Good morning, all. Hope you’re doing well today as we inch closer to the holiday weekend. Well, to the links!
Charlie Murphy has lost his battle with leukemia. Hopefully he’s playing some 3 on 3 with Prince and the Revolution in a better place.
China urges against American military force being used on North Korea. And at the same time, they urge the hermit kingdom to halt its nuclear program. I sure hope everybody listens, because while I think it would be a pretty short war once those Norks saw what a well-fed military with proper weapons looks like, I believe it would be an utter disaster with a lot of bloodshed. Plus its none our damn business.
Remember how that race in Kansas earlier this week was gonna be the first big test on Trump? Well, now that the GOP prevailed, pundits are saying the first REAL big test is coming up in Georgia. I wonder how much bitching they’d be doing if it was the GOP candidate who had 95% of his campaign’s money coming from outside of the state?
I don’t know what’s more disturbing in this story. The fact that they exempted one of the King’s Men or the fact that they’re openly targeting people that were never convicted of a crime for “unannounced residence checks” or enhanced scrutiny. Either one has serious equal protection implications.
Looks like the Seattle cops will seek felony charges for the woman that shot someone at the Milo event a few months back. The shooter’s attorney is claiming she feared for her husband’s life.
And the Alabama Senate has voted to allow a 4,000 member church to form their own police department.
Today’s music comes to you from Riverdale. And those heady days of cartoon/pop music/lsd crossovers.
Good luck out there today! Whatever you choose to do with it.
Comments
404 responses to “Thursday Morning Links”
Sometimes there is no choice because the alternatives are untenable. ie, I’m stuck at work.
I just got back from work. My weekend starts now, and it’s starting right with a beer for breakfast.
The company I work for has Good Friday as a holiday. Since I am in sales (we don’t work), I will be taking off a little early today in order to have a Good Thursday too: Cigar and scotch, perhaps a stout as well.
And the Alabama Senate has voted to allow a 4,000 member church to form their own police department.
The High Sparrow cometh… Shaaame… shaaaame…
Call the Church. Call the Police. Call the Church Police!
Nice overview of the great bee-pocalypse hoax:
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/neonicotinoids-and-bees/#.WO8ll1XN5ME.facebook
This was one of the things I kept trying to get a clear idea and failing. I still have no idea if neonicotinoids hurt bees.
It appears the answer is no, they do not. Watermelons are lying, again.
“green activist groups claim neonics devastate bee populations”
“there has been no “bee-pocalypse.” In Europe and North America, honeybee numbers are higher today than they were two decades ago when neonics were first introduced.”
“for wild bees, again the decline before 1990 ceased or reversed around the time neonics were introduced”
“bees, which come into the most-direct contact with neonics, are thriving”
What seems significant to me is that all of the ‘maybe’s and ‘we dont know’s are things that can be easily discovered empirically. They dont know how much neonics show up in the pollen bees consume? WTF? Get some fuckin’ pollen stored in hives and measure it. This is the SOP for watermelons: take a subject that can be scientifically studied, blow a bunch of fucking smoke until the subject is fuzzy in the minds of the public, stir people up with scaremongering, pump out rivers of misinformation mixed with half-truths and then agitate for legal action.
Its a con.
‘It appears the answer is no, they do not. Watermelons are lying, again.”
if their lips are moving you can be assured they are lying…
Bees hurt people sometimes. They’re just getting their just desserts!
Latino, Muslim, black and pro-Palestine student groups at Harvard posted fake “investigations unit” notices in dorms that said a resident had been “detained indefinitely” as a potential “deportable alien,” The Harvard Crimson reports.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/32094/
Harvard has an “Israel Apartheid Week”?
What the fuck is the world coming to?
Students involved will be disciplined for hate crimes, no?
What the hell? When the black bags actually show up what are these guy gonna do?
Thanks. Those scare posts about the bees had always seemed fishy (!) to me.
The bee scare gets really silly in the U.S. where they aren’t even a native species. It’s like being worried that wild anacondas are dying in Florida.
Whenever a proggie friend posts about the bee-pocalypse on derpbook I love to point out that honeybees are an invasive species introduced to North America in the 1600s by (gasp!) Europeans.
Yep; I’m glad I found an article that summarizes some of the factual studies and evidence out there that shows there is no problem.
I’m sick of the Facebook meme ‘98% of you won’t repost this bee apocalypse post’ and wanted something definitive to smack them around with.
STEVE SMITH RAPE FOR FREE!
It appears it is, in fact, good to be the king’s men …
Needs more SugarFree:
more here
Needs more SugarFree
Oh, dear God, no.
First line had SugarFree potential.
YOUNG STEVE SMITH?
Oh shit, here we go!
There is no way to “nearly fl[i]ng YOUNG STEVE SMITH off [your] back”.
No one’s back is that strong.
Next OTC drug we’ll have to start showing ID to get
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/04/opioids-diarrhea-drugs-imodium/522195/
That’s just fucking great. I would guess they will also limit quantities as well.
In England they noticed some danger associated with ibuprofen and were thinking of making that prescription medicine, which sounds shitty to me as it is my painkiller of choice and I use it quite moderately, a couple of times a month. Would suck to need a prescription for ibuprofen.
Government can’t trust someone like you to know what they want you to do, so they need to regulate you to death..
Would be great for me if I started moonlighting as an ibuprofen dealer, though. A buyer in pain is my kinda buyer
Do you americans get the generic stuff or are you stuck paying 6 times the cost for Advil?
price I mean not cost. anyway around here Brufen or Cipla is about 6 times cheaper than Advil or Nurofen
Yeah, we can buy generic stuff much cheaper here in the states.
Walmart, for example, sells generic ibuprofen – it’s cheap: 100 count for $2 and change.
Fuck that. Ibuprofen works better for my migraines than the $10/pill prescription meds.
Yeah, that’s my go to for lower back pain as well. May have to take 4 of them, but gets the job done.
The government loves make life difficult so that isn’t, unfortunately, too surprising
Aleve is via Rx in the UK. Sucks.
Fine by me. I’ll just go to Chipotle if I get bound up.
Immodium reduces the effluent output.
Yeah, I usually take a couple before I go on a road trip, especially if I had been drinking the night before. Work pretty well.
Oh, I thought it was for constipation.
Wait until Chipotle is perscription-only.
Or prescription, even. /goddamned idiot
Chipotle won’t be, chipotleway will be though
Domestic violence is a fucking nightmare. Both sides in that dynamic are fucked up. The abuser is fucked up and the one they beat on is also (usually) screwed up too. The victim grew up (usually) in that cycle of violence too and thinks it is normal.
Growing up, we’d get a couple calls a month to the house by a crying woman asking my dad to make some boyfriend/husband stop beating her. (My father was a probation/parole officer) He’d explain to her that unless they’d sign charges there wasn’t much he could do (this was a long time ago). The victim would always say she couldn’t because she loved him and that would send him back to the pen.
Really crazy dynamic. I think that domestic violence is one of those areas where I think we have made real progress by allowing the state to press charges (and not having to force the victim to). Obviously this can also be abused, but I think on the whole it is a good change.
Well i assume this crazy dynamic is why it keeps going and going …
You have a cease and desist letter from Energizer.
Sounds like battery to me.
that charge won’t stick
Hold up, ion gonna let you finish, but first I have to say that Straffin put out the best joke of the year and got robbed at the awards ceremony.
I’m Taylor Swift in this analogy. Fine as long as UnCiv is Kanye.
What’s with the polarizing remarks? Besides wasn’t there supposed to be a pun amidst that static?
I think getting this punny fragment to 30 postings might be a bridge too far
We just need to transform them to go the distance.
Enough with your resistance Number.6, just go with the current.
You guys need to stop getting amped up every time a pun is made.
I’m sorry, I can’t resist.
every time, you jump in. It is re-volting.
This whole subthread is shocking.
Your words do not shock me.
Oh dear, my timing was off, we may have just blown a fuse.
Keeping all the puns in one place insulates the rest of the Glibs from the mayhem.
I wish someone could impede you guys when these puns start.
You’d have to put us in a cell.
*narrows gaze at the lot of ye*
Are you positive?
Swiss is all Ohmygod.
you could almost say we’re a terminal case 🙁
It’s not too late to rectify your behavior, you know.
Who is to judge whether a pun is bad?
ME!
Anode one when I sees one.
I believe Swiss is neutral.
I need to meditate after all these puns:
OHM…….
we’ve got a lot on our plates, but we appreciate your vigilance at your post at keeping us separatored.
It only increases our potential!
Do we have the capacity to continue this much longer?
Are you trying to short the discussion?
Is this sub thread still current?
These puns are exceeding my capacity. I am increasingly reluctant. Flux this shit.
The problem is you guys need some kind of release valve after your commute.
Electrons have consequences.
Well that and the fact that wimmen just won’t listen and do as they are told…..
+1 Sammich
When these guys are taken to jail to domestic violence, their victim is there bailing them out within the hour.
It is especially rich when someone steps in to defend a woman from her abuser and she attacks them to defend the guy who was beating her ass ten seconds earlier. I have a friend that ended up with a broken nose when he got kicked in the face by a woman while he was holding down the offending boyfriend.
Lovely.
Never, ever, ever, ever get involved in a domestic dispute. You think you’re playing the hero, but while you’re shoving him back telling him to calm down she’s about to break a bottle on the back of your head for attacking her man.
Yeah, my wife and I were watching a crime show the other day, and there was an abduction with witnesses. No one called the cops until it got into the media when her body was found. People thought it was a domestic dispute and didn’t want to get involved I’m sure for that exact same reason.
Totally agree.
When I was home for college once, my stepdad and mom were fighting about something, and my stepdad decided to start breaking all of my mother’s porcelain plates and whatnot to be a dick. My mother, in an effort to stop him, jumped on his back and he flipped her over his back onto the ground. Needless to say, I lost my shit and attacked my stepdad, yelling that if he ever touched my mom again I would kill him.
At the end of that scuffle, everyone went their separate ways, and later I noticed that I was bleeding from my neck. Apparently my mother was trying to pull me off of my stepdad, and had dug furrows into my neck with her fingernails in her attempt.
I think a foundational principle of any kind of libertarian jurisprudence has to be charges pressed by a victim, either the victim themselves or by an explicitly designated advocate. I am not a fan of the State prosecuting people based on assumed authority. If you can’t get a victim to swear out charges, I don’t see how you can prosecute in good conscience.
I disagree with this. For example, the state should prosecute a rapist even if the victim refuses to press charges, because the state has a responsibility to get that person off the street. I believe the purpose of confinement is to protect the public from people who cannot be trusted to abide by the law. So, people who have actually demonstrated that inability by committing crimes are the people who should be confined, regardless of what psychology voo-doo they’ve pulled on the victim to get them not to ‘press charges’.
Also, I think confining dangerous people to protect the public is one of the few legitimate roles of the state, and I consider my view to be entirely consistent with my libertarian principles.
If the State cannot get a victim to sign an affidavit stating the crime committed against them, then I don’t see how you square that with the right of an accused criminal to face his accuser in open court. If the victim is alive, I’m going to need at a bare minimum a signed statement from the victim swearing that their rights were infringed. I’m not suggesting victims have to run the whole investigation and prosecution themselves. For homicide you can go with next of kin.
One of the most worrisome trends in the culture today is that the basic rights of the accused, which can be traced back hundreds of years, are something that can and should be waived under “special circumstances”.
This. Good luck confronting the state in court. And you really want the state trying to differentiate rough consensual sex from rape?
Yeah, I do. It’s the state’s job to lock up dangerous people. Part of doing that is differentiating between dangerous and non-dangerous people. If the state is going to maintain a system of extraordinarily expensive prisons specifically to deny people liberty, it better as hell be about differentiating the dangerous from the non-dangerous people and then acting accordingly as opposed to subsidizing victim’s desires to seek retribution.
And yet you are free to post.
Seriously, who decides who is dangerous unless someone is willing to provide factual evidence? It’s a slippery slope.
What do you do when there is no next of kin, or you can’t identify them?
How often does that happen, honestly?
Then i guess they get away with…. Murder
Back when I was younger, I got into a few fights. One of the few moral victories I had was when I went to party with my girlfriend and her roommate. My GF’s roommate’s Boyfriend showed up, and started to slap her around.
I objected once he started slapping her around. Words were exchanged, and since he wasn’t quite rational, fisticuffs ensued, and I won that particular exchange. (I’m not a tough guy, he was a drunken idiot.) Anyways so after roughing him up, my girlfriend’s roommate accused me of being a thug for stopping her boyfriend from beating her up.
Sometimes you just can’t win. So I have a bit of sympathy for cops doing domestic disturbance calls.
There’s a reason cops hate domestic calls the most.
If you’d told her to shut her mouth, she probably would have been up for a 3 way with you and the GF.
There are studies that show mandatory arrest laws have lead to an increase in domestic violence. People are less likely to call the police because they don’t want the family breadwinner to go to jail.
I disagree. The mandatory arrest just turns the 911 call into another way to land hits on the other person. Not to mention the person now has an arrest record and gets to explain that for the rest of their life, regardless of how valid the arrest is or the final disposition of the charges. Sealed records, expunged arrests, dismissed charges are completely meaningless when it comes to any government agency.
I have seen this tactic employed by lots of women with axes to grind at divorce time, and oft on advice from their legal council. Many states allow for special circumstances in otherwise no-fault rulings, and this crap often is abused by the vindictive types.
I think most of the difference of opinion, at least in this circle of people, comes from a decision on whether you think it is morally better that and innocent man is punished or a guilty man is allowed to go free.
Shortly before I got married my Dad told me he wanted to have a talk with me. He told me that my Mom had a cousin that forever explaining bruises by saying that she had fallen down the steps or run into the door, etc. He said when the cousin’s daughter was 2 or 3 years old her father got mad about something and backhanded the little girl so hard she flew into a wall. My dad the girl’s father (the cousin’s husband) had an “accident” that put him in the hospital. He said there were never any charges and everything was handled “in the family” (this was back in the fifties). Anyway, my Dad told me that if my husband ever put his hands on me that I should tell him immediately and no matter where I was my dad would handle the situation “because that is what families do”. My ex and I each have a lot of faults but being violent isn’t among them. I feel sorry for women (and the abused husbands I’ve known) that they didn’t have family to rely on. I’ve known families where violence was just accepted. The husband hit the wife, the wife hit the husband, they both hit the kids, the kids hit each other and eventually the kids hit the parents. Sad way to live.
That should have read, “The dad…” not “My dad…”. Some day I’ll learn to proofread before hitting “reply”.
Was out at an amusement park with a group of friends a couple years back. We were coming off a roller coaster, and saw a guy screaming at his ~8 year old son. Everyone kind of awkwardly staring at them. All of a sudden he slaps the kid in the face. Kid falls down. My buddy yells out “Oh you’re a real tough guy huh?” at the dude. Dude spins around all “WHO SAID THAT? HUH? WHO SAID THAT?”
Now my buddy did 3 tours in Iraq, and he enlisted after getting kicked out of a Division 1 college football program (he was a linebacker). My buddy’s greatest regret from his time in Iraq is that he was not able to ever actually use his bayonet on the enemy. My buddy is the first guy I would call if I needed to create and/or move a corpse. He took a step forward and just stares at Mr. Hits His Kids in Public. Who all of a sudden, is not such a badass after all.
(writes down line in my “Things to use as details when I get around to writing a novel”-notebook)
*Gets out dictionary to see if “enthusiasm” has been replaced with “pantshitting”*
Losers here in the city of Atlanta, which isn’t even part of that district, are putting up Ossoff signs in their yards.
Get Your Ossoff my lawn!
Why Guys Get Turned on When You Orgasm — and Why That’s a Bad Thing
Hannah Smothers. Good BBW porn name.
Oooooookay. *Backs away slowly*
Apr 10
hannah @hannahsmothers_
wasnt until i yelled at a man on the street for refusing to say hes a feminist that i realized my tolerance level for lazy men has reached 0
Yeah, it’s totally not crazy to just yell at people for not adhering to your little niche ideology. (Just look at the percentages of people who identify as such some day)
Oh no you diddin go check her Twitter account.
I did too. This woman is a Grade A idiot.
I would run. Plus a feminist with the name Smothers you know her workout of the day is lifting the ice cream spoon to her mouth.
She seems reasonably attractive, or at least she picked a good picture for her Twitter profile.
Ok actually pulled up her twitter. Baggy clothes, but you’re probably right.
Stay and take a yelling like a man!
I’m not going to bother actually looking at her twitter page, this reads as if she started yelling at a random man on the street.
Which is totally not insane at all!
She doesn’t believe our dicks get poked by IUD wires. Again, oooooookay.
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a9262074/iuds-sex-according-to-men/
Happened to me. I could feel the strings so they cut them shorter. Now I only feel them rarely. It probably has to do with position.
That’s it. Proof positive that absolutely anything good can be turned into Exhibit A on why our world is mired in whatever -ism you are peddling.
I notice that retarded sites like that never allow comments.
Being exposed to alternative opinions is violence, didn’t you hear?
complicating conceptualizations of women’s orgasms as women-centric
Damn. Now I have to take a Woman’s Studies class to have sex?
With these sort of she-hags? Yes..
Next question…
How else are you gonna hook up with em?
God forbid sex be mutually enjoyable.
She’s rather be miserable than let a guy enjoy anything.
I suspect people like this are miserable no matter what, and you know what they say about misery.
It’s like a pie, if a man enjoys pleasuring a woman, it eats into that pie. That’s why the preferred form of sex for these women is while beating their partner.
Go on…
“complicating conceptualizations of women’s orgasms as women-centric”
WTF does that even mean?
It means she paid good money for a worthless degree in grievance studies.
Translation: “You’re supposed to read this and think I’s smart.”
I think what’s she’s getting at is that some guys treat a woman’s orgasm like they’ve scored a touchdown or something (so it’s about proving something to themselves), rather than being something that’s pleasurable for her. There really are guys like that, and it’s a bit… wearying. Just relax, be into it, and if an orgasm happens, great, but if not, it was still fun
The problem is that feminists have argued for decades that men are exploiting women for orgasms and don’t give a shit whether or not women enjoy sex. So if a guy can make a woman cum, then hey, it was good for both of us.
You don’t get to spend decades complaining that men don’t care about female orgasms, then start whining that men are too fixated on the female orgasm.
Bingo.
Well, it’s all about fucking guilt, isn’t it? Since the 70’s, men have had it pounded into them that they’re a failure unless she gets some enjoyment out of the whole sorry, sordid, beastly process, and a woman’s orgasm is solid, irrefutable (well, until you realize they can be faked) proof that there was some point in her being awake.
Lie back and think of England, dear was not tongue-in-cheek humor for women, or so men (certainly in England) are told.
This isn’t going away either. Robot sex will take off as a ‘thing’, but the real gold standard for the guys that use one will be parlaying the experience they get bonking a machine into an equivalent experience with a meat-world partner. And I predict there will be a LOT of disappointed guys around when their first experience with a woman is her bitching about the wet patch or whether she’ll ever get that load out of her eye, and he won’t even be able to ask with any confidence whether it was worth the inconvenience.
Well, it’s all about fucking guilt, isn’t it?
Of course, it’s about guilt. Guilt is all the feminists have got. You’re talking about a group that, at their best, are average looking, of mediocre intelligence and sub-par personalities. If they had any particular personal merit, they wouldn’t feel the need to latch on to a collectivist supremacist ideology (and every identity ideology is supremacist). The thing is, though, if you can make someone feel guilty for their very existence, you pretty much own them.
I agree that sex shouldn’t be football. (But you might not agree with me that football shouldn’t be sex.)
But I’ll not that, back in the long long ago when I used condoms, I faked a few orgasms. If you’re drunk enough, or tired enough, or the girl is annoying enough, sometimes you just want to make a few appropriate grunts so you can go to sleep or go home. I suspect that the girls would be horrified if they knew, and probably this writer, too.
Well, you realize that women only want you to orgasm to satisfy their egos, don’t you? And that’s a BAD THING!
That, and they want you to deplete your precious bodily fluids.
(so it’s about proving something to themselves), rather than being something that’s pleasurable for her.
______________________________
Eh, I don’t see it as mutually exclusive. Properly fucking (or I guess you would say rooting) your woman is IMO as much of a manly act as changing a tire, a hard day’s work, hitting a new mile time or deadlift weight, finishing a project, winning a fight, etc. Yeah, it’s an ego boost, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing.
This complaint from Cosmo writer is just one more example of some twit thinking that if a person doesn’t have totally altruistic intentions then the act is tainted or somehow morally suspect.
They’re not mutually exclusive. But for some guys, it is – or it sure as hell seems that way (you’ll have to trust me on this one).
Yeah fair enough.
I just think that the writer is confusing ” he’s bad at fucking me” with “evil patriarchal shitlord oppressing me”
Sometimes bad sex is just bad sex.
If the argument was simply that guys should stop trying to shake hands with the little guy in the canoe, because hey, sometimes guys just aren’t going to seal the deal, then that would be a reasonable critique.
The whole patriarchal society BS is what makes it a rather annoying argument.
Is the implication that some guys who are bad at sex will force the act to continue until they think they have given a lady an orgasm and thus boost their ego?
Did they poll women and ask them how the felt when a man could or couldn’t get it up when they were with them?
Kevin Williamson’s take on airline problems
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446661/united-flight-3411-why-people-hate-capitalism-theyre-wrong
I think some of the uniform hate for United and championing of Dao when compared to police shootings is that United is an evul KKKorporation.
I fly probably a half-dozen times per year, typically on Delta, and have been doing so for several years. I’ve got a couple of horror stories but my experiences are usually pretty good. It’s very rare that I’m delayed in any impactful way, outside of some weather related issues, and I’ve always been rebooked and compensated to my satisfaction (save one time on United, which is why I stopped flying with them). Are my experiences really that atypical?
I make a rule not to fly on airlines with an american flag painted anywhere on the plane. Broad brush, but makes life easier.
It’s a little bit easier to do that where US cabotage laws don’t apply.
Delta seems to be one of the better big airlines. But my view is skewed, because I haven’t had to travel for work the last several years and when I have flown it’s been with small children, which means I board first and the flight crew goes out of their way to be nice to us.
When flying with small children, I have the wife board first and prep the area, and I and the kids board close to last call to minimize time on the plane.
United is simply the worst. They disappeared about 200k of Continental miles I had accumulated.
I like Southwest for several reasons including the free baggage. I hate getting on and off a plane these days while people are trying to cram suitcases into overhead bins.
For cross-country flights, Virgin America is my go-to.
I can’t stand the lack of an assigned seat on Southwest. It just adds too much pressure to an already stressful situation.
I love it. Just get on the damn plane and sit down.
Well, some of us have Forrest Gump “seat’s taken” ptsd flashbacks when there isn’t assigned seating.
Virgin America is awesome. Not sure what Alaska plans to do with it, though. I hope they keep it as-is.
Effectively shut it down. Import some aspects of the service/culture but that’s about it. Won’t happen until at least later this year or next.
Personally, I’m glad to see it go. Some aspects of the inflight experience are nice (with a lot of useless flash) but they have no idea how to run an airline. Bitch about the legacies but at least they do the basics. Virgin America’s back end from their outsourced call center to their IT is complete shit.
I’m mostly loyal to American because they have a Chicago hub and I find I can usually get close to earning Gold status with them annually. But if my return plans are uncertain, I love booking Southwest–comparably priced to AA, but a credit for any unused travel. So I can book two return flights a day or two apart, then take whichever is more convenient when the travel dates roll around. And if I’m worried about not getting a good seat on Southwest, I just spend the extra $15 for early boarding. And if I only use Southwest for returns, it means I don’t have to go through the long lines getting into Midway. A miserable airport to fly out of, but easy flying into it and getting downtown.
United has a Chicago hub too, but their service has always seemed much worse than American’s to me.
Meet Martina Big:
Ex-air hostess spends £50,000 on boosting her breasts to size 32S and tanning injections for ‘crispy brown’ skin (and says she’ll have MORE surgery to become an ‘exotic Barbie’)
I have excreted things that looked more attractive, but at least some of you would
Oh, a link would be handy
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4408048/Martina-Big-biggest-breasts-Europe.html#ixzz4e8GMSffz
Before – there was a resonable attractive woman.
After – a hideously deformed freak of surgical mutilation.
Is she in blackface?
Pics of excretions plz.
Here you go
Crusty would
Jeebus H. Wartydottir.
*runs back to view yesterday’s ‘Breakfast Pimple Pop’ for relief*
I had to check the date on that posting to be sure it wasn’t from April 1. That … person … looks like “Transgendered Idi Amin”
Pass the long pig sammich!
Oh, so you like Dr Pimple Popper too, now? Let’s watch some more.
https://youtu.be/vIVNdxrVSHQ
(Again, probably SFW. But gross.)
No, I hate those friggin’ things, but they’re less horrific than Fraulein Big.
No, I would not.
http://eyebleach.com/
Where do people get the idea that breasts that big are attractive? I’ve never been much of a boobs man, myself, but even someone who is has to admit those are just gross.
Ex hostess? A Twinkie?
Looks more like a Ding-dong.
Definitely a Ho-ho!
You forgot about the NHL playoffs, which started last night. I know you all are rooting for the Pens to repeat, like I am. I’d still like to see Montreal go deep, but they have to generate some offense.
My team isn’t in the playoffs. Why should I give a shit about the ones that are?
That’s the NHL way – if the Red Wings aren’t playing (out after a 25 year streak of making it to the playoffs!), my interest drops to near zero.
Ditto, although sometimes I pop in on the finals and that can be some good hockey.
Even if Pittsburgh wasn’t in it, I’d still watch when able. Playoff hockey is one of the great spectacles in sports.
I do wish they would shorten the early rounds if they insist on having so many teams. I have a philosophical objection to the finals being played in June.
I prefer actual sports.
Such as?
Rooting for the Pens to repeat?
*fills out psych referral form for LynchPin*
Its about time for another Blackhawks win. The core has one more Cup in them, I want it now!
C-A-P-S! Caps Caps Caps Caps!*
*will choke in the first round
Saw this guy when I was in Denver last month. Way more Caps fans than Avs fans too.
I’ll let Liz Lemon do the talking.
The Penguins are one of the world’s purest sources of undiluted evil. I would root for ISIS against them.
^^^This
You say that now, but wait until one of their forwards skates into the Pens bench and detonates himself. Now you’re pissed off because you paid damn good money for that playoff ticket, and now the game’s going to take forever to finish.
I’ve been listening to Night Moves lately – kinda of a The Band, Neil Young, 70s Radio blend of music
Night Moves? Is there a naked young Melanie Griffith involved?
Great flick.
Yes indeed, and could you imagine anything like the Griffith role flying in a contemporary movie?
Damn, I hate seeing comedians croak-RIP Charlie Murphy. Don’t let Rick James get you two into too much trouble wherever y’all ended up.
Are drugs legal in heaven?
Only the pure and good stuff.
And angel dust of course.
Do they serve pancakes afterwards?
Cocaine is a powerful drug…
God I hope so. Sitting around on a cloud playing a harp would be boring to the point of driving you insane.
Are you a vegetarian professional who doesn’t watch ‘commercial TV’ and can engage in ‘profound conversation’? Why not move in with Catherine?
I hate vegans. They’re not even fit to be soylent green.
I hate all fundamentalist dietary people. I hate being lectured to by omnivores about protein and how certain things are natural etc etc and how awesome bacon is. I hate being lectured to by my vegan cousin who refuses to enter a house that contains ‘the products of violence’.
If you keep a vegetarian kitchen, the last thing you want is somebody cooking (and especially storing) a bunch of meat in there.
Given that she’s a 46-y/o woman looking for “flatmates,” she might be very interested in the storage of meat in her space.
Actually, that does describe me, but SP has spoiled me for other women.
Though I suspect my idea of profound conversation might not match Catherine’s.
I will say it again: People who engage in food weirdness are people who have never been hungry. First world craziness.
Actually I have noticed a lot of that, women who complain they cant find a good man but have ridiculous standards. Hey Princess, the fairytale world you were led to expect doesnt exist.
Also, the dude that meets the items on their checklist is going to be beta, and ultimately disappoint them.
Godfrey strikes again …
https://twitter.com/GodfreyElfwick/status/852136737317023745
What amuses me reading the serious don’t-know-it’s-a-troll reactions to that is that is that they mostly focus on the amount of schooling a doctor needs and not simply on that whole supply-demand nonsense. I mean it’s as if the years of intense study should determine job pay or something.
The labor theory of value* is intuitive and seems fair. It’s not surprising that idiots default to believing in it.
*My phone suggested “cake” instead of “value” here. Indeed, phone.
I once got into an argument with a coworker on a construction site. We were both laborers. He said that there was no point going to school or learning how to do something besides pick up a shovel and dig, that all that knowledge was worthless. Meanwhile, we’re surrounded by equipment that none of us could afford to purchase, following instructions from a plan that none of us could produce or even fully understand, to prepare the groundwork for a building that could never come to be by the sheer force of labor alone. He was championing a willfully ignorant way of living while collecting a paycheck that depended upon the existence of people who did what he said was worthless.
It was utterly baffling, and incredibly short-sighted. Without knowledge and capital to accompany it, raw labor is practically worthless.
It’s utterly baffling only if you ignore the feelz. If you can’t do something, and know it, you can recover your self-esteem by saying it’s not worth doing at all.
A lot of this!
Bingo
Like living as one a woke untermensch in Atlas Shrugged
“He was championing a willfully ignorant way of living while collecting a paycheck that depended upon the existence of people who did what he said was worthless.”
Some gems I remember:
1) Him – “I can play the saxophone just like that.” *begins doing air sax to song on radio*
Me – “What? You have no musical experience at all. You have never picked up a sax in your life.”
Him – ” I can do that, nothing to it.”
2) *Man who has a crush on my girlfriend storm out of room where she and I are sitting talking. As he goes out the door he yells “Science is for fools!” * He knew I was a chemist.
What these two guys had in common were that they were both nuts. Years later I heard the first one finally cracked and the cops shot him after he charged them with a machete. The second one was arrested for beating his live-in girlfriend and finally ended up in a mental health facility.
I have seen that kind of crazy a few times.
I briefly considered tweeting something about LTV, and then thought… why am I taking a troll more seriously than the super-serial people who don’t know it’s a troll?
Don’t lock eyes with that phone.
The labor theory of value as seen through the eyes of the poster boy for Marxist malcontents.
I’m outraged at Minnesoda story.
I could care less about the white privilege nonsense. What urinates me off is the fact that us taxpayers paid for a residence hall named after Mark Yudof?
WTF? A completely forgettable president of the U gets shit named after him? The only thing he did that I can remember is cave on the NCAA investigation into the Gopher b-ball cheating scandal. Sure they were guilty, but most other big universities would have convened a blue ribbon panel, “investigated” and then told the NCAA that they didn’t find anything and to move along. Instead that knothead actually investigated and told the truth.
Doesn’t he realize to be successful in college sports you need to be corrupt!?
Just call it Snowflake Hall and be done with it.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sacramento-officer-video-punch-jaywalker-20170412-story.html
I had a pleasant encounter with a LEO yesterday. Traffic was backed up so I crossed a double yellow to get to the left turn lane. Sure enough there was a cop. He pulled me over said don’t bother with the license just a friendly reminder to not cross the double yellow and we were on our way. I don’t get why this can’t be the norm.
He must be a newbie…he’ll learn.
Or why he wasted his time and yours pulling you over considering the situation
Middle of the month and he might be ahead on his quota?
Look, I’ve been pulled over three times in the last few months and they’ve all been encounters like that. Either they’re learning or they’re getting too lazy to be dicks to everyone.
There is no cannibalism in the royal navy.
http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article144256424.html
Dear Sir, I am glad to hear that your studio audience disapproves of the last skit as strongly as I. As a naval officer I abhor the implication that the Royal Navy is a haven for cannibalism. It is well known that we have the problem relatively under control, and that it is the R.A.F. who now suffer the largest casualties in this area. And what do you think the Argylls ate in Aden? Arabs?
Yours etc.
Captain B.J. Smethwick in a white wine sauce with shallots, mushrooms and garlic.
Ok now, this getting a bit too silly.
Kansas has voter identification laws strongly supported by Kobach that have often been criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union and Democratic lawmakers in the state.
Shocker.
Shocker
Actually, I believe Kobach left home and went to Harvard.
Now the puns have crossed streams. I’m imagining Swiss covered in green slime.
I was going in a different direction, actually. But I guess it sailed over everyone’s head.
Wichita State and Battery, right?
Yeah. But I didn’t cross them deliberately.
Which is an even bigger win! Nice catch.
Sigh. We can’t do anything right in Minnesoda.
I eagerly opened that story to see what hottie had banged some lucky 17 year old high school guy and what do I see. A male music teacher.
I was robbed.
Foetus in fetu fun
Supine infants look a lot like frogs.
Muslim Barney Fife.
Kudos for this guy. Fucking with the Somalis in the Riverside neighborhood takes some stones.
Fun fact the Riverside apartments look like the communist era apartments in the town where I taught in Slovakia.
Shut your mouth. They are beautiful!
Looking at them you have no idea why they’ve been known as “Ghetto in the sky” almost since the day they were built.
It looks like a painting by Mondrian
If he’d been an architect in Norilsk, sure.
That’s something I didn’t know, Pussy Riot’s most attractive member is from Norilsk …
Guy’s a dead ringer for Val Kilmer’s Doc Holiday.
Crack Stacks!
*gives self important sounding title*
I AM IN CHARGE NOW.
Oh yeah?
/the Ghost of His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular
That’s just too long-winded, people tune it out after a while.
/the God-Emperor of Mankind
So unwoke
/The ungendered Almighty ruler of all person-kind
Just for that – there will be no female Space Marines.
/God-Emperor of Mankind
I don’t think the title is as much about power as it is about getting government grants.
Al Haig does sound Arabic.
Cheap raki that tastes like cheap blended scotch.
Liberals fume at Democratic establishment for refusing to take more risk
FIFT
FIFT. FYFUFYI have no idea what you just said.
Fixed your F***up for you.
What they cant seem to fathom this was a special election that is usually a blowout so why show up? If it had been a a major election like midterms or presidential i doubt this happens
Hmm
The resistance mustered a 55 percent less turnout than November. There was no incumbent and isnt the dem a gun owner? Do they bother looking at what the dem who lost profile was?
The grassroots are idiots and the grassroots don’t realize how unpopular they are with regular people.
The establishment Dems are caught between trying to explain reality to them, and simply trying to keep their jobs.
Millennials, popular dating apps might have increased your risk of getting STDs, experts say
Young people have more STDs than ever before, says CDC.
Sounds like the CDC needs more funding.
At least it’s an actual communicable disease.
They also study teenage dating violence and bicycle safety.
Wait what… are you saying people on dates are getting in fights while riding bicycles?
Well they study obesity an increase of which may lead to lower STD risk so it balances out.
You must not have seen hippos rooting…
Dumbass kids. Wrap your damn dicks up. Also stay off my lawn.
I just carry around a can of disinfectant spray.
Is that Pepe in the music video? Also, would Veronica.
Saudi Woman Abducted at the Airport
Dina Ali Lasloom was looking for freedom. Instead she was detained thousands of miles from home, beaten, wrapped up like a mummy, and sent back to the Kingdom.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/13/saudi-woman-abducted-at-the-airport.html
Next time don’t fly United.
*snort*
*opera applause*
Yet instead of focusing on this, “feminists” in the US wear pussy hats and protest TRUMP for vague reasons they can’t seem to fully explain.
I guess i dont get why the progs are enthused by a close loss of 7 pts
Hillary had 70k votes in the county wichita is in alone. Why didnt they show up to be part of the resistance?
The resistance seems more like occupy Wall Street
and or live action role play
Marxist larping. I like that.
They did some demographic studies, and it turns out that AntiFa is just Marx LARP.
Unsurprising. People without means tend to need to, you know, work.
It’s a Dick Dale kinda morning
I could listen all day. My wife hates it and thinks I was hit in the head too often when I was young.
Oh, dear. I’m sorry to hear that!
I’ve probably seen him live 20 times. Won’t be able to catch him in Annapolis this year, though. He doesn’t have too long left here on Earth, I think.
Agree. I missed him when he came to Michigan and have been kicking myself. I’ll probably have to wrangle in a business travel to a location he’s playing.
That bass sounds way off.
That’s nice. This is my scroll music tonight.
Nothing says “integrity” like real Nazis and fake Indians
http://freebeacon.com/issues/soros-funded-group-chaired-elizabeth-warrens-daughter-fighting-voter-integrity-lawsuits/
So I’m behind a college age trio in line yesterday, two girls and one guy. One of the girls is wearing a DC Study Program tshirt and reeks of SJW. The SJW girl is dominating the conversation while the guy is trying to get a word in edgewise. SJW reaches over and puts her hand to his mouth to shush him in public and he just clams up like a good little boy.
I wanted to yell at him “What the hell is wrong with you?” There’s no way I would put up with that or treat my wife/partner that way. It’s completely disrespectful.
The price of threesomes?
Because he’s young and thinks he’s going to get laid.
Trust me, it wasn’t worth it.
Doesn’t matter. Hormone goggles are far more effective than beer goggles.
Sad, isn’t it. You don’t have to be an asshole to get laid, but you sure don’t have to be a pussy either. I go with taint and split the difference.
It’s even sadder that he won’t get laid. Not by those chicks, at least.
And that’s the best thing for him even if he doesn’t know it now.
No spoilers!
Shut up shitlord, she’s speaking for the oppressed
Because these stupid little bastards have been indoctrinated to an incredible extent.
If I ever saw a son of mine act like that I would bitch slap him myself.
The €740 million sale of AC Milan to Rossoneri Sport Investment Lux, led by Chinese businessmen Yonghong Li and Han Li, has been finalized.
http://www.espnfc.com/ac-milan/story/3102696/silvio-berlusconi-sells-ac-milan-to-chinese-investors
Oh no the Chinese are buying Europe! Whatever shall we do?
Wait until they deal with the migrants, then nationalize the industries and re-privatize.
I recently upgraded my television – going from an old 32″ 720P flat panel to a 48″ 1080 LED. Also replaced the old DVD player – going from a component analog connection to HDMI/blu ray / upscaling whatever. (I’m no videophile)
The extra detail is almost too much. A lot of movies, especially the vintage stuff, looks more staged than before. For example, yesterday I was watching the Blu-ray of Swamp Thing. It looked like a cheap made-for-TV movie versus something that was actually released in the theater. Or watching some Kojak DVDs – the sets, well, look more like sets. It’s more difficult to get lost in the story when I’m noticing these little details that were hidden before.
Modern movies, however, aren’t so jarring.
Don’t watch Lynch’s Dune. It did not survive the transition to high-def.
I recently visited someone who was watching a series from the 2000s on an oversized screen. It looked like daytime TV from the80s because the flaws and staging were visible.
There’s a setting to turn off right away. Maybe real motion. Companies call it different things. It makes everything look like a soap opera.
Why would you turn that off? The fake increased framerate makes everything look much more fluid.
Exactly. Fluid like a piss party.
For old movies on blu-ray, see if it has a 24p mode.
I had that experience watching Wizard of Oz. “Man, I never realized how fakey the sets, makeup, and costumes were.”
Go look in the settings. You’l likely find something related to “motion smoothing” or something like that. Turn that off if you don’t want movies to look like soap operas.
So the numbers are in and Bucharest got 1.1 million foreign tourists last year. London gets about 17 million and Paris 12, from a quick google.
Were they all Moldovans shopping?
Hopefully I have this completely wrong, but was Will Grigg “our” Pro Libertate? I saw Will passed away this week. I hadn’t been to Will’s blog until today.
(Link practically guaranteed to be SF’d.)
Evidently not according to SF (IIRC). There was some synchronicity for you.
I wonder how much bitching they’d be doing if it was the GOP candidate who had 95% of his campaign’s money coming from outside of the state?
I eagerly await the nonstop weeping about Democratic “dark money” flooding the Montana airwaves with ads for some dumb fuck folk singer whose sole qualification for Congress is a vow of undying fealty to Nancy Pelosi.
Its only bad if they do it…
Further proof Outside Magazine has gone full retard.
That is full woke. It’s impossible for there to be more woke*
* I have no clue what I’m saying here
As I understand it, “woke” is millennial vernacular for “retarded.”
You’d think African American men would not want to be hanging around under trees if white privilege is so powerful these days.
*Normally I delete these kind of thoughts. WW3 is coming so all restraint is off*
At this point I am worried I might start rooting for that to happen because humanity has certainly lost its way with this prog bullshit.
You win the thread.
No worries. Swiss will be here soon to dole out the punishment.
Proposal: some white dude Glibertarians meet up in NY, dress in full Uncle Pennybags regalia, and stand under that tree.
Are you trying to trigger HazelMeade?
With an shoeless orphan
A black orphan and girl orphan.
Trees, so racist.
Or maybe the white guys don’t need to stop under trees every two minutes to check their social media or call their bae. They’re trying to get to get to work and get home as quickly and efficiently as possible which I guess is racist and misogynistic.
This guy teaches at Sewanee?? That school couldn’t be more of a stereotype of rich preppie Southerndom. Weird.
Can’t argue with all that raw data he collected.
Further proof Outside Magazine
has gone full retardwas acquired by The Onion in a secret hostile takeover.Haskell calls the area around the tree “gendered and raced space.”
It’s shitlords, all the way down.
Dukes has said he does not want his assailant punished, and his attorney has said he is interested in “restorative justice” through communicating with the shooter.
Is that just fluff for the jury?
Sheila Abdus-Salaam, a NY state court judge washes up dead in the Hudson River, no signs of foul play (which doesn’t prove anything, but still). She was a woman, an ethnic minority and a muslim. Progs freak out, go full tinfoil.
Also, apparently some other minority judge somewhere in the US was recently killed in what appears to be a routine robbery. Fires fsnned.
Fanned…
To be fair, just coming into contact with the Hudson has been known to be fatal.
not if your Sully
Or Cosmo Kramer.
And if it was foul play my first guess would be a mob/union hit based on the MO.
“There’s no such thing as the Mafia!”
/Tony Soprano
“The cartel member suspected of shooting and killing Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in 2010 with a gun supplied by the U.S. government was arrested in Mexico Wednesday”
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/04/12/fast-and-furious-scandal-suspected-triggerman-in-border-agents-murder-arrested.html
You’d think African American men would not want to be hanging around under trees
“Bravo! Author! Author!”
“China urges against American military force being used on North Korea. And at the same time, they urge the hermit kingdom to halt its nuclear program.”
It looks like Bannon has been seriously ‘moted, and Trump is abandoning anti-globalism along with Bannon.
I understand Trump offered China a better trade deal in exchange for their help with North Korea.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/328217-trump-china-will-get-far-better-trade-deal-if-it-solves-north-korea
Meanwhile, Bannon was kicked off the National Security Council last week.
Those of us who hate Bannon’s economic nationalism should rejoice.
Bannon’s anti-globalism, however, flew in the face of the neocons, and if that changes, then that’s worrisome.
Unfortunately, it often is the cast that those with laudable foreign policy goals have awful domestic policy goals, and vice-versa.
I prefer the fat anti(stupid)war guy to whoever has his ear now. That being said, the Norks have lost their damn minds and have pushed it a bit too far. A nuke test might very well mean war and I wish one of Kim’s generals would put a bullet in the back of his head.
If they don’t the Chinese may. The last thing the Chicoms want is a shitshow with the US next door in Korea.
They’re also wary of being overrun with North Korean refugees.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4399076/China-deploys-150-000-troops-North-Korea-border.html
“Fix bayonets, comrades”
Chinese instant border fence?
If the CCP had been reading Dalmia’s articles, they’d know that being overrun with ideologically fucked up refugees is actually a blessing in disguise.
I’m surprised by the lack of cat butts – the pun-o-rama extravaganza deserves a few.
Now that’s just negative.
I think our puns went over like a lead-acid balloon, sadly.
Wire you being like this, LH?
That would never have happened if Jo (Hamster) was still in charge. 😉
School of evil.
It is hard to overstate the school’s influence on corporate America.
That’s why a new, exhaustive history of the school is causing a stir before it is even out. The book, “The Golden Passport,” by the veteran business journalist Duff McDonald, is a richly reported indictment of the school as a leading reason that corporate America is disdained by much of the country.
“The Harvard Business School became (and remains) so intoxicated with its own importance that it blithely assumed away one of the most important questions it could ask, which was whether the capitalist system it was uniquely positioned to help improve was designed properly for the long term,” Mr. McDonald writes in the book, to be released in two weeks.
His answer? “With economic inequality at a hundred-year high and meaningful progress on climate change and other social and environmental issues embarrassingly paltry, the answer to that question is obvious. It is not.”
Citing a report from the Aspen Institute, Mr. McDonald explains that “when students enter business school, they believe that the purpose of a corporation is to produce goods and services for the benefit of society.”
“When they graduate,” he continues, “they believe that it is to maximize shareholder value.”
Harvard Business school has ruint the Garden of Eden. There’s a lot of derogatory stuff which can be said about “MBA culture” but this guy sounds like an idiot with some sort of axe to grind.
As far as compensation goes, if Bill Gates or Richard Branson thinks he should be paid a trillion dollars a year, I’m okay with it, as long as the cash flow supports it. A guy like Jeff Immelt, who is nothing more than an employee, should be getting a lot less (particularly since I firmly believe my GE shares would jump by at least fifty per cent if he announced his retirement).
I’ve never once worked with anyone who went to Harvard bidness school. How many MBA’s to they turn out each year? Compared to how many companies and employees exist in the world?
It’s not just the MBAs (we recruit one or two a year, we’re somewhat more brand-loyal to Wharton) but you also have the turgid spewings of HBS thoughtpieces that infest the business media.
I mean, we even get it in the LCD displays in the elevators. Suggestions like “The purpose of management is to cultivate subordinates’ skill sets to maximize operational efficiency”, and you have all the Bright Young Things in Hugo Boss suits get out on the 24th floor and discuss just how deep and insightful those guys at HBS are.
These are the podlings that one day will take the helm at Pepsico.
ugh…. empty-headed pablum
Still less destructive of civil society than if these kids graduated into public service.
The MBA culture isn’t nearly as bad as HBS’ sponsorship of the consultantcy culture. The insane hubris that a snot nosed 26 year old with zero real world experience other than previous “engagements” has much to offer is laughable. And the idiocy of deer in the headlights senior execs that bring in these snot nosed kids to “help” improve their company. If they knew how to run a business in your industry, they’d be doing that instead of working for accenture bleeding your time and money like all other parasites. Next week your supposed trusted partners will be doing the same for your competitors.
I can’t watch House of Lies. It’s too depressing of a show. Like Portlandia.
But they have super secret patented cash flow techniques!
Full disclosure, I enjoy thumbing through Havard Business Review, although the excessive use of pseudonyms gives me the feeling that the case studies are more fictional than a Stephen Glass story.
My first job out of college was with Andersen Consulting (before it turned into Accenture). I’ve never worked with smarter more driven people. Being my first job, I thought that was the norm. Big surprise when I left and went and worked at other places and discovered that most IT shops are one step below Roy and Moss.
Be warned, when I worked at AC, it was in Mpls which had a “solution center”. Instead of us going out to clients, we had teams of developers building really big software solutions in house. We did a lot in the airline business.
Given a choice between the knob who wrote this:
“The Harvard Business School became (and remains) so intoxicated with its own importance that it blithely assumed away one of the most important questions it could ask, which was whether the capitalist system it was uniquely positioned to help improve was designed properly for the long term. . . . With economic inequality at a hundred-year high and meaningful progress on climate change and other social and environmental issues embarrassingly paltry, the answer to that question is obvious. It is not.”
And a Harvard MBA, I’d go with the Harvard MBA.
For HM. Haven’t crossed his path for a while so, there it is.
Excellent argument against central planning (IMHO): passive funds vs. active funds.
“Over the 15 years ending December 2016, 95.4% of U.S. midcap funds, 93.2% of U.S. small cap funds, and 92.2% of U.S. large cap funds trailed their respective benchmarks”
—-Wall Street Journal
https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2017/04/12/for-90-of-all-stockpickers-a-decade-and-a-half-of-underperformance/
Now, obviously, the problem with these fund managers isn’t that they aren’t qualified to pick stocks. Portfolio managers are some of the smartest, best educated, people in the world–and they don’t get or keep their jobs because of their education. Their positions are performance based.
Obviously, the problem with these fund managers is not that they aren’t appropriately motivated to make money for the fund’s shareholders. Not only are they expected to keep a large portion of their own funds in the portfolios they manage, but outperforming the indexes brings incredible rewards to them personally.
No, the reason 90% of the fund managers out there can’t outperform the S&P 500 is because central planning is inferior to 500 different companies each pursuing their own interests from their own perspective. Is there a better explanation?
Well, a high proportion of those fund managers are effectively buying a (smaller, but allegedly representative) portion of the S&P500 and attempting to enhance it with ‘hot stock picks’, so you get a Taupe Sandwich with Magnolia Dressing – not positioned to deliver Alpha in the occasional significant bull runs, and subject to bear events and selloffs.
So you get S&P 500 plus or minus some selection alpha, minus fees. Unless the clients lucked out and the ‘alpha stock picks’ of the manager (usually concentrated in about 10 companies) coincides with the market’s gainers, you end up trailing the index.
In context, up until 2000, only about 5% of long-only equities managers outperformed their benchmark over a 7 year time horizon. I used to work for one that did, consistently, but to do it he had to forgo investment from large pension funds because he used to bias his portfolio so that he eliminated about 100 firms in the S&P500 because they were smaller AND had bad fundamentals.
The upside of benchmarking to an index and falling behind it is that you can tell the pension trustees that while you lagged the S&P by 400 basis, all your peers lagged by 600 basis.
Why don’t the institutions just go passively managed then for their stock portfolios then?
I’ve dealt with institutional investors in commercial real estate, and I guess the people who work for an institution like that need to justify their own jobs. If they recommend going passively managed, then, yeah, why does the institution need their own portfolio people to oversee that?
I should say, I stock pick myself, but I’m not buying at market, exactly, and hoping that that market goes up (greater fool theory). I’m using options, selling covered calls to get in below market prices, etc. I know large cap investors can’t do that stuff, and I can. I also know that as an entrepreneur or as a CEO, you can make decisions that will directly impact your earnings over time–and large cap portfolio managers can’t really do that (activst investors do, but that’s different).
So, being a large cap portfolio manager is even easier than being a central planner that way–because the portfolio manager doesn’t even need to run 500 different companies–they just have to predict which ones will have higher earnings growth than the index in the next quarter–for 15 years going. And very few of them can do that one simple thing! Not to mention that because someone is among the one in twelve who beat the average over the last 15 years is no indication that they will do so over the next 15 years.
Active vs. passive funds is like a simplified model of what central planners are trying to do–and it shows why they fail at even a simplified task relative to hundreds of individual concerns all making choices for themselves. Any progressives who can’t explain why fund managers can’t easily outperform the indexes has no business trying to tell us that we’d be better off if some elitist politicians were making our choices for us–not to mention running the economy.
Many large institutions do just buy the S&P 500 and enter investment advisory relationships with consultants or directly with large hedge funds so they can build an ‘enhanced’ portfolio. The problem is that a real “enhanced portfolio” implicitly uses leverage, which is a no-no for many institutional investors. Just how the blend is maintained is increasingly farmed out to pension consultants too, allowing the end client to maintain an arms-length relationship between the end client’s investment staff and the inevitable underperformance that occurs.
With low t-bill rates and high frequency trading, attempting to deliver consistent, positive alpha in capital markets without leverage is almost impossible. For a trustee at an investor with a large defined-benefit plan, you know you’re going to be in the job for the next 10 years, you know that the the plan is underfunded, and won’t be able to meet its obligations in 18 years’ time based on the feedback your actuaries have provided, unless the market goes into orbit. But you do know that you’ll be out of there and pulling your golden parachute in 11 years as long as you haven’t trodden on your own dick with your portfolio.
The last thing you want is a portfolio with beta. You’d rather have a 0.0 beta, -100bp alpha product than a 0.6 beta, 0bp alpha product. And the other side of the equation. There’s a demand for bland product that tracks, if lags, the index. Ideally, it should be so bland that the fees are 25 basis points.
Is there a better explanation?
nope.
This twitter thread defies description
Shortest description: The twitter hive mind tries to come up with explanations/solutions for United’s debacle.
Literal murder. That guy with the bloodied face was literally dead.
Shortest description: The twitter hive mind tries to come up with explanations/solutions for United’s debacle.
I was expecting a bunch of people bitching to have Ferguson brought back. Or Giggs installed at the manager. What I found was stupidity distilled even more than I find from Manure supporters.
High speed rail…..BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Leftists do love their choo-choos so.
Why fly when you can have 200-year-old technology?
They really are a bunch of Luddites.
High speed rail can’t come soon enough.
Because nobody would ever get dragged off a train by uniformed goons.
Nor locked in one either.
From the Truth Is Funnier Than Fiction desk:
The election of President Trump has provoked elation, outrage and self-reflection among Americans across the political spectrum. For some, it has even prompted something more drastic: a career change.
In the last few months, professionals across the country have decided to leave conventional jobs and get involved in politics or activism.
“It feels like we are in this existential crisis of democracy,” said Matt Ewing, who abandoned a career at SolarCity to join Swing Left, a group hoping to get out the vote in competitive congressional districts in 2018. “Going back to work in my comfortable corporate job didn’t make sense anymore.”
He abandoned a sinking ship so he could spend more time social signalling. Good for him.
Apparently when your candidate loses a free and fair election, that’s an “existential crisis of democracy”. Fucking idiots.
Not Charlie Murphy!
Lessons in how not to get my business…
From an email
I thought I was gonna get your business.
:kicks pebble:
I haven’t forgotten. I’ve been pinned to my desk lately.
I’ll follow up within the next week.
Cool!
Heh. Scruffy’s giving sloopy the business.
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-nigerian-scam-emails-are-obvious-2014-5
Long story short, scammers intentionally screw-up because they want to target idiots.
Lessons in how not to get my business…
Oh, c’mon! Just send him the damn bank info. What’s the worst that could happen?
I have a new business opportunity!
There’s this guy that sent me an email. He’s a prince in Nigeria, but he’s having trouble getting his money out of the country.
Canadian health care is even more restrictive than communist China’s.
That’s technically not correct – Canadians are allowed to spend all the money they want. Doctors who take provincial health plans may or may not be allowed to take their money.
Also, because it never occurred to the country’s founders that state has any business meddling in health care, each province has a separate legislation dealing with health care, some places being more lenient than others.
Hilariously, if it’s non-necessary health care? Spend as you see fit. Dentistry, optometry, cosmetic surgery aren’t covered by provincial plans (I think anywhere, definitely not BC) so it’s a combination of supplementary insurance and out-of-pocket for those.
Next you’ll tell me it’s those services that are much more responsive to demand and price sensitivity.
Inconthievable!