Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

Author: jesse.in.mb

  • What are we reading? November 2017

    Good day, jive turkeys! Now that we have you wrapped in a wooly blanket of tryptophan and some kind of gluttony-related guilt. We would like to discuss your reading habits.

    SugarFree

    My October horror kick held on through November. I read my first John Farris book. As much as I like the 70s and 80s horror novel boom, I missed Farris somehow. His biggest claim to fame is The Fury, the novel adapted into the film of the same name by Brian DePalma–DePalma and Amy Irving’s second swing at the telekinetic teen revenge drama that came out right after the masterful Carrie. I read All The Heads Turn As The Hunt Goes By, a pleasing blend of High Gothic’s Cursed Family, voodoo, and H. Rider Haggard’s She Who Must Be Obeyed. It starts strong, slows down for a good bit of exposition and then all hell breaks loose. Highly entertaining.

    Less so, was Colin Wilson ham-handed attempt at Lovecraft, The Mind Parasites. Written on a Dare from August Derleth after Wilson insulted Lovecraft, The Mind Parasites starts off well enough–Cyclopean cities pre-dating human civilization, madness, industrial psychology and mescaline–but collapses in a confused mess of vast mental powers unlocked through discovery and resistance to the titular Mind Parasites. If you are going to delve into Wilson, The Space Vampires is the way to go, even if, for some deranged reason, you aren’t a fan of Tobe Hooper’s lunatic 1985 adaption as Lifeforce, that movie people only watch for the nude mute space vampire girl that nearly destroys London. (Link is SFW)

    jesse

    I’ve been a bit audiobook heavy this month with Victor Gischler – Ink Mage: A Fire Beneath the Skin, (Book 1), Michael Crichton – The Great Train Robbery, and A. G. Riddle – Pandemic: The Extinction Files, (Book 1) Crichton remains a favorite light read and I’d never gotten to TGTR. The content was different than I expected but the pacing, informativeness and balance of tension and humor were exactly what I hope for when picking up a Crichton novel. Ink Mage was a solid fantasy novel that works fairly well as a standalone, but left enough hanging to make the sequel seem worthwhile. A young woman’s life is torn away from her by quisling traitors and by god she’s gonna get her duchy back. Pandemic actually reads (listens?) like a Crichton novel, although not quite to the level of one. If you like fictional conspiracies, pandemics and heroic epidemiologists, this may be the book for you.

    Napoleon Hill – Outwitting the Devil. Napoleon Hill is the godfather of the self-help movement and (allegedly) a “fraudster.” Outwitting the Devil was written around the same time as his other works but was withheld from publication until everyone remotely associated with it had died. It’s a fascinating bit of autobiography and a rambling conversation with the Devil about what the Devil does to trip people up. My mother had started reading it and put it down because it was too weird (this is a woman who was telling anyone who would listen that a tetrad of blood moons on Jewish holidays over an arbitrary period of time was a portent of doom!). I’m glad I took it off her hands because while it’s an absolute hate-read, it’s an interesting insight into the completely bonkers source of modern self-help.

    Kai Ashante Wilson – A Taste of Honey is a short novel by the same author as The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps. These stories take place in a future earth with a set of gods who are really just more genetically advanced humans and mortals who are pretty standard issue, but have a bit of mutagenic witchery to them. Wilson has been lauded for queer characters of color enough that I thought I’d find Sorcerer a hamfisted trainwreck, but the diversity was handled deftly and never got in the way of storytelling. When I saw another book out, I picked it up immediately and have been delighted by the level of world-building Wilson is able to do in ~160 pages.

    Brett L

    What did I read this month? Ah yes, Mark Lawrence’s collection of shorts set in the Broken Empire world, Road Brothers. Two of these were really good and added to the whole Mark Lawrence does a great job of standing traditional fantasy on its head. The rest were not bad. The one featuring Jorg’s younger brother alive is — a bit heavy-handed.

    I also read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. I have read a good bit of the Gulag Archipelago, but this book has been much discussed by Jesse in particular of late. It seems like another planet where people could be worked and/or starved and/or beaten to death with great regularity for basically being exposed to other cultures. I had forgotten just how banal it all seems on the page there.

    JW

    Did you know that there’s 120 calories per serving for these Grape Nuts Flakes?

    Old Man With Candy

    SP laughs her ass off every time she sees the books in the bathroom. I’m currently immersed in Technology for Waterborne Coatings, which I got at a book sale for a buck. It’s delightful, every chapter making me wonder what’s going to happen next.

    A mystery in my life is who sent me Cork Dork, a saga of a writer’s quest to achieve the status of Master Sommelier. I know quite a few of the people she meets or discusses in this book, and if you want an account of all of the things I hated about the world of fine wine, it’s here. All of the shallowness, pretension, unhealthy obsession, gaudy show-off, and wasted lives are on display. Interestingly, at some points, you can see the author starting to face some basic economics, then quickly back away. One telling point for me was the New York restaurant-centric approach, which manages to miss the best sommeliers, Masters of Wine, wine lists, wine writers, and importers in the US- her mentors had never heard of Ann Noble, for example, which is like finding physicists who never heard of Poincaré. I have been sorely tempted to write about wine and how to avoid the sort of shit the author rolls around in. (And yes, I thought “Sideways” was an absolutely terrible movie)

    Riven

    I’m still working on The Skinner by Neal Asher. It’s been a busy month, so I’ve probably only read another chapter or two since weighing in last month. Wah wah. Maybe I’ll get more read this weekend while visiting in the in-laws?

    SP

    I’ve been enjoying revisiting the Cliff Janeway mystery series by John Dunning. I’d forgotten what a pleasure they are to read.

    Janeway is based in Denver, and although somewhat predictable in plot, I love the main character and I love the book seller tidbits sprinkled throughout. In a past life, I was tangentially involved in the rare and antiquarian book trade and these details are such fun.

    I listened to one volume from Audible while doing a cross-country drive recently. It was brilliantly read by George Guidall, perhaps my favorite book narrator of all time. It’s super handy that the audio book syncs with the e-book; a seamless transition from one device or location to the next.

     

  • Manly Monday – Cooking With Bears

    Back by (surprisingly) popular demand, but probably on an irregular basis!

    My boyfriend has been marketed to: a British honey producer—Rowse Honey—asked their advertising firm for something interesting and challenging and someone came up with selling honey with bears…gay bears, three of them…and porridge. Unlike the BF, my preferences do not begin and end with “is a bear,” but the ads contain three hirsute men of varying beefiness preparing oats, doing yoga, and chopping wood and they’re charming as all get-out. Rowse is available on Amazon, but not with Prime shipping (boo!)

    https://youtu.be/KSZJ8yH_u2Q

    Part of the problem with doing Manly Monday is that I start GISing something topical like “scruffy men in aprons” (hey, it’s Thanksgiving week*) and then have a difficult time finishing the task at hand my post. It’s fun how a simple image search can lead one to #bearnakedchef a web series of Adrian De Berardinis cooking in just an apron (often just over his nethers). *Except in Canada where y’all already blew your Thanksgiving wad

    Or that there’s a combination photo/cookbook of Italian bears cooking healthy Italian cuisine (one of whom looks suspiciously like a doctor/former chef I work with).

    And then you might stumble on scruffy pizza chef, Daniel Gutter who goes by @Pizza_Gutt on Instagram and makes (wait for it) deep dish pizza in Philly, and was harassed online because his username was too close to #Pizzagate (wtf is wrong with people?)

    http://www.instagram.com/p/BMfUSZdDab4

    All that said, I need to kill the GIS window, don a full body hair net and get some cooking of my own done.

  • What are we reading? October 2017

    It is time once again to pretend that we have education and class. Our one chance of getting invited to cocktail parties… Although I don’t know anyone who invites trashlit, science books, or self-improvement tomes to cocktail parties. We also want to know what you’re reading. Library Scientist or not, SF is going to run out of books to feed us some day.

    SugarFree

    October means I’m reading horror.

    Given the hype over the new movie (which I haven’t found a good copy to pirate seen yet,) I felt compelled to read It, probably for the 12th time since high school. It really is too bad about, ahem, that scene, because, without it, the huge novel could be pushed on anyone who ever wondered what Stephen King’s success was all about. It combines pretty much everything good King ever had to say with some of his best writing–even if a ruthless editor could have improved it by trimming away 100,000 words and a squicky sewer gangbang.

    On the other end of the scale, I also read Cujo. For such a King fan, I just never got around to Cujo, I think because someone warned me off of it. Whoever you were, you were totally right. Cujo is It as seen through a mirror darkly. At best a novella, the simple premise of Cujo is stretched kicking and screaming and biting and pissing itself to an unnecessary novel length with a boring cast of stock Maine characters who add nothing to the core conflict between mother, child and monster dog. The husband’s failing ad agency, the abusive father of the family that owns the dog, the hacky lottery ticket that sets up the deserted farm for the Cujo attack, the foul-mouthed drunk down the way who is Cujo’s first victim, and even the shithead who the mother had an affair with all mean nothing to the overall story. And the ham-fingered way King tries to tie a rabid dog back to Frank Dodd, the Castle Rock serial killer from The Dead Zone, only reminds the reader that they are reading a far, far inferior book (as does the attempt to bring back the third-person omniscient and time-bending narration from Carrie as an attempt at world-weariness.) Stephen King has admitted to being so out-of-his-mind drunk during this period that he has no conscious memory of writing the book whatsoever. He’s either lying to save face or alcoholism has a rare blessing after all.

    And since I was on a roll, I read two more 1970s books-to-movies (watching the movies again, of course, just like It and Cujo.) The Howling by Gary Brandner, the source novel for the 1981 movie of the same name–you know, the one where Elliot’s mom from E.T. turns into a Lhasa Apso–and Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg, made into 1987’s Angel Heart, where De Niro peels an egg while badly in need of a manicure and Mickey Rourke gives the second oldest Huxtable girl the Hottest Cosby of them all. The Howling is fairly mediocre, a they shouldn’t have gone there combined with man, rednecks are pretty creepy; the movie is far superior, with a kinky edge that the book couldn’t find even though it features much more werewolf sex. Falling Angel is very, very well written, and would have been a revelation to read in 1978, but decades of hard-boiled wizards has taken the punch out of its early fusion of Raymond Chandler and Dennis Wheatley.

    Brett L.

    I really don’t seem to have read much this month. Other than a couple of RFPs that included 180 page appendices on the unsuitability of their current system. Holy crap. Whoever did the consulting work on that study must have had a 2 page per thousand dollar rule. I’m sure they were aiming for exhaustive, but only reached exhausting. I did work my way through three of Tim Dorsey’s Serge Storms novels: The Big Bamboo, Hurricane Punch, and Atomic Lobster, because the Apple book store thingy had a collection and I had credits from some class action lawsuit. Anyhow, I enjoy the billion and one Florida facts Dorsey manages to cram into each book, and with several books taking place or passing through the Tampa Bay area, I’ve learned a lot of trivia about my local area. Also, in the last two, Dorsey took Serge back to doing what he does best: killing Florida Man inventively. These are fun leisure reading with all of the Florida and none of the sanctimony of that other Florida novelist from Miami.

    I also read The Skinner by Neal Asher, on SF’s recommendation. Not to steal any of Riven’s thunder, I’ll just say that Spatterjay is a fucked up universe. I’ll probably work my way through the whole thing eventually, but disembodied heads that skitter and giant killer space crabs are merely two of a host of violent and difficult to kill denizens. I will eventually work my way through more. Its good space opera that seems to center on “how can I buff these characters so I can kill them at least twice?” Which is actually a hell of a way to build a universe.

    I am listening to Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss based on a recommendation out of the comments (someone gave RC Dean credit, but if I’m wrong please correct me). Since everything is a hostage crisis negotiation when you have two toddlers, this may be the most helpful book I’ve ever read. The unfortunate downside is that I don’t have a SWAT team to bail me out when I make a mistake. Sometimes, I wish there was.

    jesse.in.mb

    Joe Abercrombie – The Blade Itself, so Brett read it last month and I largely agree with his assessment. I noticed several of you came to Abercrombie’s defense and I may be willing to pick up the next book in the series based on that, but there was some interesting world building and by the end of the book I wasn’t excited to see where the grand adventure would take me.

    Marie Kondo – Spark Joy is more practical than her declutterer’s manifesto The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but I’m not entirely sure that I got that much more out of it than the first book. My book collection is now about 1/4 of what it was previously (Salvation Army ended up with just shy of 200 used books this weekend), and I can actually find clothes in my cabinet and closet, so I’m kinda digging the philosophy.

    Tom Merritt – Pilot X seems to be very much a play on Doctor Who plot and themes and a few times dropped some Easter Eggs related to the show “Spoilers sweeties” and the like. The story is fun and the narrator, Kevin T. Collins does a great job of bringing the story to life. The one down side is that I couldn’t stop thinking about how much the story reminded me of a Who arc.

    JW

    JW has been reading the back of a box of Post Toasties. Did you know they have thiamine, niacin, and riboflavin?

    Old Man With Candy

    I will make two confessions: first, the most interesting book I read this month was Handbook of Ring-Opening Polymerization. From the title, I thought it would be about anal sex, but I was mistaken. Nonetheless, excellent content if you’re into this sort of thing. I am tempted to experiment with microemulsification…

    Second, I never actually did read Primary Colors when it came out. I have corrected this. It’s certainly a good cynical look inside the Clinton campaign of 1996, surprisingly so for a liberal author. But my main complaint was, not nearly cynical enough.

    Riven

    So, I’m still working through The Skinner by Neal Asher, a SugarFree recommendation. I’m only about a quarter of the way through it so far as my free time this last month has definitely been on the short side. Additionally, it took me a while to “get into” this book. I was probably 10% in before things started to click into place, and the confusion surrounding the universe in which the book is set cleared to the point I could read it enjoyably. Not to say that Asher isn’t still introducing new creatures, concepts, etc., just that I think I finally have a basic grasp of the characters (and there are a lot of them) and how they relate to each other. So far the bulk of the action has taken place on one specific world, but there are references to other characters on other worlds and there have been a few scenes set off this main world, as well. It’s making for an interesting universe so far, to say the least. There are a lot of different plots all happening at the same time, and it’s sometimes difficult to see how one or another are going to tie in together. There’s still plenty of the book left for it all to come together and make some sense, though, and I can be patient.

    SugarFree here… I made this handy chart to Neal Asher’s Polity Universe that should easily clear up any questions about continuity or reading order:

     

  • Wednesday Afternoon Links

    Hey kiddos, I’m here to provide you with your daily dose of afternoon links! Won’t this be fun?

    • Speaking of kiddos, the Paddock family is really working hard at notoriety. The Vegas shooter’s brother is in the OMWC way currently having been arrested during an investigation of consumers of adult content featuring child actors.
    • The .in.mb family seat in rural NY now has a spectacularly named gun club for homos and trans-folk “Trigger Warning Queer and Trans Gun Club.” I’d rather see the membership and clout of the Pink Pistols grow, but I’ll take what I can get.
    • Fun fact: Playa Manhattan is masturbating furiously right. this. minute.
    • Philipines continues to snuggle up to people we don’t really like.

    And since I was drunk at Oktoberfest this weekend, here’s a scruffy blond fellow in (faux) leather lederhosen playing the sax.

    Thanks, Alpine Village Oktoberfest!

  • #CalExit 2, The CalExiting

    I’m Not Dead Yet

    #CalExit, more formally known as Yes California (poached unapologetically from the Scottish independence movement) seemed to collapse when it’s leader, Louis Marinelli, moved back to Russia in April, but a flurry of recent news makes it seem like someone forgot to leave the stake in the movement’s heart.

    Singam is the face of “CalFree TV 100% Made in California” (source: YouTube)

    When the site was young—and so was I—I wrote a quick primer on Marinelli and the #CalExit movement for this site. I was contacted by the good folks at the California National Party to clarify the differences between Yes California’s push to radically sever ties with the US by ballot initiative, and the CNP’s more structural process of building a political movement toward that end.

    A Wild #CalExit Movement Appears

    Much of this noise seems to stem from a new group, The California Freedom Coalition (CFC) appearing on the scene. They seem eager to funnel attention to Yes California, but whether they have a formal relationship or are just fellow travelers is murky at best.

    With the exit of Marinelli from the scene I had assumed Yes California would be remembered as the state-scale equivalent of “If Trump wins, I’m moving to Canada,” but a few days ago my news feed started lighting up with sour-grapes Op Eds about how awful California is, being republished by the GOPUSA site and some kind of bizarre exchange between Tucker Carlson and Shankar Singam* the “Vice President, Board Member and Chapter Laision” for the CFC, in which Singam claims California hemorrhaging its middle class to other states is a good thing and leaves Tucker Carlson wondering if he’s being punked.

    Yes California’s official Twitter account has since explicitly denied that Singam speaks for Yes California.

    Singam should replace Marinelli quite handily as a lightning-rod for controversy. He comments aggressively on articles about California independence and is a published author on the topic of ghost hunting.

    CalExit Bits and Bobs

    There’s a Calexit comic book by Matteo Pizzol with art by Amancay Nahuelpan and Tyler Boss. I’ll try and get a copy to peruse on my upcoming roadtrip.

    The gloriously named “Capitalism.com” has an unusually balanced gloss on the economic issues related to CalExit, which was written prior to Marinelli’s exit from the movement. Singam commented heavily on their article.

    *Trying to find information on Singam, Google autocorrects the name to Shanker Singham and tells me he’s an advocate of free markets and free trade with the Legatum Institute. Unfortunately for everyone involved Google is full of shit and this is a totally different guy, and this is why we can’t have nice things.

  • Wednesday Afternoon Links

    Party at St. Peter’s

    Brett is in some third world hell hole that lacks internet coverage. So you get me and slapdash links today.

    At least someone at the Vatican knows how to have a good time.

    It’d be an even better time if they had invited Floridian drag performer Elishaly D’witshes to their party (Dlisted is a touch work unfriendly).

    China is trying to make itself less fun with increased censorship of the internet.

    New details on (very) old material science.

  • What are we reading? June 2017

    *looks up from book* Oh, it’s you. *frowns slightly, returns to reading*

    SugarFree

    Finished Mira Grant‘s Newsflesh trilogy–Feed, Deadline, Blackout–and the various in-universe short stories collected in Rise. All the novels and a few of the shorter pieces in Rise were nominated for Hugo awards so there has been quite a bit of buzz about this series since Feed came out in 2010, but they are set in a post-zombie apocalypse and I have been suffering rather severe zombie-fatigue. Set 20 years or so after a viral zombie outbreak that killed around a 1/3 of Americans, crusading bloggers are chosen to be in the press pool for a charismatic young Senator running for President of the United States. The CDC basically runs the country through strict containment laws and thick layers of security theater. Complications on the campaign trail ensue, as they always do.

    The set-up is a bit derivative, stealing a bit of Bug Jack Barron via Transmetropolitan, but Grant does a pretty good job convincing even a cynic that such a thing as a honest reporter can exist. And that a public who is trying to survive in a much more deadly world would actually care what a reporter had to say. But in a literary universe where the dead walk, some suspension of belief is required up front. And the general anti-government and individualist outlook of the work will be pleasing to the libertarian mindset.

    Grant is a pseudonym for Seanan McGuire, who also publishes under her real name. The Newsflesh material is her one big hit and the in-universe short stories show her milking it for all it’s worth, and as a result the stories are generally-enjoyable-shading-to-disposable. But, overall, I look forward to reading more of her work.

    jesse.in.mb

    Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day: Always looking to up my baking game a bit, especially since the doctor I work for (a former professional chef) was convinced by his partner to get back into baking. I was actually led to Reinhart by Warty suggesting I make a struan. That shit’s tasty, yo. Artisan Breads Every Day does a solid job of simplifying some of the techniques he presented in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice although I’d like more details on prepping a wet sourdough starter into a stiffer biga or pâte fermentée. It’s times like this I was working with a paper book so I could math in the margins.

    Ender’s Game Alive: A solid full-cast recording of Ender’s Game, I listened to this while frittering time in a Tucson hotel. It’s been a long-ass time since I read Ender’s Game and it made me want to try reading Speaker for the Dead again, but I remember picking it up getting bored as fuck and putting it back down almost immediately last time, so maybe not. Bonus points for it being under Audible’s gratis options.

    Beach Lawyer by Avery Duff: This ended up being my Kindle Firsts choice and it was ideal airplane reading. The two attractive male alpha lawyers jockeying for position plot was a bit tired, but it’s always fun reading a novel that’s set in your stomping grounds and Duff’s descriptions of locale are vivid and right on.

    JW

    JW is currently reading his palm…wait, that’s not reading! Jesus, dude, get a room.

    Old Man With Candy

    SP gifted me with a copy of Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature, which has been reviewed and discussed so  many times… wait a minute, it looks like she’s talking about it below. Damn, I can’t step on her toes or I’ll be catbutted.

    And I am plowing into a couple of sci fi books that SugarFree gave me, starting with Up the Line by Robert Silverberg, a time travel novel which, unlike Heinlein’s later efforts, does not involve sex with the protagonist’s mother and daughters. But there IS plenty of sex because, after all, Robert Silverberg. The writing is slick and vivid.

    Riven

    In our last installment, I mentioned that I was still working on cracking the cover of Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison, recommended to me by SugarFree. I have since read every book and short story in “The Hollows” series except the lately published prequel, The Turn, which I only just started yesterday morning. It was a fun and satisfying series: fantasy elements made modern, tastefully written smut scenes that only occasionally take place in bedrooms, and a bit of a who-dun-it feel. I haven’t been able to put them down since I started–even the short stories are compelling. The characters don’t always act in predictable ways (to the reader or to other characters) and wacky hijinks abound from misunderstandings, magical anomalies, and the like. You could argue that the books tend to be a little formulaic as time goes on: trouble rears its ugly head, tension builds, our plucky protagonist Rachel finds that the trouble is actually worse than we’d previously thought, but somehow, someway… everything ends up being alright. Or, y’know, especially difficult problems get carried over into the next book. Ongoing issues don’t just fade away; Harrison neatly wraps them up, sometimes in a book or three, sometimes spanning the entire series. Overall, this was a grand adventure of a series, full of capers and intrigue, a principled protagonist who stuck to her guns, and I’m sorry to see it end–even though I know it can’t go on forever, which is a lasting message from the series, itself.

    Brett L.

    I slogged my way through The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.: A Novel  by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland and — how can I put this… Take the least interesting parts of The Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle and all of the knowledge dumping of Seveneves without the cool final two chapter payoff and that’s this book. If you have the rest of the summer to kill and don’t mind wandering through poor staging/narrator choices and far too many nerd jokes, this is a two-star effort from a five-star writer. The short, non-spoilerish version is that magic waned until a bright MIT guy invented a chamber where the quantum wave function can’t collapse (for those of you who know quantum mechanics, just stick with me here) like the Schroedinger Gedankenerfahrung that everyone has heard enough about to use as a plot device. Anyhow, time travel, not nearly enough adventure, and quasi-immortal German bankers. Its actually worse than it sounds. Seriously, don’t read it.

    On the other hand, I just picked up Mark Lawrence’s latest work Red Sister, which is already better. If you’re not familiar with his post-apocalyptic, semi-magical Europe double trilogy (two trilogies telling two complete, but overlapping stories), I highly recommend them. Look for a more complete review next month.

    SP

    This month I’m deep into The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker. I’ve followed Pinker for many years on edge.org and he’s always fascinating.

    Also reading The Haywire Heart by Chris Case, John Mandrola MD (an electrophysiologist I follow online), and Lennard Zinn. This is a very interesting look at how intense physical training can bring on arrhythmias in endurance athletes as they age. (I don’t personally need to worry about this particular problem.)

    And, YEA!, the new Scot Harvath novel, Use of Force, from Brad Thor arrived. You should get it.

    sloopyinca

    Sloop is reading The Neverending Story and contemplating Xeno’s paradox.

    Gojira

    Gojira gets enough fiction from movies, and is currently re-reading one of his top 3 favorite non-fiction books, The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia.

    Heroic Mulatto

    Summer reading for an upcoming project:

    Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn and TensorFlow: Concepts, Tools, and Techniques to Build Intelligent Systems and Natural Language Processing with Python: Analyzing Text with the Natural Language Toolkit.

    WebDominatrix

    I am currently re-reading The Dictator’s Handbook, which has shifted the way I approach business and marketing, as I’ve seen a lot similarities in the business world.

    I’m also reading Hit Makers about how trends happen.

  • Wood Wednesday

    Manchineel tree just chillin’ there all innocent

    Beloved commenter and Glibertarian co-overlord, Brett L., recently shared a fascinating Atlas Obscura link with the rest of the secret Glibertarian cabal that controls your thoughts and feelings and bends the Glibertarian firmament to its slightest whim. Because Florida is America’s Australia, it has the deadliest tree, the  tree whose Spanish names translate to “tree of death” and “death apple tree” The author gives us an appropriately dramatic intro to the tree:

    You might be tempted to eat the fruit. Do not eat the fruit. You might want to rest your hand on the trunk, or touch a branch. Do not touch the tree trunk or any branches. Do not stand under or even near the tree for any length of time whatsoever. Do not touch your eyes while near the tree. Do not pick up any of the ominously shiny, tropic-green leaves. If you want to slowly but firmly back away from this tree, you would not find any argument from any botanist who has studied it.

    And the whole thing gets more entertaining from there. Of special note: the manichneel tree is the deadliest tree in North America, but not the deadliest plant, which apparently goes to the spotted water hemlock…also a resident of Florida, because…Florida.

    If you’re not woke to Atlas Obscura, you probably should be. Click here for their main page.

  • Friday Afternoon Links

    *hums Katy Perry song gaily while preparing links* Oh hello there fellow Glibertarians! I didn’t hear you come in. It’s Friday afternoon so we’ll keep things relatively light. Enjoy!

    • Los Angeles tunnel diggers discover bone of ancient giant sloth. Kristen Bell hardest hit.

      The twin human advances of digging giant tunnels under the erf to move people and catheterization so that drugged out homeless people can piss themselves continuously on the train without ruining their ratty sweatpants.
    • If you recognize this guy, track him down and fuck up his day with a cudgel. Explanation. Update: Guy was caught after I finished prepping links, you’ll have to wait until he’s out to cudgel him, sorry folks.
    • Philippine politics are almost as interesting as American politics. I wonder how you say “the minute you drive it off the lot” in Tagalog. Also this week, Duterte does his best STEVE SMITH impression.
    • Today is National Doughnut Day. You forgot? Monster! The Denver Post wants to remind you that people who bring their coworkers (and Friday Afternoon Links editors) doughnuts are more popular in a thinly veiled an ad for Postmates: promo code DONUTFAIRY (no relation to our kindly Edit Faerie).
    • Lebanon bans ‘Wonder Woman’ in protest against Israeli actress Gal Gadot. Lebanese Rivens hardest hit.
    • Pornhub released an infographic showing the most common misspellings of porn searches by state. Florida Man sure likes his wbony porm, eh? SFW link from Thrillist if you don’t want “Pornhub” in your work history (their blog is SFW, but pornhub.com…)

    And while skimming #MuscleBear on Instagram looking for some skin to post up, I came across this:

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BU0g0BFFrmt/

    10 internet points to whoever can figure out why that hashtag was used there. And here’s something more in line with what I was looking for.

  • Manly Monday

    Yo, it’s Memorial Day Weekend and also the weekend when Scottish Fest USA happens at the OC Fairground. I haven’t had time to post process most of the pics, so I’ll throw up a few choice ones today and dig through the rest later.

    The flowing locks really makes this action shot actiony.
    Former football player, current Highland gamer, and exuberant thigh tanner.
    This guy’s name is Sasquatch. The very Scottish announcer could not get enough of saying that.
    rawr
    Eddie Braun (or Brun or Brown…it was hard to tell with the thick Scottish accent). One of the women next to us kept describing the filthy things she’d do to the guy in the blue kilt.
    Braun (or whatever) had mad hops. As soon as I put my camera away he hopped into the air pulled his legs up horizontal and touched his toes. Landed gracefully to.