Good morning, friends. I hope you’ve had a solid start to your week. And I hope it finishes even better for you. Let’s jump right in, shall we?
Our closest friend and ally in Europe will invoke Article 50 today and tell the European Union they are leaving. Pants will be soiled. Fainting couches will be used. And the world will continue to turn.
President Donald Trump says a scheduling conflict will prevent him from throwing out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals season opener. (TW: Salon) And the leftosphere, who complain every time he takes a dignitary to Mar-a-Lago, now complain that he’s not taking the time off to do this. Maybe he didn’t have the mom jeans in his closet necessary to look presidential out there as he one-hopped it to home plate with the mechanics of an 11 year old girl. Or was that somebody else?
Rep Devin Nunes’s actions have shifted the intel “investigations” to the Senate. As best as I can read it, Dems want him to recuse himself because he took info from a whistleblower and shared with America that he had received it and that it potentially corroborated a few tweets and the words of a certain former judge/question asker that is currently unemployed.
Cleveland podiatrist charged with groping employee, exposing himself. No foot fetish, anyway. That we know of.
A halfway house in Oakland burned to the ground last weekend, killing 4 people. The list of characters involved is a bizarre one. Lets just hope the eclectic nature of it doesn’t detract from the fact that city investigators were notified on countless occasions of its unsafe nature yet did nothing to prevent the deadly blaze, whether out of apathy, stupidity or just plain malevolence. Just like what happened with the fire last year where 36 people died
City plays shell game with funds. Seriously, why does this surprise anybody with a functioning brain?
Thanks to Trump rolling back the environmental regs, this will likely not happen for another 4 years anyway. Actually, it will never happen, as man always marches forward.
Go out there and enjoy your day. Tell somebody you don’t often tell how much they mean to you. Tell a family member or forgotten friend that you love them. And enjoy the hell out of it.
Comments
371 responses to “Wednesday Morning Links”
17) Lungs produce half of blood platelets in mice, likely also humans
Is medicine behind the other sciences, comparatively speaking? I feel like there are basic questions of organ functioning, nutrition, pathology, and so forth that we know very little about, compared to other fields of science.
I was speaking to my son’s psychiatrist, and he mentioned that right now we have a good idea of the role played by three neurotransmitters in the brain—but that there are known to be at least 150 such chemicals.
In history, it’s crazy how late medical science came into its own. Ignaz Semmelweis didn’t figure out surgeons should wash their hands until the 1840s—and that idea didn’t become commonplace for decades after that! For comparison, by the 1840s we saw all sorts of advances or discoveries in batteries, refining, bridge-building, gases, elements, orbit calculation, wave theory, and on and on.
I mean, clearly we’re juveniles in our understanding of the world in all fields. But I feel like where we might be pre-pubescents in physics, fourth-graders in chemistry, and three-year olds in climate science (No! It’s my global warming!), in human biology we’re still toddlers, trying to figure out what parts of the body produce blood, whether fat is good for you or not, are ulcers caused by stress or bacteria, etc.
As I sip a beer that may or may be good for me. Probably bad for me, that sounds about right.
Perfect typo.
No need for the not at all.
My condolences on your son needing a psychiatrist.
Thank you. In my opinion he doesn’t really need one, but quarterly visits to a psychiatrist are necessary for a Ritilin prescription. IT would be much easier and cheaper if we could get the prescription from an PA or something, but not possible.
That having been said, the psychiatrist is a pretty interesting guy and I don’t mind my son and I spending an hour with him every three months, except for the cost.
Sorry to be “that guy” but does he really need ritilin, or does he have ADHD in the sense that he is a boy and sitting at a desk all day is hard to do.
The latter, definitely the latter.
Until 2001, the City of Fairfax had four public schools and most students walked. In that year, the schools were consolidated into two to better provide “services” to the kids and most kids now take the bus. The old school in our neighborhood is still there, currently a community center. I sometimes wonder if we wouldn’t have had a lot of the behavior problems if he was starting each morning with a half-mile walk there instead of a long bus ride across town.
The 20 minute recess, plus P.E. twice a week, also doesn’t seem like sufficient physical activity. The kids have assigned seating at lunch. Geez, no wonder so many boys need Ritalin (sorry, spelled it wrong above).
It’s not that the Ritalin doesn’t make a difference–it does, a big difference. It just seems like a rather artificial way to achieve what we used to do with vigorous physical activity.
Physical activity isn’t always the answer.
My son is a sophomore in High School and was on adderall for years before this school year. He decided to try it this school year off of it. Even though he played football in the Fall and lifts weights 6 days a week, he really struggled. Now he’s a jacked 205 lbs with shitty grades. We’ve tried every herbal focus pill there is and fish oil — none of them did much.
Last week he decided to go back on the adderall at a lower dose. Like night and day with the schoolwork this week.
I hate that he has to take the drug he hates – but glad he decided to own the situation and deal with it.
We’ve had quite a bit of trouble with the physical activity levels for our kids in elementary school too. They get recess – but not when they have a PE rotation. Or if it rains – then they watch a video. Or if it is too hot. Or if they didn’t finish their work earlier.
Kids need time to be kids. They don’t even get to hang out and talk before school any more. They have “safety patrol” monitors that make sure the kids sit quietly outside their classroom until the bell to start class rings. And at lunch they have monitors making sure they don’t get too loud.
It is a wonder they don’t blow their stacks.
But on the other side, teachers are getting much better at dealing with wiggly little boys. They have bands to put around the legs of the desk for them to bounce their feet on. They have bean bag chairs and carpeting so the kids can sit on the floor. They move around all day now…. with “centers” and personal assignments so they don’t sit in one desk and they only sometimes all work on the same thing at the same time. It really is odd if you grew up in the old “everyone sit in your desk in neat rows and listen to your teacher” era.
My son is on low-dose Vyvanse and doing really well. He’s 14.
I think we need to rethink curriculum that are basically lecture-based. I think we need more hands-on learning experiences, especially for younger boys. More experiments, etc.
The kids have assigned seating at lunch.
Preventing them from learning how to socialize or to be able to pick their own friends. That is straight up child abuse.
This pisses me off so bad. I used to work at an after school program and the moron director implemented “silent snack” my second year there. As in, when they come into the program and get their snack while we take attendance before they split up for homework hour, they weren’t allowed to talk. After being in school all day. And having to come directly to ASP. And then having to go directly to homework hour.
I was in charge of the kindergarteners and first graders, and most of my first graders had been good kindergarteners when I had them the year before. That year? They were out of control. The teacher that was partnered with me started helping me sneak them outside to go run and burn off their energy when we were supposed to be doing homework hour. I could have lost my job for it, but it was absolutely inhumane what this director was doing to them.
A psychiatrist calling out medicine is kinda funny. Psychiatry isn’t even stuck in the dark ages. They are only obliquely familiar with the scientific method.
That being said, getting medicine moving from “in my experience” to a science-based approach is spotty. Basic medical research is doing amazing things, and there tons of research projects that would be great to have done that just can’t get funded because resources are limited.
But at the physician level things are really spotty. They are of course prescribing antibiotics when they know the patient has a virus. But they are also prescribing Tamiflu for non-flu viruses. I had one doctor try to give me Tamiflu when the symptoms didn’t really fit flu. He told me they were using it off-label with good success. Of course, this makes no sense, because Oseltamivir targets the neuraminidase protein found on the Flu virus – and only on the Flu virus. It isn’t going to work on rhinoviruses or other cold viruses.
And surgeons. Holy crap. I worked in a transplant unit where we’d have a bunch of surgeons coming to lab meetings and journal club. “Just show me where to cut” was the common refrain. They are definitely in the ” one guy made this up and tried it out and he says it works real good” camp. They have a long way to go to get fully “science based”.
Heck, I even had a pediatrician recommend a homeopathic nostrum for molluscum. I made sure that every member of the practice got an earful. Apparently a drug rep kept dropping off samples and she just pulled it out because it was in the closet. I held a class for them in what “100 C” means.
So yeah…. compared to particle physics, day-to-day medicine is way behind. But biology is probably several orders of magnitude more complex than quantum mechanics.
“They are of course prescribing antibiotics when they know the patient has a virus.”
I certainly hope not.
You would think, wouldn’t you?
But even this basic principle is commonly violated. Digging deeper, they commonly prescribe the wrong antibiotic. They get favorites – like the Z-pack – and just prescribe it for everyone that needs an antibiotic.
A problem exacerbated by the fact that they rarely know what bug they are trying to kill. Cultures are uncommon in normal office visit settings – so unless you have Strep Throat, you are unlikely to have a physician who knows whether you are growing gram-negative rods or spirochetes. Picking the most effective antibiotic with the highest safety is rarely done outside of hospital infectious disease consults….. at least in my limited experience.
I have specifically asked why they picked a particular antibiotic on many occasions. I have never gotten a satisfactory answer from a primary care physician. Not even a “we have reports of X bacteria circulating in the population right now, and this particular antibiotic is proving very effective”. I will often ask “will amoxicillin do the job just as well? (one of the free ones at Publix, and with very low side effects) They almost always respond in the affirmative and change the prescription from a $60 drug to a free one.
Here’s a clue: any time you have a doctor who tells you he’s going to prescribe “a stronger antibiotic”, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. There are broad spectrum antibiotics, but the correctly targeted antibiotic will have the minimum of side effects and the maximum antibiotic effect on that particular bug. If he gives you Cipro because you have an ear ache, it is best to ask why that particular drug and if there is something safer that will work just as well with fewer side effects.
I’m not in the medical field, but I am in the math / comp sci field. I hold out a lot of hope for AI assisted medicine. Not because I think it will be particularly great, but because it sounds impressive enough that patient will want know what the AI says when the doctor tells them something they don’t like.
I mean, the AI could literally be a Chinese room (look it up), but if its built on simple and accurate heuristics, it can be a vast improvement over the kind of bullshit that passes for front-line medicine these days.
My girlfriend just went to a clinic a couple weeks back with a cold/flu, they prescribed antibiotics without doing a culture or anything. So maybe not when they know it’s a virus, but without confirming it’s a bacteria.
I doubt it. If they see “cold and flu symptoms”, I really don’t think they are going “I suspect bacteria!”
My guess is they get lots of negative feedback for doing nothing (patting you on the head and saying there is a rhinovirus going around and you’ll feel better in about three days), so they prescribe something – with the added justification that it will be prophylactic against secondary infections.
With the massive advances in DNA sequencing technology, it might not be too long before they are doing whole genome sequencing routinely to figure out what bug you have and how to kill it.
I was trying to give the clinic the benefit of the doubt. But I agree with your guess. Too many people don’t want to hear that there’s nothing to be done for their illness. Suck it up, take some OTC cold medicine that works for you, and you’ll get better in about a week.
My guess is they get lots of negative feedback for doing nothing (patting you on the head and saying there is a rhinovirus going around and you’ll feel better in about three days), so they prescribe something – with the added justification that it will be prophylactic against secondary infections.
This. I rarely go to the doctor for flu-like symptoms, but I had something that I couldn’t shake (for weeks) a few years back while living in Korea. He punched my symptoms into a computer said it was flu and handed me antibiotics and a bunch of other things he couldn’t adequately explain. I asked which ones were the ABs and threw them out when I got home and took the rest on blind faith.
It is scary that “evidence based medicine”:
1. Exists.
b. Is fairly new.
That phrase shouldn’t have to exist.
My experience suggests the same.
*cough* I think you are confusing psychiatrists with psychologists. Psychiatrists go to the same medical schools as all other physicians and are doctors first, then learn mental illness from a biologic standpoint, only adding the psychotherapy skills later (and for some who are more into research or other physical avenues, they may have minimal training in the psychotherapies at all). Many psychiatrists also have additional training as emergency medicine physicians, internists, etc — I even know one who is also an orthopedic surgeon. Psychologists, though, spend their graduate years learning about psychological theory and doing counseling, and are not expected to know much medicine.
Surgeons are skilled technicians and can do amazing things with their hands, and are worthy of their admiration. But the idea that they are the brilliant ones in medicine are misplaced. They tend to be the guys who would rather build a beautiful birdhouse in the garage than go visit the sick aunt — and their work is about using those skills, not about reasoning so much. A surgeon’s answer to most things, at least before much of our amazing advances in technology, was to cut open and see what’s in there, and cut out or sew up the problem. (There’s an old joke doctors swap about every medical profession — for example, “internists know everything and do nothing.” For surgeons, it’s that they “know nothing and do everything”.
So, don’t be surprised that a psychiatrist is talking about science, it’s what they know best. For a real interesting deep dive, talk to any psychiatrist about neurotransmitters, reuptake inhibitors, pituitary adenomas, thyroid storm, tardive dyskinesia, or the other things these ‘non-medicine’ people are involved in every day.
I agree with all of that. I was more referring to the field of psychiatry, which has been way behind on taking a “scientific method” based approach to clinical practice. Major chunks of the field are still “gut feeling” based – but the same could be said for internists going about their daily business, I guess.
I’m more talking about the weak state of science in psychology. Having been to many a journal club and lab meeting with the neurobiology and psychiatry crowd, I’ve seen the state of the papers. Way too often they are absolute crap. (I’m talking about hte behavioral stuff – not neurotransmitter half-life studies) Some of this is due to the nature of the stuff they are trying to study. It is almost impossible to come up with good experimental design and good controls in that field. It is just incredibly difficult. But beyond that, the culture is way too accepting of crappy science. They just don’t get it….. at least not compared to a group studying phosphorylation in cell surface receptor molecules. They have subjective endpoints, subjective evaluation criteria…. it is all just a mess. And then they draw conclusions in the discussion that are way beyond anything supported by the data, even if they have some useful data in the paper. It is often these conclusions that are then synthesized into the next big thing.
Much of clinical practice would come under the heading of “not scientific” in my book – meaning it is more of a culture and shared knowledge thing than a rigorously tested scientific practice.
One of our clients. They specialize in gene-testing for conditions like depression, anxiety, and ADHD so that they can help a physician tell when a medication is less likely to work with a patient’s genetic makeup.
That’s where the world is headed, isn’t it? That alone would be a huge improvement for patient treatment. Think of the years some people spend swapping around medications and playing with dosages, trying to find something that works.
I’m sure we’ll eventually arrive at a place where all fields have a rigorous scientific basis for the clinical practice, and the tools will be amazing.
I have radiation enteritis caused by treatment for recent bout of cancer. My radiologist referred me to a gastric doctor who referred me back to radiology who referred me back to the gastric guy. I decided to look for someone outside of the cancer center and was turned away everywhere I tried and told that only the cancer center treats radiation enteritis (obviously they don’t). After fifty hyperbaric treatments I’m now trying acupuncture. This is my last hope. The frustrating part for me is that I’m told that ten percent of patients who receive radiation in the abdominal region will develope chronic radiation enteritis but I can’t find a single recent study on the disease. And by recent I mean in the last decade.
Do you at least get to glow in the dark? 🙂
You could say I’ve got a bit of an aura about me.
Jesus, wtf?
A decade or so ago I was gabbing with one of the other husbands (a doctor) that showed up for my wife’s ladies night get together (rarely do any of them show up) when he announced proudly that a new surgical technique allowed them to do prostate surgeries without cutting nerves and causing loss of boners. The location of those nerves had finally been discovered. The conversation turned south when I mumbled “We are still trying to figure out basic anatomy?”
He sulked in his beer after that.
Las Vegas brothel owner to open Raiders-themed ‘sex palace’ with discounts for players and staff
now that sounds classy
The headline is misleading. Brothels are illegal in Clark County. This will be in the hinterlands.
Shouldn’t he go with “tight ends” for the girls? I mean, this is Whoring 101 here. You don’t call your bitches “wide”.
yeah at least go with slot receiver
*narrows gaze*
Something, something, penetrating the black hole.
Jake the Snake with fumbles in the red zone.
Well the Red Wings themed brothel tested poorly with focus groups for some reason.
Hopefully The Darrell Russel Hall of Dames will be better than the Jamarcus Russell Hall of Dames where all the women are grossly overweight and unmotivated.
“President Donald Trump says a scheduling conflict will prevent him from throwing out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals season opener.”
Good. I’m glad he’s dispensing with all the executive-glorifying stunts and customs. I hope next year for the State of the Union address he sends a letter to Congress.
I wish he told Major League Baseball he doesn’t care. in this day and age why does this matter to anyone?
He should go one step further and either troll the AL by saying the DH is unamerican and stupid. Or troll the NL by saying they don’t understand economics since they expose expensive pitchers to injury by having them hit.
Hell, he ought to do both in consecutive tweets for the added lulz of making lefty heads explode thinking he’s a bot.
Actually, the economics works in the NLs favor. DH’s make a lot more money than a utility infielder.
I hope he decides to do it. Then tweet how that pitch was a fucking STRIKE
While also tweeting how Obama bounced one to the catcher like a little girl.
Ryan wants him to throw it underarm to make sure it passes the plate.
“It was the greatest pitch ever thrown. More people watched my pitch than Obama bouncing one off the grass.”
Oh no, Trump’s not going to give up a chance to rant at the country about how hard he’s winning. It’s going to be fantastic.
The real reason why he isn’t throwing out the first pitch? Little hands (hat tip, “little” Marco Rubio)
The other real reason? 70 year old dude who likely hasn’t thrown a ball in 40 years.
If ever. I can’t picture having played any sport where his opponents could touch him.
I can’t imagine him wearing a ball cap …
I laughed. Thanks.
Ironically, there’s an opinion piece above the fold on the WaPo site decrying Republicans for wanting a “king” rather than a president. Without a shred of irony.
I am waiting for Thomas ‘More like China’ Friedman to write that one.
Or David Brooks. Didn’t he say about the same thing that Friedman did?
I am glad he is not going to be at the game as well. I am sure the crowd would not be friendly.
But I’d love to have the Nats suffer the extra expense of providing extra security.
One of the few things I like about Bush was his ability to grove a batting-practice fastball down the middle.
Do you honestly think Trump will give up a chance to be braodcast on every major and half the minor networks all at the same time?
Spiders could theoretically eat every human on earth in a year and still be hungry
Shhhhhh! Don’t TELL them
Surely it’s just coincidence that I caught sight of a wolf spider crawling up the wall behind my laptop as I read this.
I don’t know what web of bullshit this guy is spinning, but I find it hard to believe spiders consume more meat than humans do in a year.
I’m guessing the spiders in Australia are wrecking the curve.
Spiders seem strangely underrepresented in horror movies. Sharks, rabid dogs, leprechauns, piranhas, bears, and other animals all have their movies or even franchises. But spiders?
Helloooooo..Arachnaphobia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_horror_films#Other_insects
arachnids seem reasonably well represented. But your suggestion for a spidernado franchise is noted.
Eight Legged Freaks is a great guilty pleasure flick, right up there with Zombieland.
Thank you for that list. I love that there’s an section for mollusks.
Which section does Lena Dunham belong to? Or will she get her own?
Pedophiles
Imagine Spiders on a Plane.
I can think of three:
Earth vs. the Giant Spider (best in MST3K form)
also Tarantula (1955)
and the “classic” Kingdom of the Spiders with the Shat.
Kingdom of the Spiders has a special place in my heart. It’s a shitty movie, but I watched it back when I was about 8 years old with my 7 year old sister. (It was on the local UHF station.) And my dad thought it would be funny to toss a rubber spider (It was just a Halloween decoration.) into the room while we were watching it and it landed on my sister’s back.
Followed by watching my kid sister freak the fuck out about the giant spider on her back. Which I would like to re-iterate was just a rubber toy, but holy shit my dad trolled us.
When my daughter was about 10 we were at a Dads-daughters event where about a dozen girls watched Arachnophopia . Right in the middle one of the Dads leaped in through the window. My ears have still not recovered.
*takes notes*
They’re over-represented as video game enemies though.
“Hey, we need some mid-tier enemy that deals melee damage, I’ve got some designs for some interesting creatures…”
“…Fuck it, just make it an off-colour spider.”
My ex loved Skyrim, but couldn’t do some dungeons because these triggered her arachnaphobia.
That’s what ranged weapons are for,
You are kidding, right?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076271/
The real spider woman:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91xunja4s8L.jpg
Forget spiders, the snakes are already doing it.
HTML fail…
http://www.wptv.com/news/national/missing-man-found-in-the-stomach-of-20-foot-long-snake
OK Florida Pythons, you need to step up your game – Indonesia is ahead!
That’s a really big nope rope!
The snakes are SFing the links?
They slither in teh Intertubez and clog it all up.
That link be broke…
Was it this one?
“How did an Indonesian Python Eat a Man?”
Uh….just guessing here but I am gonna say ‘head first’?
Asked for Ketchup… or was it Ketchap?
King of Twitter (now that Burge has stepped down) weighs in
I miss David Burge.
If I win the lottery, I’ll give him the mil to come back.
I’ll pitch in the $3.00. (he wants $1 million and $3 dollars)
Watch out Mr Lizard.
An oldie but goodie.
a followup:
Local researcher says recent Idaho Bigfoot sighting seems credible
STEVE SMITH GIVE YOU SOMETHING INCREDIBLE
OF COURSE STEVE SMITH OFTEN ON HIGHWAY OR AT WATERING HOLE. BEST PLACE TO FIND RAPE VICTIM.
STEVE SMITH HAD ROUGH WINTER, NO HIKERS TO RAPE, NEED TO SAMPLE LOCAL WILDLIFE INSTEAD.
Bigfoot researcher says Bigfoot sighting seems credible. Does he now? Clinton says Russkies threw the election to DT.
One Man Army?
Senate votes overwhelmingly to admit Montenegro to NATO
Oh, good, now we’ve committed to war against Russia to preserve the territorial integrity of Montenegro. What could possibly go wrong?
Russia is jealous – they wanted Montenegro as another outpost of corruption and influence.
Absolutely stupid. The American people cannot identify Montenegro on the map and we are supposed to expect them to spend blood and treasure defending that country? Russia-paranoia is the most frightening development in foreign policy today.
Russia-paranoia is the most frightening development in foreign policy today.
Exactly, so why antagonize them by pressing NATO even further toward them and feeding their paranoia? It makes no sense.
MonteNEGRO?
TRIGGERED!
Montenegro please!
Vaas frowns.
“This shit again, won’t anyone learn?”
It’s Monte of Color!
Oooh, but Kotor is gorgeous.
KOTOR is a great game and all, but those graphics are barely serviceable and not even close to gorgeous.
🙁
I don’t know about gorgeous, but it appears to have held up in being ported to Android.
Always weirds me out seeing games that I would’ve had a hard time running on my computer back in the day playing smoothly on a mobile device.
Of course the have to change the name to Montecountryofcolor.
I figured MonteAfricanAmerican.
This shit will get out of control.
This situation will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.
Ever the optimist
Thank you for catching my very oblique reference.
Damn, Alex Baldwin was good in that.
Baldwin was a better Jack Ryan than was Harrison Ford. There, I said it.
Obvious truth is obvious.
And years later he realized what a fucking idiot he was for not sticking with the franchise.
Harrison Ford was never a good Jack Ryan choice. The whole point of Ryan was that he was NOT an action hero, just an ordinary guy with some brains who got caught up in situations beyond his control.
Baldwin was probably the perfect casting for him.
“Next time, write a god damn memo, Jack.” [gets dropped from helicopter into North Atlantic]
“The whole point of Ryan was that he was NOT an action hero, just an ordinary guy with some brains who got caught up in situations beyond his control.”
I thought he was special forces before being president? I haven’t read any Clancy in a long time, but I thought Ryan was a modern day Grant or Eisenhower
Nope, he was an ex Marine platoon leader who was forced out on a medical discharge as a butter bar when the helicopter he was riding in crashed. After that he went on to a successful career as a stockbroker and part time consultant to the CIA before the events of Hunt for the Red October occurred.
So yeah he had some combat and firearms training but he was anything BUT a combat trained operative
he Academy, Class of ’72. A Marine. Greer told me. Summer of his third year, he and his squad went down in a chopper accident in the Med. Bad – pilot, crew killed. That kid spent ten months in traction, another year learning to walk again. Did his fourth year from the hospital. Now it’s up to you, Charlie, but you might consider cuttin’ the kid a little slack.
Seems like it would just be easier to make Montenegro the 52nd state (after Kurdistan).
Who’s next? The Vatican?
Kinky!
Senators should have been forced to find Montenegro on an unmarked map before they committed to a treaty protecting them.
Paul is so right on this, but the media will treat him like a kook about it.
Mass. State Rep Caught Tipping Off Illegal Immigrants To Imminent ICE Raids
Obstruction? Aiding and abetting?
Highly doubtful. Unless she got the info directly from someone at ICE. Saying “I got the following from my friend in the Latin community” pretty much means she’s just spreading rumors. And I would imagine it’s a solid defense, barring her being tipped off or made aware of the potential raids by ICE itself and told to remain quiet about it.
But why would ICE tell a state rep what they’re about to do?
What is the ‘Latin’ community, anyways? Are her friends ancient Roman tribes?
And why aren’t the French canadiens called Latino?
Why don’t we just go back to “Hispanic”? It’s a hell of a lot more specific.
I blame Napoleon III who started referring to Central America as ‘Latin America’ in order to show some type of kinship between France and the peoples of Central America. How’d that work out for Maximillian?
“And why aren’t the French canadiens called Latino?”
This needs to start right here, right now.
Which is also my point about the uselessness of “Asian”. I mean, Indians and Uzbeks are from Asia too. There was nothing wrong with “Oriental” – it specified Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese/etc as opposed to those Uzbeks and Indians.
India is a subcontinent, so I don’t count them as Asian. The real question is, are Russians European or Asian, or does it depend on where they are at the moment (Moscow v. Siberia).
Romanians too!
Romanes eunt domus
Romani ite domum
OK, but other than that ….
I originally read that as Romans eat donuts.
I may be hungry.
The people called Romans they go to the house?
Sounds like Ms. DuBois ought to be deported to France or Quebec.
If true, she’s a …hero… ? Right?
Leave No Prisoners of War Behind—Even in Space?
Because somehow an act of war in space wouldn’t bring military retaliation here on earth against the guilty country?
Blame it on the Somalian Space Pirates.
aka: Reavers.
Human Trip Wires vs. The Reavers
“If they take the ship, they’ll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing – and if we’re very, very lucky, they’ll do it in that order”
I’d watch that movie.
Reavers are the dumbest thing in the Firefly universe. Somehow the animalistic rape machines still take time to constantly repair, maintain, and decorate their spaceships while also being able to plot complex navigational movements and understand orbital mechanics.
That’s pretty bad. But the dumbest thing in the Firefly universe is River Tam. If you took her, her pussy brother and the tedious Shepherd asshole and shoved them out the nearest airlock then that show could have lasted many seasons. Or at least one more season before Whedon figured out how to ruin the show with even dumber bullshit.
Don’t you talk shit about my Summer Glau waifu.
Eh, it’s a Whedon show. The preternaturally powerful adolescent girl is a given.
I’m not sure any show could have survived how Fox treated that show: no consistent schedule, episodes out of order, give away the big reveals in the ads, when they bother to run ads. Fox misunderstood what they were buying; they thought it was an action show with a cowboys-in-space twist, instead of a ensemble drama with occasional action.
That said, the show had some big holes, JT’s criticism of Reavers is spot on.
Summer Glau could probably sell all that extra space on her forehead to clear channel.
to feed the spiders, of course.
WTF is a human trip wire?
You find the dumbest two guys in your unit, and you put them out as an advance picket in the area you expect the enemy to advance thru’. Often cheaper and better than a pair of sticks, a wire and half a dozen ration cans
Two dumb guys fall asleep. Enemy overlooks them while passing through. Oh yeah and attack will not be during stand to.
City plays shell game with funds.
I was startled to see the article was not about Chicago.
Pension Board Chairman Sam Friar said at the meeting that he didn’t care where the money came from as long as the system got it.
OK, it can come from your paycheck, @#$hole.
Any pol that wants to reel in pubsec unions ought to be quoting him every chance they get. Because that’s the union position distilled to its essence and it will never change.
SJWednesday – Don’t Stick It In Crazy Edition (Technically they all are, but whatever)
It goes on further to explain that the self-loathing can be in healthy relationships and it’s all your fault (you being capitalist patriarchs).
We win yet again
I can see why she feels the need to rationalize self-loathing.
Self-loathing is just self-obsession, another form of narcissism.
“First reason is that some of our harshest criticisms are directed at ourselves already. This is a result of a capitalist patriarchal society that convinces us that we’re never good enough. ”
I laughed out loud when I got to this non sequitur. Beautiful.
I always have fun mentally replacing ‘capitalist patriarchy’ with random other easy-to-blame constructs.
“This is a result of God/the New World Order/the Illuminati/the Jews that convince us that we’re never good enough. ”
Wait, I thought the New World Order, the Illuminati, and the Jews, were all the same thing?!
That’s what they want you to think.
I guess we need to ask Swiss if the Gnomes of Zurich are jewish or not.
By the Ghost of Huldrych Zwingli, no!
Wait I read that book, in the shocking twist ending the guy was hunted down by the Illuminati, the Free Masons, the Rosicrucians, and he didn’t know their secrets any more than they did.
Might be fun to use a word substitution plugin and come up with a list of alternatives. I’ll have to play around with that when I get home.
Bring a male capitalist, this puts me into an endless loop of oppressor and victim!
It is any wonder I loathe myself?
Being a male capitalist…
Bring me the head of John the Capitalist?
Will there be a dance of seven veils?
Where the fuck is this”capitalist patriarchal society” I keep reading about? I might want to move there. What’s their immigration policy?
“You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.”
It’s in California?!
Such a lack of self-awareness. If you go to work and and you’re surrounded by assholes, then go out to work for drinks and you’re still surrounded by assholes. Maybe it’s not that the world is full of assholess, the common point is you, maybe you’re just an asshole and you should try to fix that.
The world is full of assholes, though.
Or you live in DC.
Specificity fail.
I’d like to tell this person the secret to happiness:
DON’T GIVE A FUCK WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK ABOUT YOU.
Period. End of story.
I think I’m in love.
Google it, you’ll find hundreds of Pinterest pins quoting it. There are memes that use it. One of the girls on The Bachelor this season had it tattooed on her.
See, maybe that’s your problem, not with the aphorism itself. (Does she know what a proverb is?) You reference a bunch of vapid dolts who pass greeting card sayings around because yay self-affirmation, then proceeds to deconstruct it like you’re revealing some weighty heretofore unknown side to it. Except it’s still the same dime-store aphorism. You are weighing down a party balloon with a sandbag.
The halfway house burning down is much worse than the last fire. People are forced to live in a halfway house, people volyntarily lived in the other slum.
Hopefully the Oakland city council will finally allocate enough money for the public servants that were tipped off to the problems (over and over and over) to
look into it furtherbe effectively investigated and prosecuted for their malfeasance.Good one. Where were you when i was looking for jokes for my stand-up act
Bow down before the Doctor.
So much class
She bought a fine aristocratic title.
And it’s not pretentious or anything to use that title outside of academia. So is her PhD earned or “honorary?” Because the only thing more pretentious than insisting on being called Dr outside of academia is using your honorary PhD.
She actually earned it. Doctorate of Philosophy (in politics) from Oxford.
No.
I believe she’s a Rhodes scholar. Cecil might want a return on that investment.
Reading into it, Jesus, she’s a walking stereotype. Lesbian raised in extremely conservative Catholic family, has issues with depression, constantly claims to be non-partisan while being ideologically rigid.
I always go back and look at the list of Rhodes Scholars and wonder why some of the more prominent names you see there aren’t held to more account for accepting the scholarships endowed by uber shitlord, racist, imperialist capitalist scum, like Cecil Rhodes.
Then I remind themselves that in the case of American recipients they’re mostly leftists, so I just dial the hypocrisymeter down to 1 so I just get a mild twinge from it.
If you were going to hold them to that standard, you’d have to close down Brown University.
And since she doesn’t need to to have PhD to be a basic cable shill, what proud thing is she doing with her doctorate? Why did she even get it? Go back to egg sac of academia where the only people that will judge you are just as dull-witted as you are, Rachel.
Bill Gates, College Dropout. Just sayin’.
Love me some credentialism in the wild.
I love it. Ad Hominems topping off insults to the deplorables.
I cant understand why arrogance and derision doesnt win votes.
Keep it up lefties. Never change.
ed snowden, high school dropout
And this matters how?
So… she paid hundreds of thousands of dollars and spend a decade of her life studying to do the same job those three guys did without wasting time or money on a useless piece of paper? Who exactly is the smarter person then?
Aren’t all 3 of them richer than her, not to mention the comparison of their audience sizes?
“Go out there and enjoy your day. Tell somebody you don’t often tell how much they mean to you. Tell a family member or forgotten friend that you love them. And enjoy the hell out of it.”
Bah humbug.
And don’t tell us what to do!
When I first read that, I wondered “Why would Trump pay for Rachel Maddow’s tit transformation?”
Ugh. Epic threading fail.
“Bah humbug.”
You are now a forgotten ex-friend.
You mean a lot to me Rufus.
Observe the tolerant and high-minded leftist in its natural habitat.
All of a sudden their fiscally responsible.
Funny that.
Their fiscally responsible what?
THEY ARE.
ARGGHHH.
Transphobia!
^This. And a whole bunch of other judgy stuff they’d jump on if a non-sjw said it. It’s always different when they do it.
It’s OK if you say it for the right reasons to the right people.
I like how they had no problem with Michelle’s lavish taxpayer-funded foreign vacations with her entourage of a couple dozen of her friends.
Well because you don’t understand the nuance of the situations. That was the Empress going on an outreach mission with her companions, this is Trump’s foreign whore hiding their bastard from the public eye.
Ah, yes, I am clearly not “woke” enough.
Principals, not principles.
The Obamas could fly around ind inn his and hers 747, and that was all green because they said the right things, but if I tip my thermostat down to 77 degrees, I’m a Captain Planet villain. Only one thing to say that. Fuck off Slaver.
The Secret Service would have to guard Trump tower regardless of whether his wife and son are there as well.
I dont remember those people complaining about the Wookie spending tens of millions on jet-set vacations. Fuck them.
I do remember them scoffing at any criticism of it.
The Dallas money shifting made me curious. What do the hero’s in blue get for retirement in Dallas. I couldn’t find that info, and am too lazy to keep looking, but according this page.
Not a bad deal to retire at 55 on the taxpayers dime is it?
“Retire” at 55 and then double-dip at another job.
The police chief in Kansas City just announced his retirement. He is getting roughly $500k in unused sick time paid out.
Wow!
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article140294368.html
Correction also includes unused vacation.
My favorite storm chaser died in a non-weather-related traffic accident yesterday while chasing a tornado east of Lubbock.
Bill Paxton?
NOOOOOOoOOooooooooo!!!!!
Not again!
Dicks out for Dorthy-2?
*facepalm*
You dont chase tornadoes east of Lubbock. Just get your equipment ready and stand still.
Kelley Williamson crapped bigger’n you.
KK! You’re here. Yay.
Hi Tonio!!! My workplace had this site blocked for a lil bit (their firewall rules are insane). Here I is! Good to see the motley crew!
Agreed! Good to see you KK????
Science on the march. The left eats its own.
“On 22 March, 2017 I posted on my Twitter account (@michaelshermer) a link to this article titled “Science march on Washington, billed as historic, plagued by organizational turmoil,” which chronicled the “infighting among organizers, attacks from outside scientists who don’t feel their interests are fairly represented, and operational disputes.” The article went on to note that “Tensions have become so pronounced that some organizers have quit and many scientists have pledged not to attend.” Predictably, politics was the divisive element, most notably identity politics involving the proper representation of race and gender diversity, and immigration, obviously in response to the election of Donald Trump. The website of the march felt the need to post an official diversity policy that reads, in part, “We acknowledge that society and scientific institutions often fail to include and value the contributions of scientists from underrepresented groups.”
http://www.michaelshermer.com/2017/03/science-for-all/
Ha! The progressive stack strikes again!
Shermer can be annoying and his contributions to ‘New Atheism’ are pretty vapid but he can be fun. He’s one of the more skeptical of the ‘Skeptics’ movement.
Agree. “Why People Believe Weird Things” is very good, although full of annoying statements too.
UPDATE: President Obama’s Own Defense Deputy Admits Obama White House Spied on Candidate/President-Elect Trump…
She spills the beans without a hint of guilt.
Wow.
That’s pretty much an outright admission. Does she even realize what she just did?
Damning stuff indeed. Shame nobody will do anything with it.
I mean, I think Mika’s total lack of reaction is pretty typical of how most Obama voters will feel about this.
Trump is evil. The right people where in charge and di the right think to spy on him. Don’t you get it? Hitler or something….
She’s not the first one to go on TV and say this. Milo’s site, via Facebook, was pushing a similar video recently. The thing is, no one in the self-proclaimed respectable, left-wing media cares.
I’m sure that the MSM will ignore it, or interpret it differently.
If you speak out against immigration in Sweden, you literally become an outlaw in the tradition definition of the word. The authorities stop protecting you from crime.
But the police in Sweden don’t protect people regardless.
But they usually try to keep up appearances, at least.
Like the article said – If right-wing Swedes were stalking and attacking a pro-immigration leftist spokesperson, the cops would be all over it.
If they are going to do this, I demand a full return to tradition. Convene the thing and declare her a nīðing. What the hel happened to the Vikings?
They left to go pirating and built empires in western Europe and Rus. These are the thralls they left behind.
lol
try that here the headline would read:
LOCAL WOMAN KILLS MASKED MEN IN REALLY LOUD, OBVIOUS, DAYTIME HOME INVASION
Families of deceased just now learning about Castle Doctrine after civil claims laughed out of court
Like this. An Oklahoma man shot and killed three suspected teenage burglars with an assault rifle when they broke into his home…
Heavily armed left-wing group
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/03/27/heavily-armed-left-wing-group-tries-to-intimidate-liberal-reporter-filming-them-it-doesnt-work/
There is nothing intimidating about a bunch of nebbish white tubs of lard. I bet their only callouses are on their thumbs.
Somehow I can’t bring myself to feel intimidated by hipsters, armed or no. Also, was the chunky chick in the second picture carrying an AK with a plastic foregrip? Also also, if you told me that either a.) those guns aren’t loaded, or b.) those are replicas, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.
Funny that they even failed to intimidate a reporter.
also noticed operatorbeard mcKaffiyeh has what appears to be an FN FSP-90, that’s a rare, expensive, not especially useful gun.
however, they do look cool – it makes me doubt it’s the real article.
$1300 isn’t outrageous for the right kind of toy. Keeping it fed is a rich man’s sport though.
Not that I’m skeptical that a hipster is gonna be interested enough in niche gun collecting to own an actual P90, but I’ll just leave this here…
From what I could see, at least they had reasonable muzzle discipline.
At least they’re finally figuring out you can’t have a revolution without weapons. Maybe they thought they were gonna overthrow The Man with racially diverse drum circles?
And bandana neck ties, no revolution is complete without bandana neck ties.
Red ones at that. Where’s their Che shirts?
OMG the scarves.
Let’s note this development as racial tension continue to rise.
Outrage has grown at Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, as the school faces layoffs and increased class sizes due to a law limiting funds for schools with a higher white student body.
The Los Angeles Unified School District provides more funding for schools where the white population is below 30 percent.
http://abc7.com/education/race-based-school-budget-cuts-spark-outrage-in-noho/1818792/
Ha!
Woops!
That’s usually my move.
BARF!
You would think she wouldn’t even want to be seen in public after losing to Donald Trump, but nope she can’t admit to herself that people don’t like her.
“It’s the kinds of things you think about when you take long walks in the woods,” she said. “Resist, insist, persist, enlist.”
Is that going to be her 2020 campaign slogan? Yikes!
“And yet, she insisted” sounds a little naggy.
Finally, Hillary is in favor of women resisting.
Oh jeez. Tell me you heard that somewhere.
Nope.
Its a variation on what some wag said about Chelsea’s book “She Persisted”. Something about how it was a nice pair with Bill’s book, “She Resisted”.
Brutal. I love it.
I really hate to criticize women on the way they dress, especially someone like HRH who can easily be ripped to shreds on her ideology and policies alone, but why does she dress like that?
It’s the Chairman Mao look. It’s all the rage on the left.
A tribute to Prince?
She looks horrible. Not that she ever looked good, but I think she’s been hitting the bottle extra hard since November.
Uh, because The Joker brought it back into style. Learn about fashion maybe.
It’s because she is a total sociopath lacking the ability to identify social cues. Where most people can pick up on what’s acceptable and what looks completely ridiculous fairly easily, she is completely inept in this regard and is dependent upon others to make these decisions for her. I’d bet that once she departs this mortal coil, there will be at least a few stylists and designers publicly coming clean about taking the piss at her expense. “Yeah, we had a bet going to see who could get her into the most absurd shit.”
Nick Gillespie died his hair?
She rebuked White House press secretary Sean Spicer, again not by name, for hours earlier Tuesday chiding a black woman journalist during a news conference for shaking her head.
NYT, WaPO headline: Hillary confirms Sean Spicer shook a black woman journalist by the head.
I don’t even assume you’re making that up.
Holy Batman!
Behold the fact of desperation. It ain’t purty.
Predictably, politics was the divisive element, most notably identity politics involving the proper representation of race and gender diversity, and immigration, obviously in response to the election of Donald Trump.
That can’t be right. We’re as one in our hatred for Trump.
This is news?
People are getting high and hooking up
http://nypost.com/2017/03/28/people-are-getting-hooked-on-chemsex-getting-high-and-hooking-up/
The New York Post enjoys playing at having the naivete of a 1962 Long Island housewife.
“…a 1962 Long Island housewife.”
Go on…
While Sydney, Australia resident Ally* 30, never went to a chemsex party per se, she has had a lot of chemsex. “By day, I worked in HR. By night, I was 25 and partying. While I’d always felt a little shy having sex, however, on cocaine and MDMA, I was totally uninhibited.
So it’s rape, right? Right? HR fuckinstuff.
Well, it’s sex and it’s drugs. So it’s double sinful. Society hasn’t changed much. It’s just that now the witch hunter puritans write for the media.
I just want to be able to get high, have sex, change my mind and accuse the man of rape. Hear me roar.
Well, like I said, there was sex and there was drugs. Must be a victim somewhere.
Chemsex? So Brave New World or Clockwork Orange?
Everyone is flipping out over some chick getting into it with cops in DC. If this happened in NoMA or Anacostia, it wouldn’t even make the local news.
Oh shit, I was watching a sports radio talk show from Monday on DVR when the emergency thing cut in and the news happened. I thought it was just caught on the recording.
The thing I’m talking about just happened like an hour ago
Does Patrick Kennedy have an alibi?
“Although preliminary,” she said, the incident “appears to be criminal with no nexis to terrorism.” She said the U.S. Capitol remains open. She also said there is “no sense of motive.”
The incident started when authorities saw a vehicle driving erratically along Independence Avenue and they tried to stop it. The driver made a U turn and nearly struck some officers.
No nexis other than where it happened.
In other words, we don’t know the motive, but it definitely isn’t terrorism. Because we just know. Somehow.
It was a chick
I think the only question is ‘Was she suffering from TDS?’.
My guess would be run-of-the-mill skeeze with warrants that you see on literally every episode of Cops. Only difference is this all happened in the neighborhood where our superior overlords work. If it were in Anacostia, wouldn’t have even made it on News Channel 8.
Trump is why we can’t have nice things
Metal barricades along Tracy Place and Kalorama Road now make it impossible for pedestrians to use the sidewalk bordering the house. Neighbors talk of clusters of Secret Service agents lingering on the pavement, conversing in loud voices and even changing their shirts in public view.
“They’ve completely taken over the whole street — as if they have the authority!” said Robinson, an Obama appointee to the U.S. Product Safety Commission. In her own email to the mayor, Robinson wrote that the Secret Service encampment “has truly ruined my peaceful enjoyment of my house.”
“It is every bit as disruptive as if a very active business was allowed to come into this residential neighborhood,” she wrote.
The horror.
The HORROR.
Also- The neighbors are willing to put up with the Secret Service blockade on both ends of Belmont Road NW, the nearby street where Obama lives. He’s a former president, after all.
Well, duh. They voted for Obama.
She ought to file a class action lawsuit. That is her specialty after all.
Paging Obama’s neighbors in Kenwood to the white courtesy phone…
OT: California files felony charges against duo who secretly filmed Planned Parenthood arranging to sell fetal tissue.
Major news network investigative journalists react with outrage.
The prosecution got a new leader this year in Becerra, a longtime Congressional Democrat, who took over for Kamala Harris when she became a U.S. Senator.
Woodchi****.
Woodchicken.
*studio audience laugh track and applause*
Mysterious ailment strikes again.
Westinghouse Electric Company, which helped drive the development of nuclear energy and the electric grid itself, filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, casting a shadow over the global nuclear industry.
———
Many of the company’s injuries are self-inflicted, such as a disastrous deal for a construction business that was intended to control costs and instead precipitated the events that led to the filing on Wednesday. Over all, Toshiba has been widely criticized for overpaying for Westinghouse.
But some of what went wrong was beyond either company’s control. Slowing demand for electricity and tumbling prices for natural gas have eroded the economic rationale for nuclear power, which is extremely costly and technically challenging to develop. Alternative-energy sources like wind and solar power are rapidly maturing and coming down in price. The 2011 earthquake in Japan that led to the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant renewed worries about safety.
Gosh, why is it so difficult and expensive to build a nuclear power plant? It’s a mystery.
I suspect it would be prohibitively costly even without the regulatory burden. Fracking is just too easy and the yields too abundant to make nuclear competitive. That said, Democrats are all about a) carbon-costless alternatives, b) overpaying for electricity, and c) huge, expensive infrastructure investments. California should be on the forefront of developing its nuclear industry.
Among the winners could be China, which has ambitions to turn its growing nuclear technical abilities into a major export. That has raised security concerns in some countries.
Beware the wily Chinaman!
OT: PERSONAL BUSINESS EXUBERANCE = STUPIDITY UPDATE:
I reached out to the research firm and made little headway. The contract is pretty specific about acting-as-an-agent-with-authority-of-the-organization, etc, etc.
However, the only person at my firm to receive any invoice is me. Nothing has gone to Accounts Payable or our Accounting department. Therefore I could technically pay the amount on a personal card, then explain my dilemma to my boss, and seek reimbursement when we use the services over the next 11.5 months. This is not ideal (my wife will be extremely unhappy) but it would be some level of “problem solving” before taking the issue to him (of course he is out on vacation now.)
Thus, they don’t need to worry about covering the cost (yet) but I could still have time to sell him/them on the service and use it for the next year.
I think we have the capability of absorbing the $3500 cost as a company, given some of things we have spent money on in the past. Hell, my flights to Boston were always in the $6-$7k range (yes, I know, those are directly client-billable) but I believe we could spread the cost out on billings to multiple clients.
Any additional thoughts on this method of action?
ummmm….don’t do that? No way in hell would I pay that kind of money out of pocket on the hopes that my company would reimburse me.
Oooooh, I don’t know if I’d put that on a personal credit card before having a chat with your boss. If you pay for it yourself your company has to make a specific effort to reimburse you, which means whoever makes that decision would have to really want to do it. It seems like the easiest move for them at that point would be to say, “Thanks for the free stuff, don’t do it again,” and just not reimburse you. On the other hand, if you hold off, talk the situation over, and offer to pay for it if you feel like things are starting to go south, the onus is on the company to find the money or work something else out with the research firm, and that might be more likely to result in their paying the bill.
It’s a tough call, man. Good luck.
Only offer the out of pocket as a last resort.
I’d still recommend dealing with the situation direct with the boss. If you pay out of pocket, you’re just kicking the can down the road, and if I were your boss, I’d doubt your judgment in dealing with any vendor in the future.
IIRC, this bill is for a future commitment to provide services? Now’s the time for a genuine officer of the company to make a manager-to-manager call and kill the contract. There might be a cancellation fee.
But whatever you do, uncomfortable though it be, get this into the ‘official’ sphere as swiftly as possible. It’ll be far less painful in the long run.
this is what i suggested the first time around. usually a vendor will want to try and use the opportunity to at least establish a relationship so they can make you a customer further down the line.
One (minor) thing that you might be able to establish is that you haven’t even logged into/reported/extracted data from that service in the 2 weeks since the contract cut in. That provides a little further leverage in demonstrating that your firm really doesn’t want the service at all.
But seriously, this research firm is just playing hardball. Don’t be intimidated, get your firm to deal with it, take your lumps, and move on.
^^^
I don’t understand why your firm isn’t already using the product. What would your clients think if they knew you’re playing with fewer than 52 cards? It’s borderline negligence. Your bosses should be thanking you for bringing this to their attention!
You haven’t talked to your/their accounts people yet?
You should inform the people on your end, and have the names of the contacts @ the research firm to pass to them. They may just tell you, “fuck em = don’t pay” And leave it at that. And they might send an email to the vendor saying, “you can try chasing this down but it wasn’t done w/ purchasing authority, blah blah”.
Basically, do whatever you can to inform the people on your end what happened. There’s no reason for you to pay and if you do its actually harder for your own co to “pay you bacK” (you would have to invoice your own co to create proper paper trail). Best to escalate the issue to the accounts people and let them tell the vendor to suck it, because that’s their job.
Ah, hell no. Do not put it on your own account. That’s not “solving a problem” so much as it is “creating a whole new problem, this time for yourself.”
If they won’t to pay it directly, why would they reimburse you for it.
Look at this as a test for your company. If they fail, get a new company. But don’t let them fail and stick you with the bill.
also = just curious, who is the research vendor?
Statista, out of Munich. I am dealing with their NYC office.
right. yeah, i’ve used some of their stuff myself.
FYI, from what i’ve seen all they do is aggregate publicly available information and repackage it. Basically, there’s nothing they have you can’t get elsewhere, but just in a less-convenient and more time-consuming way.
unless i’ve missed something. I used to be on their mailing list to get some periodic newsletter-type ‘case studies’ but haven’t looked at them in ages.
Speaking as a business owner, do NOT pay for it yourself.
Research firms / consulting companies are notorious “opportunity billers” and have a tendency to treat any and all interaction as evidence of a contract. Payment for services is definitely within that range.
If the value of services is worth the money then it should be paid by the business itself. If not, then the vendor will have to pound sand / sort it out in court.
I’ve been down this road with less than scrupulous vendors a few times.
Late to the party, but I’m the vendor manager for my company. I arrange all contracts, amendments, etc, but I don’t have signing authority to enter into the agreement itself. It’s a helpful insulator. I’d get everything kicked up to an officer of the company. Don’t take it on yourself.
Any additional thoughts on this method of action?
I saw your earlier report. Isn’t there a staff attorney who can weasel you out of the contract?
Alternatively, if you take on the cost of the contract personally, maybe you can mark up the the reports you use, and turn a profit.
Mendacious, or stupid?
The big story everyone is chasing is whether President Trump is a Russian stooge. Wrong. That’s all a smoke screen. Trump is actually a Chinese agent. He is clearly out to make China great again. Just look at the facts.
Trump took office promising to fix our trade imbalance with China, and what’s the first thing he did? He threw away a U.S.-designed free-trade deal with 11 other Pacific nations — a pact whose members make up 40 percent of global G.D.P.
That’s pretty much as far as I got.
yes
A deal to which China was not a signer. TPP may have been bad for a raft of other reasons, but not because it would somehow have benefited China.
And besides, if Trump’s a Chinese stooge then so was Sanders, and given her mercurial attitude toward policy, so was Clinton when she came out against it after being its biggest booster besides Obama.
That said, if Trump actually starts to tear down trade barriers like he’s doing with the EPA, good news for free traders and bad for autarky.
The Russians are going after the French and German elections, too. According to whoever this douchebag is.
More Friedman:
O.K., Mr. President, let’s assume for a second that climate change is a hoax. Do you believe in math? There are now 7.5 billion people on the planet, and there will be 8.5 billion by 2030, according to the United Nations population bureau — and most will want to drive like us, eat protein like us and live in houses like us. And if they do, we’ll eat up, burn up, smoke up and choke up the planet — and devour our fisheries, coral reefs, rivers and forests — at a pace we’ve never seen before. Major cities in India and China already can’t breathe; wait for when there are another billion people.
Malthus will be right, this time!
Wouldn’t it be great if Trump actually understood a bit about demographics, and schooled these buffoons about the *apparent* correlation between increased prosperity and reduced birth rates?
So, is Friedman promoting mass extermination, or mass poverty? I don’t see a third option.
The third option is really the first, paying off the AGW mafia protection racket. Billions for NGOs and third-world bagmen.
Forced vasectomies for everyone?
This is the opening of an article in the New Republic I’m trying to hack my way through:
Trumpcare is dead. President Donald Trump is humiliated and so is House Speaker Paul Ryan.
This is all I see in the news. Trump has suffered a crushing defeat, and is now hobbled and will be ineffectual for the remainder of his term as President. There is no such thing as the Deep State, but the Deep State just kicked Trump’s ass up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. Long live the Deep State.
But maybe Round One of the insurance clusterfuck repeal effort was a ploy to shine a light into the dark corners in order to see which way the rats scurry. Even if it was unintentional, we know more about where the rats really stand than we did before. And that should be useful, down the road.
When you’re done with that shit sandwich, cleanse your palette with this.
Ever subtle and nuanced, the New Republic is on the health care case.
The moral case for universal health care is too often obscured by red-baiting. But once you accept that everyone should be covered, and establish that the expansion of government programs is the only viable path to achieving that goal, that case is difficult to ignore.
Everything you need to know, in one sentence. REPENT, YOU FUCKING SINNERS! The rest is just filigree.
Healthcare is much too important to leave to government to figure out.
Whoops. Tag fairy to aisle three for a cleanup!
Hardcore, you won’t even thread your request for cleaning up an earlier post?
I admire your dedication.
Maybe I’ll try to fix my fuckup.
Ever subtle and nuanced, the New Republic is on the health care case.
The moral case for universal health care is too often obscured by red-baiting. But once you accept that everyone should be covered, and establish that the expansion of government programs is the only viable path to achieving that goal, that case is difficult to ignore.
Everything you need to know, in one sentence. REPENT, YOU FUCKING SINNERS! The rest is just filigree.
And later, we get this:
They’ll have a test soon: Sanders has announced that he will re-introduce his Medicare for All bill, and a similar measure in the House has 72 co-sponsors. Neither will pass in a Republican Congress, but that’s not really the point.
Medicare For All will suffer a crushing defeat, if it ever makes it to the floor, but that defeat will only make them stronger. Defeat cripples Trump, but empowers Bernie Sanders, because that’s how things work in fairy tales.
I admire your dedication.
I endeavour to persevere.
Anyone seen this?
https://www.good.is/articles/scott-adams-prediction-trump
Or Adams’ take on the AHCA failure: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158812654486/trump-and-healthcare
I hadn’t been following Adams or his thoughts on Trump, so this was all intriguing to me. I do agree that transitioning from “Trump-is-Hitler” (aka TDS) is generally a good thing. It seems Adams is saying we’ve hit peak TDS, and should soon be transitioning to the normal process of attacking the opposition as incompotent.
Except Hitler was not all THAT unique. Is he so different than Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, et al.?