctly, there is a very limited amount of people who know what to do. That and pieces and parts for a diesel are very expensive.

      the problem is a matter of economy of scale. There are many more gas engines in circulation than diesel. that’s my only problem with diesel.

  21. Derpetologist

    https://www.truthdig.com/articles/ever-deadlier-police-state/

    ***
    None of the reforms, increased training, diversity programs, community outreach and gimmicks such as body cameras have blunted America’s deadly police assault, especially against poor people of color. Police forces in the United States—which, according to The Washington Post, have fatally shot 782 people this year—are unaccountable, militarized monstrosities that spread fear and terror in poor communities. By comparison, police in England and Wales killed 62 people in the 27 years between the start of 1990 and the end of 2016.

    Police officers have become rogue predators in impoverished communities. Under U.S. forfeiture laws, police indiscriminately seize money, real estate, automobiles and other assets. In many cities, traffic, parking and other fines are little more than legalized extortion that funds local government and turns jails into debtor prisons.

    Because of a failed court system, millions of young men and women are railroaded into prison, many for nonviolent offenses. SWAT teams with military weapons burst into homes often under warrants for nonviolent offenses, sometimes shooting those inside. Trigger-happy cops pump multiple rounds into the backs of unarmed men and women and are rarely charged with murder. And for poor Americans, basic constitutional rights, including due process, were effectively abolished decades ago.
    ***

    Just awful. I wonder who he blames for this.

    ***
    The accelerated assault on the poor and the growing omnipotence of the police signal our transformation into an authoritarian state in which the rich and the powerful are not subject to the rule of law. The Trump administration will promote none of the conditions that could ameliorate this crisis—affordable housing; well-paying jobs; safe and nurturing schools that do not charge tuition; better mental health facilities; efficient public transportation; the rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure; demilitarized police forces in which most officers do not carry weapons; universal, government-funded health care; an end to the predatory loans and unethical practices of big banks; and reparations to African-Americans and an end to racial segregation. Trump and most of those he has appointed to positions of power disdain the poor as a dead weight on society. They blame stricken populations for their own misery. They seek to subjugate the poor, especially those of color, through police violence, ever harsher forms of punishment and an expansion of the prison system.
    ***

    1. Winston

      affordable housing; well-paying jobs; safe and nurturing schools that do not charge tuition; better mental health facilities; efficient public transportation; the rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure; demilitarized police forces in which most officers do not carry weapons; universal, government-funded health care; an end to the predatory loans and unethical practices of big banks; and reparations to African-Americans

      Libertarian and progressives have a lot of common ground/ Reason and CATO

      1. Not an Economist

        All that seems like a progressive wish list and not targeted actually solving the problems they describe. Except for demilitarizing police forces they don’t even mention police. It is like they have one solution for all problems.

    2. Rope Snake

      Problem:

      the rich and the powerful are not subject to the rule of law

      Solution: Further empowerment of centralized government and more unequal application of the law (fuck the kulaks!).

      Great.

      Fuck these people.

    1. Juvenile Bluster

      But he stepped down as Police Union chief, replaced by this guy, who may be a bigger piece of shit.

    2. straffinrun

      Certainly sounds like a POS. That article, however, doesn’t even try to hide it’s bias.

  22. The Late P Brooks

    The Trump administration will promote none of the conditions that could ameliorate this crisis—affordable housing; well-paying jobs; safe and nurturing schools that do not charge tuition; better mental health facilities; efficient public transportation; the rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure; demilitarized police forces in which most officers do not carry weapons; universal, government-funded health care; an end to the predatory loans and unethical practices of big banks; and reparations to African-Americans and an end to racial segregation.

    Yeah. That would fix everything.

    1. Derpetologist

      “predatory loans”

      Be careful. Watch your back. Someone might sneak up on you and lend you money.

      1. Rope Snake

        (((Someone)))

      2. Look Derp, these bastard lend you money that they know you can’t pay back, and then add on late fees and interest until you really can’t pay it back , and then they sell your loan to a collection agency at a loss and then they profit, it’s trickle down economics or something. Also they force you in to prostitution but that’s more of a sex trafficking problem during Superbowls™ and republican conventions.

  23. Q Continuum

    And now a crowd favorite.

    http://archive.is/ug7x7

    1. MikeS

      1, 2, 5, 30

      Bunny boiler: It’s redheads, there are too many to list

      1. MikeS

        Second time through…add 23, 25, 27, and 33 to the list.

        1. BakedPenguin

          1, 16, 23, 27 & 34 are the only ones who’d be verified as natural reds. Not saying all of the rest are dying their hair, just without the Dalmatian spots, you can’t know.

      2. westernsloper

        30 is beyond bunny boiler. She 180 deg turned her head around and is looking at the camera from over her shoulder blades. She is a Steven King novel.

        1. MikeS

          I know, right?! Delicious!

  24. Derpetologist

    To Protect Animals, Should We Just Shoot All the Poachers?
    http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/08/03/it-ethical-kill-poachers

    ***
    Protecting the world’s endangered species from poachers is dangerous business.

    Over the past decade, more than 1,000 rangers have died in the line of duty, according to statistics released last week for World Ranger Day. Some deaths were caused by accidents or animals. Most, however, were murders committed by heavily armed poachers who enter national parks and other protected areas in search of species such as tigers, rhinos, and elephants.

    At the same time, rangers have killed hundreds of poachers, often spurred by the shoot-on-sight policies that have become the norm in several parks. The numbers add up: Between 2011 and 2015, rangers at South Africa’s Kruger National Park alone reportedly killed nearly 500 poachers.

    While these rangers are undoubtedly heroes who all too often lay down their lives to protect the animals in their care, some organizations have begun to raise questions about the retaliatory bloodshed, asking if it is ethical or moral for rangers to kill suspected poachers without arrest or trial. The issue came to bear most recently last month after a guard in India’s Kaziranga National Park, which has a shoot-to-kill policy, critically wounded a seven-year-old boy from a tribe that lives around the park.

    “We’re pretty horrified by the situation,” said Sophie Grig, senior campaigner at Survival International, a tribal rights organization that has criticized the recent Kaziranga shooting and shoot-to-kill policies in general. “It seems to us a very worrying trend that is bad for both local people who get caught in the crossfire and for conservation.”

    Grig also wonders if shooting poachers even solves the larger problem. “If you were arresting those people and then investigating them, you could trace back and work out who the kingpins are,” she said. “If you shoot them dead, you can’t ask them any questions.”
    ***

    Here’s an idea- sell hunting permits and legalize the sale of ivory

    It’s just crazy enough to work.

    1. Heroic Mulatto

      Nah. The Chinese will find a way to counterfeit the permits.

      1. Derpetologist

        Even so, there are only a few places where elephant populations are increasing, and they all have the same thing in common.

        ***
        Namibia’s Conservancy Approach

        In Namibia, elephant numbers have been increasing, and the nation’s conservancy approach is applauded as a factor in this success.

        Established by the Namibian government in 1996, the program grants communities the power to manage wildlife on communal land and to work with private companies to develop their own tourism markets.

        The latest government statistics indicate that the estimated contributions from trophy hunting exceeded $70 million. The vast majority of this income is returned to operators and spin-off beneficiaries such as airlines, hotels, tourism facilities, but there is a trickle-down effect.

        In 2000, the total income to communal conservancies from all forms of wildlife use, including trophy hunting, amounted to $165,000. Six years later, this had increased almost tenfold to $1,330,000. Though small compared to the overall income from trophy hunting, it does provide one in seven Namibians with $75 a month.
        ***

        https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151715-conservation-trophy-hunting-elephants-tusks-poaching-zimbabwe-namibia/

        1. Didn’t Tanzania have some success privatizing their elephants?

  25. Derpetologist

    An impressive amount of derp crammed into a 90 second video called Thanks, Capitalism!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sLgqq939JQ

    The cartoon style reminded me of PlayMobil toys.

  26. Akira

    OT: I bought some LED bulbs and installed them in my kitchen chandelier… Now they are going through periods of constant flickering (all of the bulbs do it, not just one). It doesn’t do it all the time, but other times, they’re flickering so badly that it just bugs me to see the light from that room out of the corner of my eye.

    I had CFL bulbs in there before, and they never flickered. Any idea why LEDs would be doing this?

    1. DOOMco

      They’re meant for DC?

    2. MikeS

      Poltergeists seem like the only logical conclusion. You’re welcome.

      Oh, and GET OUT

    3. Heroic Mulatto

      Is your chandelier on a dimmer?

      1. Akira

        Nope.

        1. Heroic Mulatto

          Then I’m guessing it’s because at the times they are flickering there is something running in your house that is causing the voltage to change in the light’s wiring. Either that or your lamp’s wiring is loose.

          1. Akira

            Are LEDs more sensitive to slight changes in voltage?

            I just ask because this never happened with the CFL bulbs even when I had the oven, AC, dryer, and other high-voltage appliances running.

          2. Heroic Mulatto

            From what I understand, yes. Unlike incandescent, CFL, etc. LEDs have no persistence. So as soon as the voltage drops below its threshold, the LED turns off immediately. Just like how LEDs can turn on at full brightness without having to warm up.

    4. westernsloper

      How many bulbs does your chandelier take? Doesn’t matter, nobody needs that many bulbs. You are the devil and killing the planet. That is why it is flickering.

    5. Lachowsky

      Inside your chandelier, assuming it is of recent vintage, there is a little black box. This little black box limits the output current to your light fixtures to .5 amps. This is something the government decided had to be installed in all light fixtures about a decade ago. The box was meant to prevent people from burning bulbs over 60 watts.

      What has happened in the years since he requirement. Lamp manufacturers use the lowest quality black boxes that they can find to be in compliance with the government regulations.

      Find your black box, and then remove it. it will probably fix your problem.

      1. Lachowsky

        As per the Energy Policy Act of 2005, all ceiling fans manufactured or imported into the United States must utilize a light bulb wattage limiter as of January 1, 2007. This limiter limits the capacity of the fan’s light kit to a maximum of 40 watts per bulb.

        That’s best I could find to verify I’m not full of shit. I’m sure that the law applies to chandeliers as well as ceiling fans.

        1. Heroic Mulatto

          There’s plenty of Youtube videos on how to take the limiters out.

          That having been said, an LED bulb is only going to draw 7 to 12 watts, so unless you’re sure it’s a shitty box, I’d try looking at other causes first.

          1. Lachowsky

            you’re approach seems logical.

            What causes lights to flicker. An incandescent bull is naught but a resistor that gets hot amd don’t burn up because it’s in a vacuum.

            An Led bulb is a solid state semiconductor.

            If the light wasn’t flickering before the led was installed but was after, then we can rule out many things. Loose connections. voltage deviations (I can explain this if you want E=IR)

            The wattage limitor is the only electronic component in a chandalier. It consists of an oscillator circuit and a set of transistors. The oscillating circuit pulses the gates of the transistor at at rate than limits the current flow.

            In a direct hookup up between a light bulb and a power source, there would be no difference between the behavior of an led bulb and and an incandescent bulb.

            Since Akira migrated from an incandescent to an led, the only thing that could cause a difference in operation is the wattage limiting circuit

          2. Heroic Mulatto

            Makes sense.

      2. Akira

        Hold up – are you telling me that the government passed an intrusive law that makes consumers worse off just so that they can virtue-signal and pretend that they’re “doing something” about a problem that doesn’t exist in the first place?? You must be off your rocker!

        Kidding aside though… Is there a fire hazard from removing this box? I’m just paranoid about such things.

        1. Lachowsky

          No. there is no hazard. when you remove the box, all you are doing is connecting the sockets directly to the bulb. That is how lights have been working since the days of edison.

          The only danger comes from an EPA inspector disassembling your fan and finding that you jumped out the wattage limitor.

        2. MikeS

          If anything, I’d think the limiter box is the fire hazard.

      3. westernsloper

        The box was meant to prevent people from burning bulbs over 60 watts.

        Mutherfuckers. Then why do they still sell 100w bulbs?

        1. Lachowsky

          Because all the incandescent bulbs that are on the market today were produced before the energy act of 2005. There is no new manufacturing of incandescent bulbs. The incandescent bulb manufacturers knew theor product was going to be banned years in advance. They over produced for years. What you can buy now is stock manufactured before the ban.

        2. KSuellington

          Unless you are getting those on the black market or some of the rapidly diminishing sources of stocked bulbs they are no longer sold.

          *psst, hey kid I got some really nice incandescents here that will light you right up*

        3. westernsloper

          I was talking about 100w compact florescent. I know not what actual wattage they draw. But please allow me to lay this on you all on that topic.

          In 1992-3 I was stationed at a small Coast Guard station in the NW just outside of where Kurt Cobain hailed from before he offed himself. (irrelevant point but I stumbled out of the bar he got his start in and I am drinking now so it has relevance) At that time, the CG had a program that if you came up with an idea to save the service money, you would be cut a percentage of the savings. That was the time compact florescent came on the market. I was in charge of the stations maintenance at the time and we changed who knows how many light bulbs a day in the quarters and general areas. These new fangled compact florescent light bulb supposedly lasted ten years and use whatever percentage of the electricity of our usual incandescent bulbs. I did all the math then that I do not remember now and used our small station as a model and calculated millions and millions of savings in the Coast Guard alone. I sent my proposal up via official channels and a JO in Seattle thought it was a great idea. He forwarded it on and on. It made it to DC where a civilian evaluater looked at it and declined my idea. He said he tried the bulbs in a lamp and they did not fit right for his shade. That experience convinced me gov contracts were more solid than saving gov money. We had cases and cases of incandescent bulbs stacked for years and years in a tiny station. If he had approved my suggestion, I would be typing on a millionaires keyboard. The florescents give shit light, but damn they do last. I have a wrinkled ten dollar bill that is all they use in Coast Guard stations now.

          1. Lachowsky

            So, a beurocrat nixed your idea on his whim. america, the land of thee free.

          2. westernsloper

            He probably also had stock in Sylvania. Jesus we went through some bulbs. It was a small station but hundreds of light bulbs. That adds up. Multiply that by hundreds of stations and we get to real money. I wrote a solid proposal even back then when the compact florescent was stupid expensive they could have saved millions. The gov moves slowly.

    6. Spartan Dad

      On a related note, I’ve been having a similar electrical difficulty.

      My dusk to dawn light (street light with a halogen bulb) has been working fine for 4 years. Out of nowhere the light started turning off whenever the heat pump kicked on.

      The light is on a completely different circuit than the heat pump. The electrical company came out, measured my voltage drop, and said there was no way the heat pump was drawing enough to affect the light on a different circuit. They even installed a larger transformer just to be sure that wasn’t the problem.It wasn’t. The light still cut out whenever the heat pump turned on.

      None of the other lights or electronics in the house flicker. Any idea what’s going on?

      1. CPRM

        I have yard light that hasn’t worked for almost a decade (the power is fine, I think the bulb is bad, but you need a cherry picker to get to it and I don’t think it’s important enough for the hassle) a few years ago out of nowhere during a storm it came on for about an hour, then hasn’t worked since. Damn witchcraft!

      2. Lachowsky

        are you sure it a halogen bulb? Some types of lighting fixtures (mercury vapor, metal oxide, high pressure sodium, etc.) need a certain voltage to to ignite the ballast. A slight drop in voltage from the compressor in your heat pump starting may cause them to go out.

  27. Derpetologist
    1. Akira

      Is he wearing a clip-on bowtie with the top button of his shirt undone??

      Fucking millennials (and I say that was someone who was born in ’87).

    2. dbleagle

      Since all the faces in that video are punchable, do we line them up by size, or age?

    3. Q Continuum

      Neuter him now before he has a chance to reproduce.

      1. CPRM

        By listening to him, I don’t think that’s a concern.

    4. Rope Snake

      Baby Clay Aiken

  28. Rhywun

    Good lord. That is the definition of “first up against the wall”.

    1. Rhywun

      Hm, that was supposed to be a reply to “today in punchable faces”.

      1. Heroic Mulatto

        I know.

    2. Lachowsky

      The stupidest supporters of the shooting regime.

    3. straffinrun

      Sounds like he’d go there voluntarily.

    4. Gilmore

      lol

      i had literally the exact same reaction. i heard a russian voice saying, “Comrade, when the revolution comes, first we shoot the intellectuals”

  29. straffinrun

    Fucking Richard Spencer manages to come off as not the biggest douche in a room. The world is over. Someone turn off the lights please.

    1. straffinrun

      After listening to some of that, I’ve changed my mind. Spencer is the biggest douche. It was a close call though.

      1. westernsloper

        I only listened for a few minutes when they got Into the chants. Then I had to take a leak.

    2. westernsloper

      That is a new leaf turned over in recent history. The white nationalist is not a bigger prick than the assholes opposing him even talking. How do they not see that giving him attention is what he wants? That ignoring him would be the best course of action? It is mind boggling. He had what, 20 guys there supporting him?

      1. straffinrun

        Maybe it’s the same leaf with a 21st century color. Two versions of authoritarianism butting heads.

        1. westernsloper

          But neither of them have any power. They have youtube and social media. I see them as entertainment and self reflection in that at least I am not that fucked up.

      2. John Titor

        If Richard Spencer didn’t exist the left would have to create him. They like to have an easily identifiable villain. The alt-right and the social justice crowd feed off each other.

      3. Rope Snake

        How do they not see that giving him attention is what he wants?

        Because they’re too busy shouting him down to hear him say explicitly that: that he relishes the protesting and hatred because he’s benefitted massively from it.

        And they lack the knowledge and awareness to recognize the pattern—pretty much a ‘law’—captured by the ‘Streisand effect.’

  30. Q Continuum

    Those things in flyover country are sub-human vermin anyway so I don’t know why he even bothered.

    http://nypost.com/2017/10/21/the-other-half-of-america-that-the-liberal-media-doesnt-cover/

    1. Akira

      She’s pretty righteous most of the time, but I remember an interview on The Other Site where she said she would support Dianne Feinstein for president (even The Jacket was flabbergasted by that one).

      Humans are capable of wild inconsistencies, I guess.

      1. Q Continuum

        True. It’s the problem with making politics your religion (as “liberals” are wont to do), even when there is a mountain of evidence in front of you, somehow you remain blind.

      2. Raven Nation

        Well, she explained it a little. The context was that she’d just finished describing Hillary as a liar and someone who couldn’t hold an opinion without poll-testing it. “This is not a strong candidate for our first woman president.” When she mentioned Feinstein & the Jacket reacted, Paglia said “I don’t care what her views are. What I’m saying is, for the post of president, the commander-in-chief of the military, it’s gotta be a woman who has familiarity with military matters and also has gravitas.” She then cites Feinstein’s control of the situation after the Moscone-Milk shootings saying this was the model for a woman president to communicate with strength, reserve, & compassion.

      3. John Titor

        Also, she thinks Revenge of the Sith is the greatest art of this generation, somehow.

        1. Rope Snake

          lol, I totally forgot about that.

    2. Bob

      She appears to think her generations campus stupidity was totes different and not what gave birth to today’s stupidity.

      1. Rope Snake

        That’s the problem with being at least moderately principled. You’ll see people acting ostensibly in favor of high ideals and not realize that those ideals are not universally extensible for most people who tout them—that in effect they apply only to the touters themselves, because once the power dynamic is shifted such that they have the better of it, their emotive, galvanizing rhetoric will suddenly disappear. Rosa Luxemburg talked a big game about freedom and free speech, but had she ascended to a position of power over mass others, she wouldn’t be favoring such freedom for them.

        Camille Paglia admired the rhetoric of her peers and the ideas expressed by it, so she doesn’t let herself recognize its essential insincerity.

    3. westernsloper

      “It’s really started at the level of public school education. I’ve been teaching now for 46 years as a classroom teacher, and I have felt the slow devolution of the quality of public school education in the classroom.”

      Did it start in 1980’ish perhaps? Something something DOE…..

  31. Ken Shultz

    I’m watching Anthony Bourdain’s show on CNN–in an episode about Pittsburgh.

    So what, right?

    Bourdain was interviewing (and eating with) this guy who I’m almost certain was the guy that asked Gillespie if he wanted to go out into the parking lot that time he was BIll Mahr’s show. Remember that guy was the mayor of the hardest hit steel town in Pennsylvania?

    The interesting thing–that guy is starting an indoor, legal marijuana facility, and his business partners is, get this, Franco Harris!

    Franco Harris was talking about the benefit of marijuana for pain treatment, etc.

    There’s a local sports hero giving you a celebrity endorsement. I wonder if they’re looking for investors.

    The former mayor’s taking care of the licensing? Check.

    Local celebrity endorsement? Check.

    Are they looking for investors?

    Hell no.

    But that shit’s gonna sell like . . . marijuana.

    Everybody wants to buy marijuana. That’s why they call it marijuana.

  32. Lachowsky

    http://imgur.com/hTZtSms

    Just dug this out of the closet. I think wife and I are gonna watch it

    1. Q Continuum

      Don’t forget your chainsaw.

    2. BakedPenguin

      Groovy

  33. Chipping Pioneer

    On the earlier thread today, Gustave was describing a situation in which his wife was admonished by a Canadian about Trump and healthcare.

    Unfortunately, many Canadians have a superior attitude toward Americans, despite having limited interactions with them. Many Canadians think that, because of Canada’s more progressive bent, we’re somehow “better” than Americans. This fits into a pattern of what I call “small Canadianism”, whereby Canadians see the world through the very narrow perspective of being Canadian, and develop a very elitist attitude. Many of my friends, family, and neighbours exhibit this attitude, and I’m embarrassed by it.

    Perhaps more embarrassing, I spent the better part of 7 years working in the US, and initially, I think that I came with this attitude, too. But, I had the opportunity to get to know many Americans on a personal level. In retrospect, I must apologize for the attitude that I had previously. Now, I have several American friends, and, in general, I like and respect Americans. What appeals to me about Americans is your friendliness, straightforwardness, and orientation towards liberty. In fact, I think that I might even like Americans more than Canadians.

    Except Philip Rivers. Fuck that guy. /Broncos fan

    1. Q Continuum

      Most Canadians I’ve met have been great and the times I’ve spent on vacation in Canada have been wonderful. I do find the hang up that Canadians seem to have about Americans being super parochial, inward-looking and patriotic, while somewhat warranted, to be kind of amusing though; possibly the only people I’ve ever met who are bigger flag-wavers than Americans are Canadians.

      1. John Titor

        Our flag sucks now, I hate the minimalist utilitarian design. And now we have idiots claiming the good flag is actually secret alt-right racism.

        You know, the one they fly at basically every Legion and veterans’ center in the country.

    2. Ken Shultz

      They have the same sort of attitude about Americans in Mexico–especially around tourist areas. I blame tourism for a lot of our bad rep abroad. Even Mexicans have an idea of the “ugly American” stereotype.

      When you see American or British or people of any nationality on TV, you see idealized versions of them.

      When you’re a Mexican in a border town or a beach town, the Americans you see in real life are there to get drunk out of their minds and puke all over the street. And the American middle class has been able to afford to go to these places for a long time–so we’ve had a long time to build up that reputation.

      Incidentally, the Mexicans who come here to be gardeners, cooks, and house cleaners are exactly representative of average Mexicans either. Middle class Mexicans don’t come here to take those jobs.

      If we judged each other’s countries by tourists, economic refugees, expat retirees, etc., we’d all think each other’s countries were shit.

      1. Chipping Pioneer

        You know, Ken, I think what you said about our interactions with Mexicans is true. In the US / Canada, the Mexican people with interact with tend to be those who work as unskilled labourers. When we go to Mexico on vacation, we tend to interact with Mexicans who work in the hospitality industry (unfortunately in North America, also seen to be unskilled labour).

      2. wdalasio

        I blame tourism for a lot of our bad rep abroad. Even Mexicans have an idea of the “ugly American” stereotype.

        Except the data doesn’t actually support it. I recall reading a piece about a survey of hospitality workers in multiple countries. Americans had the worst reputation of any nationality polled about. Fair enough. Then they showed the sub-categories for different qualities of tourists. Americans came out at or near the top on every category.

        Honestly, when I hear some of the foreign commentary dismissing Americans, I can’t help but wonder why they just don’t call us (((Americans))). I mean, what do they say: we’re loud, we’re pushy, we think we know it all, we throw our money around.

    3. westernsloper

      Except Philip Rivers. Fuck that guy. /Broncos fan

      I say fuck Trevor Siemian. /Broncos fan

      I would echo what is said above. Canadians are the biggest flag wavers I have ever met. They have a pride that is awesome but a grudge like a beat up kid but there is no reason to have since we never beat Canada up. Timber deals, milk deals, trucking deals….I don’t know the ins and outs of them all enough to make a certain statement, but the Canadians I know are sure they are being fucked over. Also, I think sans the free healthcare, they are pissed they are America with just a little more Northern Latitude, higher taxes and Tim Hortons. Canada is the USA with better hockey players and worse coffee but awesome twelve grain bagels. (toasted with butter please)

      1. Chipping Pioneer

        Yeah, I’ve seen enough of Trevor Siemian. Also not sold on Vance Joseph.

      2. John Titor

        but there is no reason to have since we never beat Canada up.

        Well, there was that one time you invaded us in the American Revolution…

        …And that other time when you invaded because the Brits kept stealing your sailors…

        …And then there was the time you allowed terrorists who wanted to conquer us to operate out of your country…

        But that’s about it. Oh, and that time we almost went to war over a pig. But that was our bad.

        1. westernsloper

          I meant more along the line of time after colonial sort of times. See, this is why you should write more history articles John. So I be learnin stuff to yell back when I hear, WE BURNED YOUR WHITE HOUSE!!11 I have heard that one a few times.

          I am a product of American public education so I have an excuse.

          1. John Titor

            The “We burned your White House” one is easy. Because we didn’t. British regulars from northern England and Scotland did, they never even set foot in Canada, the invasion staging operation was in Bermuda. Canadian militia were not involved at all, and the dumb argument I always hear is “well, some of the guys who burned the White House later settled in Canada, so it counts.” But by that logic we also conquered India I guess.

    4. John Titor

      A lot of modern Canadian nationalism is more about being massively insecure about being neighbours with the superpower than anything else, it manifests itself in some pretty pathetic ways.

      *Cue “WE BURRRRRRRRRNED THE WHITE HOUSE DOWN” autistic screeching*

      1. CPRM

        Hey, the US government did force a lot of kids to watch Degrassi Junior High, that was a worse affront than burning the white house.

        1. Rope Snake

          I love DJH. Tell me this isn’t brilliant.

          1. CPRM

            ^Check out the Canadian spy ^

  34. Q Continuum

    Not Brooksing here, but that article Rhywun posted about the Dems’ identity politics religion so accurately and succinctly outlined the current political climate that it is an absolute thing of beauty. I wish I could have condensed the reality of our situation that well.

    1. But you did Brooks

      1. “I don’t mean to interrupt…” He interrupted.

        or as is hip on the twitter of late…

        Narrators voice – “He was Brooksing.”

      2. Q Continuum

        Did I? Perhaps *YOU* did!!

        (suspenseful music)

    2. Rope Snake

      A little bitta Brooksing is a good thing, I reckon.

      1. Q Continuum

        That’s what she said (I assume).

  35. DOOMco

    this fog is crazy

  36. Akira

    OT: My friends just came back from their wedding anniversary, where they ate at one of these “employee-owned co-op” restaurants…

    They walked into the front room, which was a large bar/seating area. It was a pretty huge room, but they had to walk up to a hostess station and give their names. The host told them to give their names and wait for a table. It was confusing because the area appeared less than half-full, and many customers were just drinking at the bar and eating appetizers. They had a few drinks and went into the restaurant area, which was surprisingly about a quarter of the size of the bar/waiting area. While looking over the menu, they noticed that it was a “co-op”, “no-tipping” establishment. They waited 30 to 45 minutes for a table, ordered their food, and waited another 30 minutes for their food, but they decided it had been too long and they gave up. They went up to pay for their drinks and chips and salsa. When they asked the host for the status of their order, they were told that the cooks hadn’t even started on it (this was a burrito restaurant, so you’d think it would be quick).

    Surely, this is the best way to run the US economy, right guys??

    1. Rope Snake

      It’s a good thing that they had to wait so long for food. In other countries, the rich get the food and the poor starve to death.

    2. CPRM

      They went to an artisinal burrito bar for their anniversary? How bourgeoisie.

    3. westernsloper

      wow. I wonder how they stay in business.

    4. CPRM

      ‘Brad, like, just wasn’t feeling coming to work today. And like man, the cooks just wanna chill for a bit. Here, have this piece of cilantro.’

  37. straffinrun

    Dine n dash crossed my mind for a split second. Just ate French toast at a restaurant. Left my damn wallet at the office. Check the change I have in my pocket-¥910. Bill is ¥970. Office is quite far away. Remember I have a point card. ¥90 worth of points. Perfuckinmundo. Had me panicking for a few minutes.

    1. egould310

      Good short story.

      1. straffinrun

        If you need ¥10, I’ve got your back.

        1. egould310

          Domo arigato.

        2. BakedPenguin

          Cool. I wanted a gumball from the machine.

          But if it’s yen, it’ll taste like squid, though, right?

        3. CPRM

          If Yen can cook, so can you!

    2. DOOMco

      better than dishes.

    3. westernsloper

      Is Jap french toast like normal french toast or do they sprinkle seaweed and low tide dead shrimp on it or something?

      1. Gustave Lytton

        Probably caramel sauce with tons of whipped cream on top.

  38. egould310

    Just cause it’s Sunday night https://youtu.be/128LI6_4L-s

    1. BakedPenguin

      Hmm… that brought up Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made For Walking and Dusty Springfield’s Son of a Preacher Man, so thanks for that.

      1. Rope Snake

        you’re gay now

        1. BakedPenguin

          Yeah, looking at those women turned me

          1. Well, Nancy is 76 or 77 and Dusty is dead, so neither is particularly appealing.

      2. egould310

        Here’s a lovely little lady singing about girl power https://youtu.be/XRclcywfu-4

    2. westernsloper

      For some of us it is Sat night, and that was #uncalledfor

      1. egould310

        Kenny Dorham so nice https://youtu.be/jQJMfufzg0Y

      2. egould310

        Nice harmonies. Sentimental as hell.
        https://youtu.be/uur4t4UO80E

        1. dbleagle

          She still has a great set of pipes.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmM72gxbdfU

  39. egould310

    Chest hair and Hai Karate https://youtu.be/2h4eeanfgh4

      1. egould310

        Good one. Here’s a classic https://youtu.be/6bki3iCF1ps

        1. CPRM

          I’ll just answer with another Dick Cheese song, because honestly, he perfected the lounge cover.

          1. CPRM

            And the closer, Closer

          2. BakedPenguin

            Ha ha just for you

          3. BakedPenguin

            One more, since you convinced me…

        1. BakedPenguin

          That man is a hero.

  40. Rope Snake

    Identity politics is only quasi-Christian. It begins from the observation that there is worldly fault and debt. That, every Christian sees. But identity politics stops there, content that we need go no further than call out fault and debt and use political power—worldly power—to settle the score. I doubt that this quasi-Christian viewpoint, which refuses reconciliation, is a stable one. Without straining our imagination, we can discern that we are either going to return to some variant of King’s Christian account, in which fault and debt are overcome through repentance and forgiveness, or we are going to move to a truly post-Christian world in which we no longer care about fault and debt. In such a world, the terms “oppressor” and “oppressed” will cease to have any meaning, and historical wounds—American slavery in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, European colonialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, German aggression in the first half of the twentieth century—will be met with the cruel words: “and we would do it again, for the world is nothing but force and fraud and the will to power.” That is the world that Nietzsche staked out in the late nineteenth century, in the hope that we would find the courage to move beyond Christian guilt. It is no small irony that today’s political Left, which owes more to Nietzsche than to Marx, has so badly understood him: the fault-and-debt points that identity politics tallies are precisely what Nietzsche wanted post-Christian man to repudiate. Our post-Christian Left, however, wants it both ways: it wishes to destroy Christianity by using the battering ram of (white male heterosexual) fault and debt.

    We should shudder to think what the world will look like if our post-Christian Left is successful, for it will be a world in which those who have been the object of its derision fully agree to Nietzsche’s terms, throw off Christian guilt altogether, and chant “blood and soil,” as white-nationalist demonstrators did recently in Charlottesville. Christianity has battled pagan movements, of the sort that Nazism is, since before the Roman Empire fell. When it loses, fault and guilt are replaced by pagan vitalism, the cruelty of which knows no bounds.

    ‘Right side of history’ arguments entail an eventual equilibrium, which supposes an increasing—even close monotonically increasing—level of stability from every moment to the successive, occurring especially at the present moment. It sounds like nonsense to me altogether, human existence is not that pretty, the physical world is not that clean,—but it’s especially nonsensical when you consider how unstable and fraught progressives view the world to be, compounded by their prescription for it. You can’t vilify people and expect them not to react disruptively. This scaremongering by the left about the ‘nihilism’ of the alt-right seems to miss the fact that the left itself has precipitated it, even necessitated it of the deplorables. How else would they react?

    But return to the question: In what direction does the arc of history bend? For King, America is a covenantal community, whose mission can be fulfilled only when blacks and whites work together to heal the wound of slavery. For King, that was the direction toward which the long arc of history bent. In the identity-politics world, however, the wound of slavery is not simply a malignancy to be healed. It is a template to be used to identify and catalog an infinitely proliferating array of wounds and grievances, tallied—indeed, fomented—by the Democratic Party, with a view to gathering power and votes. There is no watchful yet merciful God, who calls us to repent and to forgive; there is only ever-expanding grievance, over which righteous, largely white, progressives preside. Identity politics depends on the wound of slavery to provide its initial coherence—but it does not stop there. Instead, it ceaselessly seeks to expand its mandate.

    That is why the community most harmed by identity politics is the African-American community. Because identity politics combines all nonwhite, heterosexual males, the African-American wound is seen as just one wound among many, different in degree but not in kind from any other wound that a nonwhite heterosexual male might claim. Yet that is not true. The African-American wound is different in kind, not in degree. Sustained legalized slavery in America, over more than two centuries, sets African-Americans apart from all others who are now here in our country. African-Americans are not one “identity” among others. My father’s family, one example among millions in America today, came from Lebanon in the 1890s. His immigrant family was not treated particularly well, nor was he. (He nevertheless lied about his age, joined the Marines after graduating high school, and served in the Pacific theater during World War II.) Toleration and acceptance are hard-won and do not happen in a generation. In the identity-politics world, my father’s immigrant family would have been granted the fault-and-guilt debt points to which his immigrant identity entitled him. To which every immigrant family with a long history in America should say, “Nonsense.” And to other immigrants today, who, by Democratic Party logic, are granted fault and guilt debt points, those same now-assimilated immigrants should say: “Stand in line; it will take you and your family several generations to adjust. It won’t be easy, but it’s an amazing country if you work hard for your family, for yourself, your community, and your nation.” Every immigrant group that has entered America for the last 300 years can offer some variant of that lesson.

    The African-American wound, by contrast, still festers. If fault and debt were only a worldly matter, as identity politics stipulates, then the never-ending fault and debt of white America would require that it eternally repay the African-American community with money transfers orchestrated by Washington—overseen by the Democratic Party, needless to say. But trillions of dollars have been spent, while the African-American wound remains unhealed. Does this not prove that fault and debt cannot be resolved on the worldly field where politics plays out? If the wound reaches beyond the world to divine things, to repentance and forgiveness, then it is not through politics but rather through our houses of worship that it will be healed. Political action can supplement the work of these societal institutions, but it cannot be a substitute for them, as it increasingly has been over the past half-century.

    Damn.

  41. Rope Snake

    https://jacobitemag.com/2017/08/12/how-message-board-culture-remade-the-left/

    Trump’s success is also not unusual in a global context. In recent years, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz won a supermajority in Hungary and proceeded to rewrite the Hungarian constitution to declare Hungary a Christian nation and ensure the electoral dominance of Fidesz for the foreseeable future. Britain voted to leave the European Union, and politicians like Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, and Andrzej Duda became household names among the set that pays attention to international politics. Trump is not a uniquely American phenomenon; if anything, he’ll likely prove to be a more moderate parallel to the trends sweeping Europe, just as FDR paralleled the European extremists of the Depression years. Of course, these trends are not just sweeping Europe, as is proven by the victories in Asia of politicians like Narendra Modi and Rodrigo Duterte.

    This global trend simply could not have been caused by an obscure piece of American fandom drama. Gamergate and 4chan cannot have contributed to the rise of the right, because the rise of the right happened to approximately the same extent in countries outside the Anglosphere and outside the cultural reach of Anglosphere nerd culture. Even Vox, which once described Trump as “the first Republican nominee whose ethos owes more to 4chan and Gamergate than it does the Bible,” has found that “polarization is accelerating fastest among those using the internet the least.”

    Nor could Trump’s rise to power have been substantially helped along by pictures of cartoon frogs. A full analysis of Trump’s victory is beyond the scope of this article, but it borders on delusion to believe that Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were flipped by 4chan trolls, rather than by such ordinary factors as Trump’s more popular positions on the key issues of immigration and trade and Clinton’s failure to run a functional campaign.

    The internet has, however, reshaped American politics; just not in the way pundits say it has. The main effects have been on the left, not the right.

    The most obvious effect is that leftists, especially those in the fields that shape and promulgate leftist doctrine, spend a lot of time online. Journalists spend less time cultivating networks of sources and more time ‘building their brand’ and interacting with other journalists; academics network on Twitter; and so on. Connection matters more than ever, and the internet has weakened local scenes and replaced them with placeless ones. Indie game developers from all over the world, for example, can compete for the attention of the largely U.S.-coastal ‘mainstream’ games journalism industry, whose writers are of course all on the same mailing lists, not to mention following each other on Twitter. Journalists, academics, political advisors and the like disappear into their own world — a world where it’s acceptable to wage war on large parts of one’s own audience, or to lead a mainstream presidential candidate to insult a large part of the voting population. And the scenes that are best able to capture the attention of this world will gain power, influence, and the propagation of their norms.

    Since we all of course know* that ‘It’s all projection with the left’™ the idea that the Russian hacking conspiracy theory being pushed is attributable to that projection shouldn’t be surprising… and yet I didn’t consider it at all. It makes sense. “Of course Trump voters were manipulated by online propaganda; I’m manipulated by online propaganda all the time!” /self-aware prog subconscious

    *facetious; don’t send me letters!

  42. Rope Snake

    “As enunciated today, progress is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.”