How now, Swiss Brown Cow?
The SMITHS were not answering the GlibPhone, and ZARDOZ had yesterday morning…so, looks like we are stuck with Swiss Links. Sorry, not as fun as, say… SEA SMITH NAUTICAL LINKS O’ RAPEY FUN…but they should serve, nonetheless.
And here are your links to get the day rolling:
- Don Swissxote Update – Come see the violence inherent in the system! Catalonia Trial.
We protest!
- Somalia! Pirates! Lists! I am sure every swingin’ one o’ ye is going to read #10 and say “squandered?!” … well, I did.
Yaarrrr?
- ROADZ! For a good laugh, read this and compare with reality. “We are dedicated to public service and strive for excellence and customer satisfaction.” HAHAHAHAHA!
O Golden state!
- And finally….A question I am sure we are all burning to find out the answer to…
Uh, go forth and FREE CASCADIA from the Brutals, or whatever.
Your apathy is showing in mixed metaphors.
The only thing i cant get behind Catalonians is that bastardized French/Spanish they speak.
There’s a few Catalonians I could definitely get behind
This hombre know what I’m talkin’ bout.
It’s late for me, and I assume Q still posted something. But I’m gonna say that whatever he posted is hereby an afterthought.
“However, pirates are highly respected in Somalia and the fastest way to lose that respect is to repair a damaged vehicle.”
That’s some culture.
Ilhan Omar sees nothing wrong with this.
How many “read more” links does that listicle make you click?
*narrows gaze*
I totally did that on accident.
Your story is full of holes.
*narrows gaze*
Emmental you, I’m not sure what to think about that excuse.
At least they were on time?
I can’t believe I read this tripe.
I have never sausage a sense of humor
Nice!
You really don’t want to see how he made that pun.
It would probably take an act of congress.
Pirates are the biggest spenders in Somalia. They spend their cash so recklessly that they quickly return to the impoverished lifestyles they were trying to escape. Today, top pirate bosses complain that they exhaust $1 million in the blink of an eye.
Paging MC Hammer…
Stop. Pirate time!
Is that still a “Can’t touch this!”?
Somehow it’s the fault of white privilege i’m sure.
So, your typical NFL 1st string WR or RB, in other words.
So pirates in Somalia are what the rich are to Burning Man?
Poverty Happens.
Swiss links are my favorites. (Also Jimmy Dean breakfast links)
Thank you, but I think SP links are the best. Sloopy and Banjos put more into their links, and OMWC swings a big link stick on weekends. Brett’s seem to be moar fun than mine too. We need more jesse.in.mb links, I should think.
[runs off crying]
Huh. A couple of weeks ago I made about…uh…30 lbs? of sausage using two Jimmy Dean recipes. Half hot, half maple.
Hot sounds awesome. Do you ship? 😉
OT: I wanted to give props to Winston, who I think is taking a lot of ribbing with excellent poise and good humor.
I think you’re mistaking Winston for his mother
/clever
That’s not a rib.
While I’m usually not commenting in the same threads as he, I admit, I’ve never seen him blow up about anything said to him.
I’ll second that.
And I’ll third it. Well said, OMWC.
Yes. He personifies the ideal of Thick Skin/Like water off a duck. Props to winston.
Winston is always informative. Mom jokes are…well, mom jokes…always funny. Where did that start, anyway? TOS?
Yes.
And a long while back. Not sure who started it.
He was quite the troll at one point; he’s much more engaging in discussion than he was when the Mom jokes became a thing.
Agreed, I’ll drink a glass to you and your glorious thicc skin, Mr. Winston.
I’ll hop on this sentiment just like I hop on [redacted].
True dat, yo. I think Winston carries himself with grace and restraint. There are some important lessons that I think a lot of us could stand to learn from his conduct in the comments.
Yeah, I never got the Winston hate.
Hate? I thought there was a lot of love for his mom…
Not a fan of the Winston’s mom jokes, but I just roll my eyes and scroll on.
110) Did my taxes yesterday, and was really eager to see how it played it out, considering the horror stories I’ve seen in the Washington Post lately from readers who allegedly owe thousands more than last year. Here’s an example from today, but there’ve been at least two others in the past week. Well, last year I owed about $1,800 to the IRS, and this year it was about $3000, which was well within my expectations. I did a little analysis, and about 2/3 of that increase was due to my hitting the $10,000 maximum on the state and local tax deductions, with the rest due to not enough withholding. Considering that I’ve seen a $150 increase per paycheck over the past year, so about $3300 overall, I come out $2100 ahead for the year. Not bad, Trump tax cuts! Further thoughts:
a. The articles in the Post suggest that the tax cuts are too small for people to notice the increase in their paychecks, but that they notice the huge increase in what they owe when doing their taxes. This strikes me as bizarre. I mean, I’m acutely interested in my paycheck. I certainly noticed after the tax cuts passed that I had an extra $150 every two weeks—but I would have noticed if it’d been $1.50 as well. I guess I’m just acutely interested in my paycheck! (Aren’t other people?) But I’m supposed to believe that someone who is so insensitive to their financial situation that they don’t notice an increase in their weekly/bi-weekly/monthly paycheck, yet they remember to the penny what they owed to the IRS a year ago?
b. If you owe more because you didn’t have enough withheld over the past year, shouldn’t you be angry at your company’s payroll department, rather than the president?
c. We make pretty good money—two professional full-time incomes–we bumped into the state tax deduction limit, and we still didn’t owe a whole lot more, considering. The only way I can see a household owing thousands and thousands more is if you live in a multi-million dollar house and hit the mortgage deduction limit. It’s awfully hard to feel sorry for you, if that’s the case!
I did a little analysis, and about 2/3 of that increase was due to my hitting the $10,000 maximum on the state and local tax deductions
Humble Brag?
Seriously where do you guys live tho that you are paying that much in State/Local taxes? I feel like Utah is pretty steep with their 5% flat Income tax and 6% sales tax, but i guess it could be much much worse
I hit the limit in AZ, but I’m overpaid, so it’s all good. If it wasn’t for our tax shelter, I would have gone with the standard deduction and come out slightly ahead of deducting SALT and mortgage interest. A lot of people will win with the bigger standard deduction. Just because you itemized last year doesn’t mean you should this year.
I’ve itemized for 25 years in a row, and this year the standard deduction was bigger. I felt kinda disappointed that everyone else is no longer subsidizing my mortgage, but I got over it. Might as well just pay it off now, the thrill is gone.
I’m in the same boat (not quite as long itemizing). The standard deduction was big enough to cover everything.
I did think about the immodesty of discussing my financial situation, but I felt the topic was important enough that Swissy would want me to make a post about it.
No i’m not begrudging you at all. I’m always happy to hear when my fellow glibs are doing well. And i’m sorry that you hit the limit. I myself was being Glib and immodest about the low levels of taxation i face, because when you take into account Sales Tax, Property Tax, Gas Tax, Income Tax… It’s pretty easy to see how you can bust $10000. (still blows my mind a little)
Well, a post would have been grand…as a comment…
Eh, $2,500 in property taxes and $7,500 in state income taxes at a 7% rate would be state AGI of $107,000. Nothing to sneeze at, but I don’t think JATNAS is trying to brag about getting into the 70% marginal bracket.
Prior to my wife’s impromptu career realignment our AGI was in that neighborhood, and we po. But this is Maryland, so there’s that.
Not bragging at all, but my property taxes nearly put me over that limit. That is a big reason we will be moving upon retirement. Fucking schools aren’t even THAT good.
But I’m supposed to believe that someone who is so insensitive to their financial situation
Believe it. I work with people who don’t even know what the numbers on their checks mean. They’re decent folks, just functionally illiterate.
I know the perception of the refund/April 15 heck trumps the reality of taxes actually paid, but did your taxes go up or down?
I can’t do a dollar amount comparison that’s apples to apples. I’ll have to do a percentage next time I’m at that computer.
I paid $500 less on $5000 more in income.
I call that a change in the right direction.
Sounds like two changes in the right direction to me.
My taxes for the year were down about $2100 overall.
My tax person always gives me a two-year look back when I file, which is nice. This way I can see that (slowly) lawyering is paying me pretty well. . . .. Of course if everyone who owed me money showed up and paid me today, I’d make enough to pay for 3 vacations. Which is why I have to charge what I do, to offset the non-paying people.
^That’s a good window into the finances of sole practitioners, and other similarly-situated professionals.
Slowly lawyering means you rack up more billable hours, amirite?
The stories I could tell you about court-appointed counsel…
What do you think you are, a pay day loan institution?
Paying about 4000 less on about 5000 less in income.
We did hit SALT limit but not by much, though we are due a refund there so technically I guess we were under the SALT limit.
If i understand correctly, 2000 of the reduction is new baby. Go forth and breed for tax savings.
Course new baby is also the why of 5000 less in income since mom took off about 4 months and only got partial pay over it (shockingly companies actually do paid leave voluntarily to keep good professional employees who would ever have imagined).
The decrease in AGI would have been more but my evil corporation gave two unexpected raises with back pay last year. Presumably they had more money from not paying taxes.
All in all, from my world yay tax cuts. 4000 liberated from Pelosi, McConnell, and Trump.
This is why I refer to my kids as Tax Deductions (online—I don’t say their names on the internet).
XY TD was scheduled to be born just after the first of the next year. I told the doc I didn’t care if he was born on Christmas, as long as it was before December 31. I didn’t carry that baby all year just to not get the deduction.
I’ve said it before, but I ran my taxes through the old and the new rates, and I’m paying $400 less under the new rates.
I didn’t mess around with my W-4 cause I assumed that it work out. Which means I overpaid by a huge margin this year than i did last year.
“110)”
You are actually bothering to keep count?
457) You mean you don’t?
Ha ha ha. This is volume 2, by the way. I started renumbering when I came over here from TOS, where I had 288 Thoughts Not Sermons.
When he first showed up at TOS and started that numbering I ribbed the shit out of him. Good times.
My wife and I had $200 less stolen a month and we had a decent refund. We are what you would call middle to upper middle class. Before the tax cuts and before we had kids we owed a little bit every year and we made far less money then.
“”Whether it’s commercial photo shoots, product placements, or Instagram posts thanking ‘friends’ for a useful item, attendees including fashion models and social media ‘influencers’ are wearing and tagging brands in their playa photos. This means they are using Black Rock City to increase their popularity; to appeal to customers and sell more stuff.””
Oh noes, not selling stuff.
I paid less than 10% of my gross in FICA. Having 2 kids in daycare, I maxed a $5K Dependent Care FSA and still got a solid dependent care deduction. But then again, I paid the daycare more than the tax man (if you include just income tax). I expect I have hit bottom for taxes as a percent of my income. Oldest starts kindergarten in the fall. I may owe next year. So yeah, be a breeder, have young kids, pay little taxes if you make under $250K/year married filing jointly to minimize tax as a percentage of income.
b) withholding tables are set by the IRS, not your company (IRS Pub 15).
I still think it was a (well played?) ploy by the republicans to push through more tax cuts.
I think it’s an effort by the bureaucratic mob to undermine the tax cuts. People aren’t smart enough to realize they paid less tax through out the year. They only see the fact that their refund is lower or completely gone.
In my case, our combined income went up and our total tax bill stayed about the same even though we were forced to take the standard deduction. So a net tax decrease. But the withholding was fucked up so we have a big bill due in April.
Almost everyone who makes less than $150K takes the standard deduction now, so if you figure with-holding for standard deductions, you’ll be accurate more often. No more some people who make that much own an $80K house and others own a $400K house. Trying to hit the middle of that with a single withholding number is way hard.
This is the first time since we built our house that we took the standard deduction. We hit the SALT limit.
I had actually increased my withholding last year in anticipation of lowing itemized deductions. And yet, I will have a substantial tax bill due this year.
I will have to increase my withholding again this year.
I guess, living in FL (8% sales tax), I didn’t even bother trying to optimize for SALT.
Why increase your withholding? I can save whatever money I need to send to the IRS and make it work for me better than the damned thieves in D.C.
Turbo Tax warned me I may have to pay a penalty.
So, more withholding to get below any level of taxes due that would result in a penalty.
For what it’s worth, I’ve paid that underpayment penalty several times, and it’s fairly nominal. I’ve written checks to the IRS for just under 10K and I think the underpayment penalty was somewhere around 100 bucks or so, it was definitely a rounding error relative to the total payment.
There are, or at least there used to be, a few safe harbor provisions as well, like not getting penalized as long as the amount you withheld was equal to your previous year’s taxes.
Last year I had my withholding increased a bit so as not to have to write such a big check in April, but the penalty was not a significant factor in that decision.
I’m in the same boat. Near as I can tell we will pay about the same amount of tax even though our wages are up by about 9K. It’s difficult to tell because we have more dividends and lower capital gains. We hit the cap on SALT, but we’re in California with what is considered a high income in most of the country, so we’re the rich that the Dems say are supposed to pay more. Our witholdings were messed up so I have to write a big check, but that’s partially my fault.
It was brilliant. Let’s say 2020 has a recession, and we get more Dems in the House, President Harris, and even a Team Blue Senate. Try funding Medicare for All or Green New Deal initiatives with taxes at their current level. In a recession no less.
While it was dumb to lower taxes without significant spending cuts to accompany them, it was a smart move politically.
I am sure every swingin’ one o’ ye is going to read #10 and say “squandered?!” … well, I did.
Most of the money we spent on drinking, gambling, fast cars, and loose women. And the rest we just wasted.
Precisely.
It may be an issue of not having the liquidity to a ransom.
Or, more likely, preferring to overpay for insurance as a recurring expense your bosses won’t challenge rather than paying a ransom and have them bitch about an unbudgeted expense.
Your pirate crew would stack some serious paper.
And finally….A question I am sure we are all burning to find out the answer to…
But are the new Poor ruining it fore everyone?
>>A question I am sure we are all burning to find out the answer to…
My best friend – very bright but extremely eccentric – was/is a big Burning Man freak. He’s been attending for years and raved about how much fun it was. It seemed interesting – years ago – but now I have no interest in going.
Don’t really care about the “rich people” thing but if they were being prats, I would make sure to make them suffer in a playful way. PA speakers pointed toward their camp, busting in with a mob of people, or whatever.
It turned into Coachella II a good 10 years ago.
Although it’s not really my scene, it always carried a slight fascination for me when I was younger just because of the relatively chaotic order on a short time scale.
Yeah over a decade ago I was interested in going just to see the naked chicks and hang out with the freaks. But now that I’m old and boring – the idea of walking with the weirdos in the boiling heat has little appeal.
Not interested. I hate being around crowds of people. Whatever scene or event it is, there’s always a few people who are completely into it. Take golf or tennis. There’s always the guy with all the clothing and equipment, spend hours and hours practicing and playing.. Or metal shows…there’s always the guy with the battle vest completely filled with patches and has a 1000 LP and tape collection, who knows every band. People wanna be into shit, good…more power to them…I just hate being around people who are totally into shit
Ha! So much this. Crowds and people who take things too seriously. Especially amateur golfers. Blech.
Same. I watched the “Fyre” documentary last night. It was pretty hard not to feel a little smug about spoiled rich kids getting ripped off. Is it morally ok? Definitely not. Somewhat satisfyingly ironic? Yup. The whole instafamous/festival scene strikes me as unboundedly vain and hedonistic. To each their own but Burningman and the like would get a hard pass from me.
As Ben Domenech said regarding Fyre, there really were no good guys in the whole affair. Just varying degrees of vain/stupid/evil.
The local suppliers were the only good guys in that whole thing.
I just don’t like being around a lot of weirdo hippies. Hard pass from me.
I started hearing “it’s as good as it used to be” around 25 years ago.
I mean “it’s not as good as it used to be”
The favored saying is “it was better next year”.
Yeah, anything like that will eventually become popular and then…. “corporatized!” Once the crowds reach a critical mass, return to the societal mean is inevitable.
Fantasy Fest in Key West is like that. My first couple of trips were lots of fun.. weirdos everywhere, lots of young (and old) painted women (and men). Lots of tongue in cheek debauchery. It was a step into a wild, hedonistic culture that only exists for a day.
Then a couple of years in, people started complaining about the corporate infiltration. I didn’t really mind – the Captain Morgan’s girls were hot and they handed out free T-shirts…. what’s not to love.
Then a couple of years later I started noticing couples with kids at the parade….. Whaaaa? Who brings a kid to a gay-centric festival of epic debauchery? I mean, on more than one occasion I saw big body builder types going way beyond R-rated behavior with each other for public display right in the middle of the street. Definitely not kid-friendly!
So that’s where “becoming corporate” ends up. Couples start bringing their kids and then suddenly the town has to crack down on totally naked women and guys pulling their junk out of the g-string and public drunkenness… and then what do you have left?
I thank the stars that the Rockabilly fest is in Vegas. Vegas alone already puts the not kid friendly flag on things. While they do let kids come to the car show (one day, where the big bands play), the parents know what they’re in for (and are usually a part of the culture). The people I do feel sorry for are those who are staying in the hotel where the event takes place who didn’t know what they were getting in to. The entire casino plays rockabilly 24/7 for the entire weekend, there’s huge lines for any of the casino restaurants, and some of the bars are closed to the general public. On the plus side, there’s lots of girls dressed like pin-ups, and a ton of classic cars around.
“Lots of tongue in cheek debauchery.”
Okay, Marquis de Sade.
It’s been interesting watching the evolution. I also maintain a small bit of morbid curiosity as to how it will all implode. And the people that really take it seriously, need to get a life.
how to write a lefty headline:
Trump Rages Against ‘Socialist Tyranny’ During Call To Oust Venezuelan President
Socialism, he told the assembled crowd, was merely an effort ― made “under the banner of progress” ― to control industries like health care, finance and others.
Well that’s just silly.
It’s that “banner of progress” that has many of us worried. We’ve seen what’s happened before.
Speech kicked ass. Would recommend. I like having a President actually call commies out on their deadly bullshit.
Reagan did the same thing and got roasted in the same way. Everything old is new again.
They still cant figure out why he was elected. All I can say is ‘keep it up’.
They say this was an early and thinly veiled attempt to tie Trump’s potential Democratic opponents to socialism, but I thought all the potential Democrat opponents were all about the “democratic” socialism? Unless they weren’t for collectivist and socialist policies like the New Green Deal after all? So much gaslighting.
The GND is not a socialist policy, its environmental policy that takes advantage of the historic opportunity of taking over all industry to implement socialist plans.
I stand humbly corrected. Of course, it’s only for the good of the environment.
“democratic” socialism
It is curious and concerning how they think that adding the modifier “democratic” makes it ok.
So they can say, “You voted for it, suckers!”?
Look, I thought we settled this already.
Is it a red banner? With a hammer and sickle?
This is like when the press called Dubya a cowboy. Like, you can’t pay for PR that good. Awesome, we have a cowboy in the office. No more weasly, cowardly, politics. White hat, rides into town, cleans shit up.
Oh, Trump is going to get rid of a guy that helped kill a double-digit percentage of his nation? *AND* he sounded like Ronnie doing it?
Are they trying to get me to vote for him? Because this is making him sound really good.
*orders MAGA
hatt-shirt*I’m loving this. Call the socialists out on their bullshit.
Today’s Global Climate Change article in the Washington Post doesn’t say what they think it does
The Earth is now as warm as it was 115,000 years ago? I had to laugh when I read this. In geological time, 115,000 years is nothing! This is more or less admitting global warming and cooling is a natural cycle that has occurred thousands of times throughout Earth’s history.
Wake me when we reach Carboniferous levels. The world should be very green by that point.
The Washington Post? I bet it’s very sciency.
I doubt we reached peak Eemian levels. But then again the shenanigans with reconstructions are many
He hasn’t even put out a decent album in years.
So still in the middle of a bunch of Ice Ages?
Gosh, how did that happen without coal plants and SUV’s? If I didn’t know better, I might start to think that there’s more to the planet’s climate cycle than a little extra CO2 in the air.
The best and brightest.
Triple orgasms and ordinary men named Steve. Patronizing German marriage counselors and burgeoning queer identities. Colorful illustrations, workshops, abuse, childbirth, miniskirts, flooding, gynecologists, and tampons.
This weekend, student directors Sarah Varghese ‘19 and Evie Elson ‘19 brought Eve Ensler’s 1996 play “The Vagina Monologues,” a series of fifteen monologues, to life at Princeton University. Ensler distilled the monologues from over two hundred interviews that she conducted with women in the 1990s, hoping to destigmatize open discussion of vaginas and experiences surrounding them.
At the University’s Theater Intime, audience members were discouraged from accepting the performance at face value. Beginning with an originally written and performed prologue, the directors did not refrain from criticizing aspects of the show, namely its equation of vaginas with female identity. The directors acknowledged the production’s inherently trans-exclusionary bent. “Our definition of what it means to be a woman, and to have a vagina is not the same thing,” said Varghese, “It never was.”
Varghese and Elson asked the audience to appreciate the importance of the stories being told — a cast member later remarked that the show has “empowered women for decades.” But in the same breath, the directors also denounced its limitations and hoped that the audience would recognize its flaws. They described “The Vagina Monologues” as a “relic” from the nineties, clearly marked throughout the production by denim and scrunchies, and stated that aspects of it were markedly outdated.
“These monologues are not representative of the experiences of all women, or all individuals with vaginas,” the directors affirmed. “Instead, they are representative of the 200+ women that Eve Ensler interviewed twenty years ago.”
The directors gave the show a modified title: “The Vagina* Monologues.” The event description came with the caveat that “*people of all genders have vaginas and these monologues represent a small segment of that population.”
“I always thought you were crazy. But now I can see your nuts!” – Austin Powers
The Ts are crazy pissed at the Ls.
No way. If every other historical group/person is going to be judged by current standards, you chicks are too.
Don’t try to tell me how different things were back in the ’90s when this was written. The Outrage Mob isn’t brooking any weak excuse like that. Face it, “The Vagina Monologues” was written by a bunch of shitlord white women and is problematic.
Yeah, transfolk totally existed back then; they were just much rarer.
Trans 5 year olds were.
Good Lord, what a bunch of gibberish.
This year the (Gay) Mr Virginia Leather contest, which is totes a beauty pageant for the gay leather crowd, will be known as Mx Virginia Leather and will be open to persons of all genders whether biological, aspirational or transient.
So a bunch of straight dudes are going to vote for straight hot biker chicks?
Hey now!
I’ll happily vote for lesbian hot biker chicks, too!
You will be assimilated, Tonio. #Resistence is futile. Gay white men are still white men and must be stopped.
Biowomen are a small segment of the population of vagina-havers? Oooookay.
Of course! They only represent 100% of the group.
From the Pirate article. The author seems genuinely surprised that people who make a living by stealing from other people go and spend all that money rather than save and invest it. Why would you save money when all you had to do was take it from someone else?
But i bet Krugman gives them some big Thumbs up. If they saved it they wouldn’t be helping to push up that Aggregate Demand. If only their were more pirates in Somalia, it wouldn’t be such a backwater.
Conversely, if your business is separating others from their portable wealth, then you might fear that other land-based bandits might separate you from yours and that nobody would have a lot of sympathy.
Exactly. It shouldn’t be surprising that people who steal, aren’t exactly interested in building up capital, nor trusting of others to invest their money in other peoples projects.
My favorite one is “Insurance companies make more than pirates on piracy!” Well, yeah. otherwise they wouldn’t insure vessels. Its being able to pay that money out and still not be broke that makes insurance companies viable.
I just wonder if there is any slim possibility that there might be some number – small or otherwise – of pirates who use their bounty to invest in other pirate ventures. I would bet it doesn’t occur to most of them but I want to think that there are at least a handful of them that recognize which side of the toast is getting most of the butter.
“Cap’n, what if we had a ship that wasn’t taking on water.”
“WALK THE PLANK, YEEEAAAAAARGHGHHGHGH!111!”
AAAS: Machine learning ‘causing science crisis’
Machine-learning techniques used by thousands of scientists to analyse data are producing results that are misleading and often completely wrong.
I can confirm. Machine-learning is easy to do, just learn some python and write a few lines of code. Doing it right is difficult. A lot of people like to take the idea of Machine Learning first Theory later. ie they will see what patterns the data spits out and then try to fit their theory to the pattern.
Would
http://www.stat.rice.edu/~gallen/bio.html
TLDR: Garbage In -> Garbage Out
I thought that was kind of the point. Let the machine find a pattern in dataset A, then check dataset B to see if it is a real pattern or not. And maybe dataset C also, as sometime it is still just a fluke.
The key is that the machine can find a sets of patterns in the first dataset to test against the second that humans would never find.
Like any other pattern recognition system, machines have a bias.
The human brain is one big pattern recognition system, but that does not mean that Jesus is suddenly appearing on toast everywhere.
If you assume he isn’t then you will miss it when he does appear on toast.
If you eat the toast is that good or bad?
Does Jesus go better with jelly or jam?
Which one is kosher?
Good obviously, just like communion.
*thunderous applause*
Hoc est corpus.
I’ll take the middle on this. Much like human applied statistics in the sciences, if you’re in the broad set of techniques that are taught to everyone formally and (relatively) easy to understand and apply, there’s a lot of hay to be made if you find a significant pattern. I’m somewhat concerned that people are lazy and that it turns (in robc’s example) datasets A, B, and C are not as independent as one might wish, or that people might consider applying the ML to dataset C unnecessary before writing papers that claim things that cannot be replicated.
This^^ The proper practice for data mining is to partition that huge data set into quarters. You then let the machine use the first quarter of data to look for patterns and use the second quarter of data to confirm the existance of the pattern in that 2nd random set.
Once the model is established, then you use the last two quarters to report how well the model fits against this new random set.
As it says inn the article, if a set is big enough and has enough variables, you will find patterns.
My data mining Professor used a randomly generated data set to show just that; and the machine learning techniques were ‘better’ at finding patterns.
Another real failing of the machine learning techniques is that often times there is no real rule-set generated from the black box.
You end up with a magic 8 ball; Magic 8 Ball says “Don’t give Swiss a loan”. And you don’t know why.
Problematic, because you might find out that Magic 8 Ball is racist, later on. He hates the National Guard.
I’m having trouble finding out the proper term of address for the third son of a Graf.
There were some sources online that mentioned these continental titles being shared aong all offspring – but there are also indications that this started in the 19th century, when the HRE was no more and there was a great deal of upheaval.
Grafsonson
Wouldn’t that be the construction for a grandson rather than merely a later child?
Sorry i read that as grandchild for some reason
Hmm. In the Middle Ages, Graf (i.e., a Count) was definitely a title conferred by the monarch because you were in charge of a County, and wouldn’t have applied to your kids, who may or may not get the position after you died. I’m not sure when it become simply a family honorific, but it was probably a gradual change. Depends on what time period your book occurs in, and probably also depends on the country.
Well, it’s a fantasy setting, with the country in question having beein inspired by (read – stolen wholsale) some aspects from the HRE. When I implement something, I want to understand the historical precedent and how it was used in real life before I go and change it.
For instance, the mediatized nobility and vassals of more immediate lords have already taken to using the family title as a courtesy for all members. ie, in “Prince of the North Tower”, Soren Gost refers to himself as Freiherr Gost, even though his father is the substabtive title holder.
You could also use the style “Title Familyname” for the operative noble and “Title Givenname” for non-ruling members.
Or even different nuances of Style, title, and function
Bob Smith, Baron of Glibertaria
As Actual ruler: “Lord Glibertaria” or “Baron Glibertaria”
As Heir apparent: “Lord Smith”
As other kid of Lord Glibertaria: “Lord Bob”
I have seen that used in some places.
I think my troubles have been that I was too casual in the usage, since the first book was narrated by a character who was very lax about the niceties. He could go by ‘Prince Kord’ or ‘Furst von Karststadt’ but can be more properly referenced as “Kord Grosz von Karststadt-Salzheim, Furst of Karststadt; Kreigsherr of the Ashmen; Prince-Elector of the North Tower; Arch-Marshal of the Volk; Xenarch of Longue; Landesherr of Doppelgelb, Gefrah, and Zerhaltenberg; Overlord of the Hookwood Tribes; Jarl of the Raven Coast; Grossburgher of Freinmarkt; Kindred Ethnarch of Quendaverus; and Left Hand of the Crown.”
He is not the character whose proper address is in question, being a ruling substantive title holder for most of the volumes.
Having not (yet) read the book, I can only assume that a detailed and finely-gradated style system implies a stable society where most of the conflicts are social?
If by social conflicts, you mean he’s first killing something 4,500 words in, and continues to rack up a body count as the story goes on…
Though what is the German equivalent for ‘Lord Bob’?
1. Junior
2. Paragraf
3. Trigraf
4. That Bastard
5. Damnit
The father was the Bastard. (Illegitimate child of a Countess who later went on to earn ennoblement in his own right)
Um, you seem to have been misinformed. Stefi only has two kids (and one is a daughter).
The only possible pairing where Andre Agassi could be considered the pretty one.
Ugh. I consider things like that to be sticky traps. You can totally go down the rabbit hole for days researching things which are ultimately window dressing and have no impact on your story. Most people will neither know nor care if you get it wrong. Just make it consistent and believable. You can always just dummy-in a title and change it later if you decide to do the research or if something comes up.
If you persist in this madness, you could look up the bio of an actual person who was a third son of a kraut count and see what titles he had during his childhood. Title drives form of address.
Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtesy_title
That’s half the fun.
That is what I like about Neil Stephenson, he clearly goes down that rabbit hole. And takes his readers with him.
I am reading REAMDE right now. It was not what I expected, but I am enjoying it.
OMG, yes. And Andy Weir. Also that guy who did Master and Commander, etc. But, those guys have built up reputations for being meticulous about fact-checking and accuracy. Weir also had his fiction crowd reviewed before he got published.
I’m trying to be responsive to current events with my Insurgency stories and have found that’s a PITA because not only do you have to fact-check things like who does building management for congress but a single press conference can turn an entire weeks worth of writing into unusable apocrypha.
Apparently, his next book, due out in June or July is a direct sequel about Dodge getting uploaded and waking up in some sort of VR-mediated afterlife. One that I’m assuming isn’t great because the title is Dodge in Hell.
I missed Trash’s great article last night. Just wanted to add the comment that the most interesting thing to me about the “Party Switch” idea is that the “Switch” still happened after all of the progressive era. which means that all the Lefty Heartthrobs like FDR, and WW, were representing the racists they say became the republican party of today. You can’t play both sides of that coin.
Seconded on the greatness of trashies article. That will forever be my go-to source for smacking down the “switched parties” fallacy.
I’m often a late-reader, too. Looking forward to reading Trashy’s latest.
Just wanted to add the comment that the most interesting thing to me about the “Party Switch” idea is that the “Switch” still happened after all of the progressive era.
It should also be noted that not only was progressive dogma formulated and found a party home before the alleged switch, modern conservative dogma was as well, which raises the question of what was allegedly switched? FDR and Wilson would assuredly find a home on today’s left and in today’s Democratic party, but likewise would Harding/Coolidge/Hoover find their home on the right and in the Republican party. While the issues of the day have changed, the broad framework for both factions has stayed the same for the last hundred years. In fact, the evidence for a switch occurs much earlier than commonly held and does not fit nicely with any useful modern narrative, which is why the false narrative of a switch happening in the 70s gets bandied about (which is based on a true narrative of a realignment, but again realignment is a much less useful narrative than switch).
“These monologues are not representative of the experiences of all women, or all individuals with vaginas,” the directors affirmed. “Instead, they are representative of the 200+ women that Eve Ensler interviewed twenty years ago.”
So close…
These monologues are not representative of the experiences of all women, or all individuals with vaginas
I’m confused. Is she saying that men with vaginas are still somehow women? Or that women with penises aren’t actually women? How unwoke.
Uffda. Is there nothing the Outrage Mob can’t fuck up? If you were just about to say “I bet no one gets bent out of shape in knitting forums because they are filled with nice little old ladies”, you are WRONG!
A knitter happened to mention that she is going to go to India and was really looking forward to it. It will be the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. When she was a kid the thought of going to India was like going to Mars.
Yup. That is right. A white person compared India to Mars. Imagine! Shitstorm launched. The original offender tried groveling and explaining. Another lady caught up in it, told the mob to fuck off. Guess which one came out better?
Welcome to the party, bitchez.
#gamergate
Knitters and their allies. LOL. What, like multiple cats?
The Cat Army will fuck your shit up!
Crocheters, duh.
Don’t forget the spinners, dyers and other fibercrafters.
Why are lesbians allies with knitters?
I also think it is a bit offensive to call lesbians crotch eaters (learn to spell dude)
The preferred nomenclature is “crocheters”.
Just shut up and knit. Dummies.
“Instead of asking your Indian friends to perform more emotional labor for you and assuage your white women’s tears, maybe do some reflection on how your equation of India with an alien world reinforces an “other” mindset that is at the core of imperialism and colonialism.”
How about you fuck off and mind your own business?
If you’re running some kind of knitting discussion group and someone is posting this, it’s time for the yarnhammer.
Meh, it isn’t any different than gathering in a bunch of rocking chairs to knit and gossip about the neighbors.
So, “performing emotional labor” = responding to someone when she’s asked if she has offended you.
“She was even accused of being a neo-Nazi because she enjoys drinking Guinness.”
Because Hitler was Irish?
Because Guinness ends in “SS”. IT’S SO OBVIOUS!!
Well, Ireland was neutral during WW2. And if you’re not punching Nazis, you must be one of them, right?
Not for nothing, but the IRA did collaborate with the Abwehr during much of WWII.
Until you realize you dropped a stitch 15 rows back. I guess that’s why the caveat “properly practiced” is in there.
Looks like we’ve finally found one group of people Democrats believe should retain their 2nd amendment rights
WOW!
“An illegal can’t have a gun only when nobody can have a gun!”
Next stop: Sanctuary gun dealers
This is up there with Sen. Menendez complaining that Trump is treating illegal aliens with a DUI like criminals.
Man Charged With Bestiality After Inviting Officer To Have Sex With Dogs
This will put him in the doghouse for a few years…
Huh. I assumed they would shoot the dogs.
Talk about screwing the pooch!
Yeah, if you’re hot for dogs, then you’re barking up the wrong tree!
“We believe there is a large group of people in the Houston area, and the state, and the country that are involved in bestiality.”
I don’t believe this at all.
Also, why would you have to use a dog somebody else is pimping out? Is it so hard to get your own dog?
Do you have any experience in training a dog to engage in unnatural acts with humans?
They don’t have peanut butter in Albany?
?
Your question confuses me and seems nonsensical. In context, I conclude it means you have had experience in training a dog to engage in unnatural acts with humans.
That’s the joke.
Its always Houston or Florida. No wonder I’m so off compared to American normal.
Obviously, I mean don’t most of the Houston PD have spouses?
“We’re conducting a similar investigation involving bestiality with another couple of people. We believe there is a large group of people in the Houston area, and the state, and the country that are involved in bestiality.”
Why?
Because if they expend their efforts chasing a potentially nonexistant bestiality ring, they can set up a task force, and insist on ever increasing budgets to chase the “well hidden deviants”.
“The fact we can’t find them just shows how well hidden they are!”
Yup. That is right. A white person compared India to Mars.
You take that back. Mars isn’t a shithole.
Still, not the kind of place to raise your kids.
well I hear that Mars needs Moms…
All the women are from Venus. Sausage party.
What you don’t like your kids exposed to rampant drinking and carousing?
I guess Mars bars aren’t the most family friendly vacation spots.
In fact it’s cold as hell
And there’s no one there to raise them if you did
And all the science I don’t understand
It’s just my job five days a week
I always wondered why Elton John had to bring in Bernie Taupin for jobs such as this. Couldn’t Sir Elton write shitty lyrics on his own?
‘Little Hitler’: Texas Boy, 7, Slammed for Selling Hot Chocolate to Raise Money for Donald Trump’s Wall
Can I say i Hate his parents for putting him in this position. I hate Progressives because they never try to fund their pet projects themselves, and call everyone nazis. In short only the 7 year old is spared my ire.
Is hot chocolate in high demand in Austin, Texas?
Ooh, wait. I see it’s only 45 F there today.
The clip has since been viewed online nearly 9,000 times
~7,500 of those hits originating from newsweek.com
Why Is it ‘Weird’ When a Woman Wants Sex More Than a Man?
What a catch.
I was just thinking the same thing. She might not want to get too attached to him and get a cat.
Oh, already an ex. He already wised up. Still, get a cat.
Of course I wasn’t mad. Confused, yes, but not mad. I knew men like John existed — men who would want to get to know my personality before they got to know my vagina — but I had yet to come across one in the wild
JOHN GET OUT! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
ex-boyfriend John
Whew
So without reading the article, I’m torn between a) John is gay or b) John is remarkably strong willed and adhering to the adage “don’t stick it in crazy”.
Gay.
I thought a duvet was a toilet.
*makes note to remove duvets before inviting Idle to Casa Dean*
So did Trump’s Russian Hookers. Wait a minute…
UKRAINIAN PISS HOOKERS! UKRAINIAN!!!
/Hat
Hang on. He rowed crew. That isn’t solid proof he was gay. Now if he was the coxwain….
*narrows gaze*
Probably knows, deep down, that she fails the hot/crazy matrix.
A lot of people are incredibly self aware of their crazy, and if you just listen they will even actively warn you in the course of a date as a favor. Too many men/women either don’t listen, don’t care, or ignore.
Could be he had caught something that hadn’t completely cleared up yet – and hadn’t expected this date to go so far.
The bumper of a clown car, from the sound of it.
After our first date, I invited him back to my place […] asking if he had a condom.
So much for equality.
About mid-20s I put a hard rule on myself. No sex on first dates. My life got better. Not as immediately rewarding, but part of being the type of person who “could pass at drug test” and “actively contribut[e] to [my] 401k”. See, if you take the longer view, waiting a couple days to bang is nothing. You get to have several conversations. You get to evaluate the actual time spent together without sex and see if that is something you might want to do more of. A whole bundle of crazy [not all of it external to me] went away. Its not about who wants it more. What does want and lust have to do with anything? Having a principle that sometimes gets challenged (it was a weak principle, but it was something) by your immediate gratification system is good for a whole lot besides sorting out people on the wrong side of the hot/crazy line.
I’ve kind of always maintained that rule. It always worked for me, I don’t judge though.
I don’t judge anyone else, either. It was something that was good for me personally. Sex is powerful, and I had to learn to respect that.
I’ve never been that keen to jump in the sack on a first date either – call me old fashioned but I want to know the other person a bit before I visit the land of Happy Endings. Or maybe I think that a girl who gives it up right away aren’t the kind that will be stable in a long-term relationship. I know – cis-shitlord and all that.
At least this is true with women I wanted something special with – not the drunken “let’s have some fun” moments. Of course it’s been a long, long time since either have happened /old married guy
Yes, I should say that I hope I never have worry about it again. Being married to a smart, sane woman who can act as an actual life partner, sometimes carrying more than her half, sometimes a little bit less, but never dodging it all; that’s when life gets good.
Meh, I’ve been with 2 women who I slept with the first night I met them. Ended up marrying both of them. Spouse #1 was definitely the crazier of the two but even she was mostly sane for the first 6 years of our relationship. It was only once she started pursuing a music career that she went off the deep end. Wife #2 hovered around a 5 on the crazy index for the first 15 years we were together and it is only in the last 3 years that creeping progressive insanity has begun to infiltrate her mind. So it is clearly not a universal situation.
*That said not sure the current Mrs Ras meets the criteria as I actually knew her online for a good 6 months before we met face to face
LMAO. Does she even realize that she stereotypes republicans as responsible stable adults? That chick is grade a nuts.
Looking around, I’m not sure that’s a baseless stereotype.
That was my thought, too. “Oh no, this guy has his shit together!”
He may have not taken his boner pills, and didn’t want to reveal he needed them.
Sounds like he dodged a bit of crazy, yeah.
He came from a family of Republicans and rowed crew. He had a plaid duvet.
Gay.
Log Cabin Republican.
“Karl Lagerfeld dies aged 85 from pancreatic cancer: Fashion legend who saved Chanel, spent thirty years as its artistic director and was notorious for his acid tongue passes away after short battle against illness”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6720439/Karl-Lagerfeld-dies-aged-85-France.html
World’s most notorious sexual assault perpetrator dies at 95
First full day of wearing my progressive glasses. I have been using contacts+readers since the fall. I almost made it to 50 without the reading glasses.
if you hear someone stumble, that would be me.
progressive glasses
Jokes write selves.
Yeah, I was going to make that one but it was too easy. Didnt stop you or UCS.
You should know this audience by now. Get out ahead of the predictable quips.
So what you’re saying is that you’ve started viewing the world through a progressive lens?
He put them on and immediately wanted someone else to pay for them.
Yeah, but I bought contacts with my insurance within the last year so it didn’t work.
The first time I got progressive lenses, stuff around the edges looked warped when I turned my head (especially disconcerting when driving). But that went away after a day or so.
Are they like Google Glass with MSNBC playing all the time?
Are the rose-colored?
The best and brightest 2: Illegal alien boogaloo
Yale University held an event Friday to help illegal immigrants get jobs.
The event, which was the Ivy League school’s third annual Equity in the Job Search symposium, aimed to “help participants recognize” supposed disadvantages faced by women working in STEM and to assist “undocumented individuals” with job searches, according to the event description. The event was geared toward graduate students but all Yale students were welcome to attend.
Billed as a forum to provide students the tools to equip them for a job search in the STEM fields, the event’s mission is to help others overcome bias. This is done by mixing career advice with “data-driven discussions of gender bias,” the description stated.
This year’s symposium featured a negotiation workshop, designed to showcase disadvantages faced by women during salary negotiations and how implicit bias impacts language used by men and women in job application documents.
In addition to gender-focused sessions, attendees were invited to panels and speeches directed at assisting “undocumented individuals” with the job search process. Funding for the event has historically included support from Yale’s Title IX Office, its Office of Graduate Student Development and Diversity, and its Office of Career Strategy, as well as various science departments at the school.
help illegal immigrants get jobs.
*SLD: I think the whole citizenship/visa requirment to work is stupid for any country to implement
But granted that these people don’t care, the only way to get an illegal immigrant a job is to get them working under the table (so they don’t pay taxes, and the employer :gasp: evades taxes) or to steal someone else’s identity.
So, either tax fraud or identity theft. Nice.
Has the entire Ivy League turned into the Idiot League?
If I were hiring and saw an ivy league school on a resume I would treat that person like poison.
Same here. Fortunately, we see very few Ivy Leaguers in the desert.
I know a fair few recent Ivy grads. The institutions are full of stupid, but at least a fair portion of the graduates don’t buy into it.
Navigating bullshit bureaucracy is an important part of any white collar job…
The alphabet is a white patriarchal social construct.
Discuss.
A -> Alpha -> Alpha Male
One and done
Wrong.
Boy did they fuck that poor kid up.
“60 Minutes’ Lara Logan slams the ‘mostly liberal’ media for its coverage of Trump which she calls a ‘distortion’ of real life, as the award-winning CBS journalist admits she is ‘committing professional suicide'”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6719215/CBSs-Lara-Logan-says-committing-professional-suicide-admits-media-liberal.html
Wasn’t she suspended from CBS after exposing Benghazi as a planned attack?
Q needs to watch that podcast. Hubba Hubba!
Tard Tuesday: We Love the Praetorian Guard Edition
They sound pretty undemocratic for having democratic in their name.
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Those noble FBI agents! ::sheds a tear::
When I served in the military we did not play politics. We had each others backs, even in peacetime . If any outsider messed with one of us the entire company would help them. If any outsider messed with our leaders the entire company would have become enraged.
Then you were wrong. Their is a difference between loyalty, and tribalism.
He was playing politics
I’m gonna break it to you, So were they. Everyone who is of a certain rank and working in certain groups is playing politics.
When Trump attacked Comey and McCabe that was considered by agents of the FBI as an attack on all of them. When he attacks Mueller they consider that as an attack on all of them. They consider it an attack on the entire institution
Then the institution should be destroyed because they are ostensibly given such power over the american people because they promise to behave professionally.
This would be the Comey who admitted to leaking classified memos to the press through a friend, then played the amnesiac in front of Congress when asked about the particulars of how he handled the Clinton glad-handing? Or McCabe, disgraced and fired for lying to FBI agents? Those two? Yeah, stand-up guys, them.
When I served in the military we did not play politics. We had each others backs, even in peacetime . If any outsider messed with one of us the entire company would help them. If any outsider messed with our leaders the entire company would have become enraged.
So, exactly like politics?
When I was in the military, we were pretty clear on the fact that the civilian leadership called the shots and that we obeyed them.
My view from having been in the military is that we were entitled to our opinions of the civilian leadership but we took our orders from them regardless. The FBI sounds like they have broken from that code.
I’m doubting the verasity of this story. My experience in the military is that the sweaties are infinitely more likely to despise their leadership. A commander that the the troops adore comes along maybe once a career.
Sounds like the problem is with the FBI.
They are still telling themselves that somehow they will expel the bad orange man from the whitehouse.
January Twenty-first, 2025, they will exclaim that their efforts have finally succeeded.
This sounds pretty close to actually what happened. The sad part is they don’t see past ORANGE MAN BAD. Also Trump attacking Comey amounted to him just firing him, the FBI attacking Trump involves people going to jail on trumped up charges.
Swap out “military” for “mafia” and it reads the same.
When I served in the military we did not play politics.
What utter bullshit.
Trump does not understand this type of loyalty.
I think he understands it just fine. I think what the author has just told us is that the FBI doesn’t understand the nature of duty and honor, and have a primitive tribalistic ingroup v. the world mentality.
Just so’s I’m clear, when a one star general was relieved of duty by a superior, the colonels would conspire to fuck the three star who did it?
See Slammer? Knitters have plenty of allies.
CBS’ Lara Logan Calls Out Media For Propaganda-Like Coverage: ‘This Interview Is Professional Suicide For Me’
Logan, currently serving as a chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News and a correspondent for “60 Minutes,” blasted the media for dropping even the pretense of being objective, likening some journalists in the mainstream media to “activists” and “propogandists.”
“This interview is professional suicide for me,” Logan told Ritland at the end of the revealing podcast.
It’s ok. You can always come stay with me. ///WOULD
Logan said she agreed with Ritland for suggesting most outlets are “absurdly left-leaning.”
“The media everywhere is mostly liberal, not just in the U.S. But in this country, 85% of journalists are registered Democrats – that’s just a fact. No one is registering Democrat when they’re really a Republican. So, the facts are on the side that you just stated: most journalists are Left, or liberal, or Democrat, or whatever word you wanna give it,” started in Logan.
“How do you know you’re being lied to? How do you know you’re being manipulated? How do you know there’s something not right with the coverage?” she asked. “When they simplify it all and there’s no gray. There’s no gray. It’s all one way. Well, life isn’t like that. If it doesn’t match real life, it’s probably not — there’s something wrong.”
Logan continued: “So, for example, all the coverage on Trump all the time is negative. … That’s distortion of the way things go in real life, because although the media has historically always been left-leaning, we’ve abandoned our pretense, or at least the effort, to be objective today.”
The journalist then gave an example of former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson admitting as much: “[Abramson] says, we would do dozens of stories about Trump every single day, and every single one of them was negative. She said, we have become the anti-Trump paper of record. Well that’s not our job.”
“We’ve become political activists, and some could argue propagandists, and there’s some merit to that,” Logan bluntly added.
I’d say many of you have always been political activists. It is just more apparent these days. And yes, many (most?) of your cohorts are absolutely propagandists.
You can always come stay with me.
She could contribute here, but we’d have to take down the G.R.O.S.S. signs.
Has she said why she was willing to commit career suicide in a low-rent podcast? It seems like an odd decision to me.
Also, you really need to see the picture to fully appreciate this interview.
Maybe Behar of all people broke the ice when she admitted that the chattering class is comprised of nothing but hysterics and political activists. National journalists are now nothing more than chattering class adjuncts.
Update: Lara Logan and CBS Have Parted Ways…
https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/lara-logan-cbs-news-1203142584/
Lara Logan was the reporter assaulted in Tahrir Square. That may have something to do with her apparent disdain for social media mobs. She’s seen the real thing.
At 28, I was ready for someone who could pass a drug test and was actively contributing to his 401(k) for a change.
Bless your heart.
She is the reason stereotypes exist.
Billed as a forum to provide students the tools to equip them for a job search in the STEM fields, the event’s mission is to help others overcome bias. This is done by mixing career advice with “data-driven discussions of gender bias,” the description stated.
*outright, prolonged laughter*
“Let me explain why your company is bad, and why you are a racist. And then you can hire me.”
Cultured lab meat may make climate change worse
Well darn the luck, looks like we’re back to the all soy and legume diet we’ve been pushing for 40 years.
*Charlton Heston nods*
It is known that Cattle are the only organisms on earth that produce methane…
Also, at least one group seems to be actually comparing the full environmental impact. I always get annoyed how “Electric” cars are touted as better when they still run on some form of fossil fuel, and that their batteries are way more costly to produce.
“…helping to drive up global temperatures.”
Someone forgot to tell the thermometers.
>how the energy
Well no fucking shit. I’m sure all the engineers and scientists working 50+ hours a week on this issue never thought to look into that detail.
I see a similarity to their (green marxians) aversion to nuclear power. They don’t want you to have energy and they apparently do not want you to have meat. If anyone gets between me and my bacon, we are going to have a problem.
I live near a wind farm that the Greens pushed for. Then they discovered that the windmills killed raptors, so the small windmills had to go. Now there are big monstrosities on the hill. Similarly someone wanted to build a solar array near a substation, and the Greens were upset that it would have taken farmland out of service. One gets the idea that they want us to live in caves.
To be fair, the Greens might have been right about the raptor deaths. We have fewer pigeons now that the small windmills have been torn down, because the hawks have been hunting them.
Yeah, that’s why they’re doing it.
And another note to the powers that be, the fruit mead class that will post later today was written by me — kinnath — not Nephililum. Can you you please update the post?
Misattribution, slander, and exaggeration. I think glibs.com is ready to go pro!
I’m just trying to protect Nephilium’s reputation.
My reputation? Beer geek, and board game geek. I think I’m safe with that. 🙂
But kinnath is correct, I did not write any additional articles on fruited mead.
Hmmm…. :Gets an idea to get some posts out without any work:
I am looking forward to the mead article.
Fixed.
Thanks
Totally my fault. Got some email mixed up. Sorry about that and very glad you noticed it.
No problem.
A new Hardcore History Addendum showed up yesterday in my player. I like Dan Carlin when he talks history but once he veers into politics – arghhhh!
Anyways – I only got the chance to listen to the first 20 minutes but it’s about the right-left political divide. And Nazis were totally right wing, not lefties because… reasons.
Right wing socialists. Women with dicks. Climate change that doesnt exist. Campuses are rape camps.
Proggy universe is one hell of a wacky place.
I was hoping someone else saw it. I made it about 20 minutes in as well. The Italian fellow’s point, near as I could reckon it, makes sense if one is way over on the leftie side of the equation then the NSDAP would appear relatively rightist but from a conservative/traditionalist (read – royalist in the early 20th century) POV, the NSDAP was leftie terror slightly more tolerable than Bolshevism.
Thirded.
Tard Tuesday: Step Aside Bernie, Princess Drinking Beer Is On The Case
Balloon Juice? That’s a paddlin’
I’m sorry Dad, I won’t do it again.
*hides balloon juice links under mattress*
Bernie needs to learn that the Democratic Party is no longer the party of old (((white))) men and recognize that it is time for fresh, new ideas from vibrant, young women of colour like Elizabeth Warren.
The beer drinking schtick was great. Everything about those kinds of people is phony-baloney bullshit.
Senator Warren, who has a deep understanding of structural wealth inequality and detailed plans to address it
Nothing helps understanding structural wealth inequality like being worth 15 million…
To be fair, Elizabeth Warren is kind of the poster-girl for systematic corruption and the System providing people with undue advantage. I mean, from getting a job post based on claiming to be a Native American to $420k for teaching one class to a $2MM interest-free loan to buy a house near Harvard to a quarter of a million in consulting fees for what she herself characterized as a “part-time job” in helping to set up the CFPB, Warren’s entire life has shown a pattern of wildly undue privilege.
Sanders’ “lane” is ably filled already by Senator Warren,
Somebody doesn’t know what “ably” means.
Plus, phrasing!
he won’t get the kid-glove treatment this time around.
Cheating him out of the nomination (and
likelypossibly threatened in order to force a Hillary endorsement…) was the “kid-glove” treatment?who has a deep understanding of structural wealth inequality and detailed plans to address it.
I’m sure she does want to make us all poor and subservient.
Princess Drinking Beer
Seeking to be Chief Squating Drunk
Google explains how it’s fighting fake news
Nefarious activity around democratic elections. Didn’t the Russians have a dozen Facebook pages that got five or six views? Google is on the case!
This is the kinda corporate money in politics we can get behind / progs
Guess who else hates Brexit.
Japanese executives are fed up after warning for years of the risks inherent in a rupture with Europe.
“Within Japan, every professional person I speak to is bemused by Brexit,” said Paul Bacon, a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University who specializes in Japan’s relations with Europe. “It is obvious here how economically damaging it will be, and also that it creates serious difficulties for Japanese industry.”
Britain is set to leave the European Union in less than 40 days, but Prime Minister Theresa May has failed to secure parliamentary backing for her plan for what happens next, heightening fears of a disorderly departure.
That’s infuriating for Japanese businesses and government officials, who have been asking for years for reassurances that British leaders would limit the harmful effects of Brexit.
The “trust has evaporated” between Japanese companies and the UK government, said Seijiro Takeshita, a professor at the University of Shizuoka’s School of Management and Information.
This sort of thing never happened in the days of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
The kings of cronyism don’t like it when the kickback systems get upended.
Remainers keep trying to sow FUD. I’m shocked.
Wow, I didn’t realize I had the power to order mods around like that. Cool.
Now to figure out how to abuse it.
So glad to know we can detect those pesky Trump supporters based on This One Weird Trait.
Trying to draw any conclusion based on a rejection of Trump by Chevy Chase, MD has got to be one of the dumbest arguments I’ve seen in a while.
Chevy Chase votes for the bureaucratic state. Their livelihoods depend on it.
That article is a dumpster fire of stolen bases.
Everything you like to do is killing the Earth, now bow down and worship Mother Gaia.
Oh, sure, because I always just throw away my records when I get done listening to them. What planet do these people live on?
I don’t know about you, but in Glibertopia, after I’m done with my records, I launch them into the atmosphere to contribute to greenhouse gases.
Or give them to my orphans.
“Even though new formats are material-free, that doesn’t mean they don’t have an environmental impact. The electronic files we download are stored on active, cooled servers. The information is then retrieved and transmitted across the network to a router, which is transferred by wi-fi to our electronic devices. This happens every time we stream a track, which costs energy.”
What if cranking a Victrola makes me fart?
I love the totally unaware transition from “material-free” to “look at how much material it takes to store this shit.”
We haven’t even begun to calculate the environmental impact of the many milkcrates it takes to house my pointlessly large LP/VHS collection (the CDs, at least, were easy to liquidate at the record store after putting them on a hard drive).
Shellac is a natural product so the farts are ok.
What the hell are they worried about? The world is going to end in 12 years anyway.
For example, under quality, Google organizes content using ranking algorithms that do not reflect the ideological viewpoints of the people creating or auditing that content — this is measured by human search quality raters.
Wait, what?
And they want me to put one of those spy boxes in my house? Fuck Google.
Titty Tuesday gives you THICC ladies.
http://archive.is/EixOS
3, 7, 11, 32.
34.
https://archive.is/EixOS/7c511e24079e3d33bc5b33fb32ba23ca00d679d5
23 is hot, too.
https://archive.is/EixOS/af380cfaa07afed9cae520a571d46d2d574f32b3
I just checked, and it’s -11 degrees out there. No wonder my toes were cold.
NEEDZ MOAR COW FARTZ
2 here with wind chill of -16. I luuuuuuuurve it.
Balmy 18 here in Sunny Minnesoda.
Of course the news is that we have another 6-9″ heading our way tomorrow and more coming in on the weekend.
We started the year pretty mildly. Easy Dec, Jan. The Climateers were all warning us about how this proves that we need to start corking cows’ asses. Then we got that shitty cold snap followed up by tons and tons of snow. With this week’s snow falls we have a good chance of setting the all time high snowfall for Feb.
Of course the Climateers all snap at you “this is just weather, not climate” when you ask them where their doG is now.
You cork a cows ass and you are just heading for a heap of trouble when the pressure builds high enough.
“we have another 6-9″ heading our way”
Mrs. Holiness is happy.
Uffda. When she hears that she’s getting 6-9″ she is totes sad. To her, that means we are having sexy times 2 or 3 times and after 25 years one time is more than enough for her.
Was a -14 here this morning so not too bad. All day snow scheduled for tomorrow and more on the week end.
At OCS we sang the “Ballad of the Chattahoochee” and the last chorus was
“We like it here
We like it here,
You bet your ass we like it here”
I’ve forgotten the rest of the song but not the chorus as I check my pulse to determine if I’m even still warm.
“…all time high snowfall for Feb. ”
That falls under “Global Weirding,” where the fallen humans pump their evil gasses into the atmosphere, and everything that was once stable and normal is all screwed up.
Got down to -20 overnight…again. Single digit to low teens (above, thank G-d) for highs in the extended forecast. Looked at the magic 8 ball weather forecast and they’re predicting negative single digit highs for the beginning of March. I’m starting to seriously get the winter blues. Highs are supposed to be ~+25 this time of year. Enough of this cold shit already.
“JUSSIE SMOLLETT IS A LIAR.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qOAGDkS-Ek
FOS Youtube channel?
NOT. CLICKING.
Her channel has nothing to do with FOS.
Are the super-rich ruining Burning Man?
I still don’t know what Burning Man is. But I am going to say the answer is “no, but your apparent maxist world view may be.”
That is what I guessed. The commies are mad that rich people are showing up.
My comment was going to be: when, outside of maybe the very first one, has Burning Man ever been anything but a summer camp for rich people?
Perhaps I need to do some kind of write up on Burning Man from an inside perspective?
Who gives a shit?
US airline passengers who don’t identify as “male” or “female” will soon have more gender options to choose when booking tickets.
The new gender options to be added include “unspecified” and “undisclosed.”
Airlines for America (A4A), the industry trade group, made the announcement that A4A and International Air Transport Association members recently approved a new international standard for non-binary passengers effective June 1.
“U.S. airlines value a culture of diversity and inclusion, both in the workplace and for our passengers, and we work hard each day to accommodate the needs of all travelers, while delivering a safe, secure and enjoyable flight experience,” Airlines for America said in a statement.
————
“Non-binary people face unnecessary, invasive, and discriminatory scrutiny by airlines,airports, and security services alike. A4A’s work is in line with other states who offer gender neutral designations on IDs and is an important step toward ensuring safe and smooth travel for all passengers regardless of their gender.”
Yeah, right.
“I really don’t need to hear your life story. Do you want to buy a goddam ticket, or don’t you?”
“If we have to attempt to identify your remains, what sort of plumbing should we look for?”
Reason 5692 why I will not fly. The last time I bought a ticket it had the flight information on it and a seat number. No one gave a fuck who I was, they only wanted to know if I had a ticket or not. I have no plans to leave the country again and I will drive where I want to go.
I don’t recall ever saying what my sex was when buying an airline ticket. Why would they even ask, or care?
Required by Secure Flight (TSA requirements post 9/11) and then passed to them for passenger matching.
Fuck identitarianism. Fuck it until its anus bleeds.
Unlike the rest of us?
It’s not the airlines and the ticket itself. It’s the identifying info required by and sent to DHS/TSA (secureflight) most likely. Airlines don’t even print titles (sorry all you MDs who demand to be called Dr outside of a medical setting) anymore.
*Shocked Face*: The Bern! announces presidential bid.
Democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced his candidacy for president Tuesday morning — and immediately resorted to blasting out a series of personal insults at President Donald Trump.
“Hi, I’m Bernie Sanders. I’m running for president,” Sanders begins, managing to produce the only real hint of a smile in the ten-minute announcement video, which features him running through his key talking points from his failed 2016 run and denouncing the sitting president as a patholigically lying, racist, sexist, xenophobe, and tryant.
“You know as well as I do that we are living in a pivotal and dangerous moment in American history,” says Sanders, about 4 minutes into his announcement. “We are running against a president who is a pathological liar, a fraud, a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, and someone who is undermining American democracy as he leads us in an authoritarian direction.”
Sanders, of course, doesn’t provide any evidence to back up his brutal description of Trump; instead, after denouncing the democratically elected president, whom nearly half of the country currently supports, he moves on to declaring that he’s the right guy for the job because he is someone who can “bring us together.”
“I am running for president because now more than ever we need leadership that brings us together, not divides us up,” Sanders asserts.
Fascinating perspective coming from someone who supports and ideology that requires authoritarianism. (never mind the fact that Trump has routinely talked of and acted in ways that suggest the opposite, broadly speaking of course.) Oh, and the US is not a ‘democracy’.
But its a Good Authoritarianism.
It is incredible really. Every time they denigrate Trump in that way they are denigrating Trump supporters, i.e. voters. Every time they talk about removing Trump they are saying to the voters ‘your vote doesnt count’. They still cant figure out why he won or why he will win again.
I hope Swiss doesn’t see this thread.
https://twitter.com/DannyDutch/status/1096333538557874177
“That’s how it starts. With a ‘gateway’ fish like the puffer.”
*NARROWS GAZE*
oh fuck off…
How streaming music could be harming the planet
ah fuck – already posted; alternative headline threw me off
I hate it when the record skips.
Double posting links could be harming the planet
Hmmmm…..
What about rubes like me growing up on the prairie? Did you factor in the environmental cost of having to drive 50 miles (one way) to Fargo/Moorhead to have even a chance of getting somewhat new music?
How did you play vinyl in the car?
No problem driving on the smooth ROADZ that the we the government built for us.
Forget the music, I hear all the best whores are over the NoDak line. And that’s an essential need!
NoDak thicc is measured by how many axe handles across the ass they are.
Chicks from good Norwegian stock are an axe handle and a half and can carry a cord of firewood on their own.
Sturdier vessels for seed.
I dated a cute little Norwegian girl from Petersburg, ND. I’m guessing she fits your description except for the lack of wood to carry.
You have no one but yourself to blame for her lack of wood.
Wasn’t her lack of wood, was her lack of would
I read this in a Letterkenny accent.
The greener option is for anyone terribly worried about this to off themselves for the good of Mother Gaia.
Because you’re worried an icky man might poke holes in your argument?
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11886
Silencing opposing views is not a sign that your position is strong…
From what I have seen of debate tournaments lately they are showing mercy to the guys.
“Women and anyone who does not identify as cis male will be welcome to compete, and registration is no questions asked,” Cryer told Campus Reform.
Such tolerance. Much inclusion.
And I expect the “debates” to go about as well as this.
IT would be so awesome for some dude to show up with a beard and dressed as a man, claim he was a really a woman and demand his trans status be respected. Then proceed to act in all ways like a man except to hysterically object every time someone refereed to him by the wrong pronoun
So one step beyond the guy who trashed the gamestop for being called ‘sir’?
Excuse me, it’s MA’AM
“I am running for president because now more than ever we need leadership that brings us together, not divides us up,” Sanders asserts.
“I’m going to round you all up” didn’t test so well with the focus groups, I guess.
Roundup is associated with the noted boogeyman Monsanto.
As if we didn’t know this was coming.
https://freebeacon.com/politics/nadler-d-suggests-a-dem-president-can-seize-guns-after-trumps-national-emergency-precedent/
The sad part is that with a different SCOTUS composition, it would likely be upheld becuz MUH LIVING CONSTATOOSHUN.
Trump didn’t set the national emergency precedent. And no, there is no Constitutional justification for confiscation of firearms. In fact, it is expressly prohibited. Fuck off, slaver.
And where the fuck do they get off with this suggestion that guns present a “national emergency” anyway? (legal/constitutional arguments notwithstanding…) 5 times as many people are killed in automotive collisions as are killd with firearms and 25 times as many are killed by medical mistakes (not accounting for justifiable homicide). And the lowest end estimate for defensive use of firearms is 50 times the homicide rate (not accounting for justifiable homicide..). The numbers are against these fucks no matter how you twist it. Which is, of course, why gun grabbers lie lie lie.
Counterargument:
GUNZ R BAD
ORANGE MAN BAD
Check and mate.
/prog
Can we call it a gun tax? Cause then I’m in.
Roberts
Go ahead and try, Nadler. See how that works out for you, you fat fucking pig.
“Hate-Crime Hoaxes Reflect America’s Sickness
Jussie Smollett’s hoax is symptomatic of America’s illness. Because of the mainstreaming of academia’s victimhood culture, we are now in a place where we place more value on being a victim than on being heroic, charitable, or even kind. Victims or victim groups high on intersectionality points are supposed to be coveted, treated with child gloves, and believed unreservedly. Their “lived experience” gives them infinite wisdom. Those who urge caution are treated as bigots.
Outside of the rare prosecution for faking a hate crime, the incentives for being a victim — real or imagined — are endless.
Anyone not blinded by bias or panic should have been skeptical of Smollett’s story from the beginning. He openly harbors an intense hatred for Donald Trump and his supporters, going so far as comparing them to Klansmen. That his alleged attackers perfectly fit this description should have raised eyebrows across the political spectrum. The cartoony, screenplay-villain portrayal of white Trump supporters was outrageously comical. But to insulated urban progressives who have little to no experience interacting with conservatives, a Trump supporter may as well be synonymous with evil.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/hate-crime-hoaxes-reflect-americas-sickness/
Thread of hate crime hoaxes:
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1097020092791934976
Here’s another good site for that.
http://www.fakehatecrimes.org
Sadly my alma mater is on their twice in one year. There was also a third incident involving a noose hanging from a tree, which hasn’t been disproven to be placed their by a hateful bigot therefore it must mean a hateful bigot placed it there.
“Journalists, progressive politicians, race activists, and celebrities should watch this on a loop.”
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1097832010184241152
“Weigel was one of the local journalists who reported leaks that turned out to be accurate.”
Things I didn’t expect to read today.
It must have been an accident.
Quick Question for the Glibertariat.
First i don’t like that Trump declared the National Emergency. I don’t see any “National Emergency” Nothing changed, and especially because it give ammunition to whatever pet project a Democrat president wants to do.
But with that i see articles about how 19 states are suing the government, including NY. Doesn’t a state need standing to do this? How does New York become a party to something that only affects states on the southern border?
Because Hawaiian judge.
^
On what grounds are they suing? If they are successful in the suit wont they be cutting their own balls off for when it is their turn or do they plan to just turn around and say the president does have that power? (He does).
Expanding the definition of what constitutes an emergency is not a good idea.
I agree that it’s not really an emergency, but none of the past emergencies were either so I don’t know if that’s the argument they should settle on.
I think a better tact would be to argue this is a blatant attempt to pass domestic policy. At least before, most of the national emergencies were about strong-arming distant people nobody in America really cares about.
As far as the states suing the government, I never really understood how that works.
ORANGE MAN BAD is about as far as their reasoning goes.
Unfortunately, there are a good many judges that agree.
And I agree that the emergency declaration is stupid, however pretending that the Dems wouldn’t eventually have done this anyway is foolish. We’ve been sliding toward an elected monarchy for a while, this is just one more step down that slippery slope.
The president is empowered to do this by a statute written by congress. I think the solution to this problem is pretty obvious…but dont hold your breath.
I’m not entirely sure he is. It will be interesting to see whether the supreme court truly agrees.
I still haven’t heard a cogent argument against the wall.
I have heard that “they only want the wall because they are racist”. Which might indeed be true. Who knows what people hold in their hearts? But the pro-wall argument is “there are millions of illegal immigrants coming across the southern border. A wall will help with enforcing the already existing legislation on who can cross the border and for what purposes. ”
That is pretty straightforward.
The counter argument is pretty tough. “too expensive” probably has a lot of truth to it… but they already abdicated the “restrain spending” argument.
“We need more immigrants” isn’t an argument against the wall, it is an argument against existing immigration policy and laws, none of which really have much to do with Trump.
“An advanced line of cameras and detectors is better” is an argument, but you could easily deploy those in conjunction with a wall.
You can have a wall that runs the entire border length and simultaneously have any immigration policy you’d like – from open borders to no immigration at all to anything in-between.
So, absent TDS, I don’t get the violent opposition to the very idea of building a wall.
I mean i’m against the wall, because when i want to flee Comrade Ocasio-Cortes new American order, i’d rather not have a wall in the way… But i don’t think that is why they are against it.
Flee to where?
Libertarianstan!
Anywhere, it’s not so much about the destination as much as the shitty origin.
I’m not against the wall in principle, in fact I actually see it as safer than the current situation for both Americans and the migrants. Forcing the migrants into the most inhospitable areas is more dangerous and a wall would incentivize them to appear at actual ports of entry. Of course it would have to be coupled with other reforms to existing laws that currently reward illegal entry and penalize legitimate entry. The status quo cannot and should not continue, if a wall helps increase legitimate immigration then I’m all for it (the tall wall, wide gate philosophy).
My issue is the emergency declaration; I’d love to see imperial presidency moving in the opposite direction and this just creeps down the path of monarchy more.
First simple reform – illegal entry or overstaying of legal entry is an automatic disqualification for any claims for asylum or refugee status. Anyone caught having entered illegally or overstayed legal entry is to be automatically deported. All such claims must be made at an embassy or legal port of entry and applicants must wait outside the country for adjudication to complete.
Second simple reform – Refugees must be given refuge as physically close as possible to their home country and encouraged to return home as soon and as often as possible. None are to be released within the country, even those from the canadian or mexican border regions. They will be maintained in border camps and returned home as soon as the immediate emergency has passed.
Third simple reform – Noncitizens are ineligable for any form of welfare.
This is pretty much exactly where I’m at.
in fact I actually see it as safer than the current situation for both Americans and the migrants.
So you’re saying you’re a Nazi. //jk
I don’t disagree on any particular point.
I keep hearing about ‘alternatives’ to the wall but never understood how drones stop anyone from crossing. Seems like they’d need to have a mini gun to stop the crossing , all a camera can do is monitor the crossing and not even too well. Need operators/image interpreters/apprehenders, etc and lots of ’em.
No need for all that. Just have the drones on autonomous, kill anything that tries to cross the denial zone.
What can a wall accomplish that the drone cannot?
If you do not man and actively patrol the wall it would take all of an hour tops for anyone to be able to circumvent it. If you do actively patrol the BORDER then you do not need the wall as long as you can get the patrol forces to the point where the migrants are crossing before they cross. Buy 50 Predator drones and put 15 of them in the air at all times patrolling the border. They will spot any attempted border crossings away from population centers a good hour before they cross into US territory. Then you have Border Patrol troops dispached by Helicopter to intercept anyone attempting to cross the border so that is going to mean about 50 Blackhawks.
At about 8 million each for the Blackhawks and 6 million each for the Preadtors you are looking at all of $700 million and you make the border every bit as impenetrable as if you had a wall
What can a wall do that a drone can’t? Provide psycological reinforcement of a boundary, continue to operate passively without additional funding, require active effort to ‘cancel’ once built. Obfuscate the location of the active patrols.
No, no it cannot.
The wall will continue to stand there but it will not operate unless it is actively patrolled AT ALL TIMES. While any given stretch of wall could go unpatrolled for 24 hours without it being an issue if you repeat not patrolling that stretch then eventually those wishing to cross the border illegally will eventually find that spot, route themselves to id and build some mechanism to circumvent the wall, whether that is going over it, under it, or through it. All they need to do is find the place that is not actively being patrolled right now and it will not take more than an hour or two tops for them to find a way to bypass the wall. The wall will be standing there but it will not be capable of performing it’s designed function.
It still provides more protection and deterrant than the scanty percentage of the border your paltry number of drones would cover.
First, So double the number of drones and helicopters, you’re still only spending $1.4 billion, a quarter of what the wall would cost. That has 30 drones in the air at all times giving each drone a roughly 60 mile wide stretch of border to patrol meaning it will take less than 15 minutes to go from one end of it’s patrol area to the other and it will see anything human sized moving within 30 miles of the border. Course there are even cheaper and better options than drones. Use tethered balloons carrying the same sensors as the Predator. Stretch one every 15 miles or so such that ever spot on the border can be seen by 3 balloons. The key is to be able to spot every illegal border crossing attempt at least 45 minutes before they reach the border then intercept them with border patrol troops at the border
Second, there is no such thing as a deterrent. Just as prisons and harsh punishments do not stop people from committing crime a wall will have absolutely no impact on people crossing the border illegally. As long as they have the incentives to come here the wall will only ever be another obstacle to overcome, it will not actually deter anyone in any way shape or form. The only actual deterrent is a knowledge that they will absolutely be caught and turned away at the border
Well, I don’t like using eminent domain to seize the land for it.
I also don’t think it will be all that effective.
The way illegal immigration works now is most often you come here legally, your permission to live here eventually expires, you pick the reason de jure for petitioning the courts to stay in the country, that process takes years and months and you have a chance of winning, if you don’t you just receive a time and date where you will be deported, and then you don’t show up.
“Doesn’t a state need standing to do this?”
Standing is for little people. When you are a sovereign entity (US State; Indian Tribe) you don’t need no stinkin’ standing.
(Don’t know if this is legally sound, but it feels good to say.)
Isn’t there currently a caravan of 12k on their way to assault our borders?
Sounds like a crisis to me.
That’s just a bunch of pregnant women and sick children!
First I’ve heard of it.
their way to assault our borders
Lets refrain from the militaristic posturing. This is not an invading army as much as it is compared to one.
Idk…mostly military aged males flying the flags of their home countries…
“Going to be documenting this today. OccupyICE PDX is one of the groups that seized the local ICE office last summer and trapped the federal workers inside.”
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1097630997829476352
“Anarchy Breaks Out in Portland, With the Mayor’s Blessing
A vicious mob targeted the ICE office and even a food cart. The police followed orders to do nothing.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/anarchy-breaks-out-in-portland-with-the-mayors-blessing-1533331454
You know who else ordered their police forces to stand by and do nothing in the face of commie mob violence?
“Anarchy Breaks Out in Portland,
Please don’t besmirch the good name of peace loving people. State sanctioned Mob Violence is not Anarchy.
I love the smell of Kristallnacht in the morning…
Smells like fascism.
Ohhhh. I may get to test out the new brush guards I put on the Wrangler. See how well it breaks commie skulls.
The Above comment will be used against you in a court of law to convict you of First Degree murder.
But being a known libertarian bolsters his insanity defense!
I am BEZOS, destroyer of worlds
Some, such as business professor Andre Hagiu, argue that Amazon would be foolish to out-compete its merchants, because this would deter them from offering their products on Amazon in the future. But researchers have long known that this logic doesn’t necessarily apply in the presence of dominant market power; back in 2000, economists Joseph Farrell and Michael Katz showed that a monopoly can have incentives to confiscate the profits from the innovation of companies who produce complementary products, thus stifling innovation. Tech publisher Tim O’Reilly argues that even if eating the third-party ecosystem isn’t a good long-term decision, a platform may be tempted to do it anyway just for the short-term profits.
Amazon “copycats” products and then gives them an advantage in search results. “Mom ‘n Pops” hardest hit.
I’m not sure abut that, but I find Amazon’s product search results to range from completely useless to barely adequate. And who clicks “buy” on the first result they get, unless it’s a re-order of a product they are already familiar with?
Amazon also sells a bunch of fake crap, such as phony batteries.
They work just fine in my telephony.
Lots of good gardening supplies too. I Bought some Faux Glove there.
The phony batteries can be dangerous. They don’t charge correctly and catch on fire.
But you can order a battery from a “non-traditional” source and have it be great, because it’s made in the same plant as the American companies and the plant held everything to the correct standard.
I’ve noticed that. Or at least, products with tons of comments claiming it’s fake. Who the hell knows?
This sounds vaguely familiar to the way Microsoft handled start-up competition in the 90’s and the uproar that created.
Usually the first page is completely useless.
I want to say maybe two years ago I noticed the quality of the stuff offered on Amazon just plummeted. Not Amazon-branded stuff, and not specific items from known brands, but the stuff that pops up when you search for an item. For instance, if you look for shoes without specifying a particular brand, it seems like there’s a huge number of terrible no-name brands that flood Amazon with cheap crap. Now I pretty much only look for specific things by particular brands, and I check to make sure it’s actually shipping from Amazon and not some random Public Storage locker in Indiana.
You’ll probably end up with a gun in that package. They are like packing peanuts there.
Well, they have to migrate somehow.
If possible I search for specific product number too.
Birkenstock stopped selling on Amazon because of fakes.
To be fair, most of the buyers weren’t real hippies.
Good to know! Love my Birks
I resisted for a long time, but I had really severe plantar fasciitis. I finally gave in and bought a pair and WHOA NELLY! Plantar fasciitis gone within a week. Maybe less. That was years and years ago.
The only other shoes I wear now are my ballet flats for church and my workboots for snow and, well, working around heavy things that might fall on my toes.
Every morning I used to hobble around with some painful feet. I reached the point where I was limping into work.
Birks – after a few weeks of use – solved that. I wear the shoe version not the sandals so year ’round use.
These in the winter with thick socks, though not if I’m going to be walking through snow. For walking *on* ice and snow (not through), the tread is fabulous.
Stupid rubes acting against their interest!
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-populist-sledgehammer-kills-amazon-jobs-that-middle-america-would-love-to-have
When are they gonna learn that working for an EVUL KKKORPORATION is worse than unemployment, poverty and the dole?
You cork a cows ass and you are just heading for a heap of trouble when the pressure builds high enough.
How else are you going to get a spherical cow?
Physics joke… nice…
“You could get a good look at a t-bone steak by sticking your head up a butcher’s ass, but wouldn’t you rather take his word for it?”
“What???”
“No, wait…..it has to be your cow….”
“Five days ago on Feb 13, the @nytimes published a feature article about the history of women in coding citing a study purporting to show extreme employer bias against CVs with female sounding names. Turns out that the study does not exist. Yet the article remains uncorrected.”
https://twitter.com/clairlemon/status/1097671545000841217
Come on, you’re better than that. Mainstream journalism may have biases, but when they get the story wrong they generally correct and apologize. The same cannot be said for right-wing propaganda sites, nor obviously for outright fake news purveyors.
Only right-wing propaganda sites exist. You know the difference between me and you buddy? I acknowledge that there are sneaky, smarmy weasels in both the independent Media and the Mainstream media.
Man, that’s impressive.
I mean, I can understand getting a single letter wrong, but never so many. How bad a typist do you have to be to spell ‘rarely’ with he letters g-e-n-e-r-a-l-l-y?
If anything, companies (particularly HR) would be falling over themselves to hire a female candidate to meet diversity
quotasgoals.That’s been true since the 90’s.
Prior to the 90’s plenty of IT shops hired women because they were able to pay them less. They even got around to promoting a few on occasion.
I’m thinking I should get my 10 y/o girl to learn some copy pasta coding skills and get her a 50K year coding job.
My daughter flunked/dropped out of college. She got an AA in comp sci from a community college and went to a boot camp for coding.
She’s been making 65K+ for the last couple years. Flunking out of college might have been a good thing in the long run for her.
Says more about your daughter and her parents than the school. Good on her and you.
“Never let a good education stand in your way to success”.
“Not an old Latvian saying”
Even in the dark days of the mid-90s, there was a hunt for female IT staff. One of my classes I had we actually worked for a company to do programming on a project that lasted the length of the semester. At the end we had to make a presentation to the class over the details of what we accomplished.
There was one woman in our group – out of the group of six, she was the only one who received a job offer from same company. (even though she hardly did any of the work)
My thirteen year-old daughter somehow got wind of this story. She confronted me with it. I told her that having worked in the industry it didn’t match my experience; that most people just don’t care about the gender, and those that do are generally pro-women getting the job.
My daughter was very upset and tearful.
I hate these people with the power of a thousand suns for the lies they use to fool little girls into feeling like pariahs or victims.
I’d be upset too. Perhaps the victimization is real in that the Media seems set to make women/girls feel like the world is against them.
Being a victim is a tempting thing. It rationalizes all sorts of otherwise distasteful feelings.
Yup. Same here, working in the industry too. Any gal who is half assed competent is welcomed with open arms.
You almost wonder how many gals were dissuaded from even trying to become a dev because they read shit like this.
Crap, I posted before I meant to.
At one point my daughter (who had just flunked out of college) and my sister (lost her job as a direct mail fundraiser) looked around and wondered how they were going to make money. They saw me and figured “If that moron can make money as a developer, how hard can it be?”
Both of them went to code camps that really did a lot to help place them after graduation. And both of them have been making good coin for the last couple years now. And doing well despite the Patriarchy.
How does one find a code camp?
Look for the digital camo.
They are around. Quick google should find some local ones.
A lot of them are run under the auspices of evil for profit colleges.
My daughter went to the Software Guild: https://www.thesoftwareguild.com/lp/Minneapolis
My sister went to this one:
https://primeacademy.io/
At my last couple of gigs, I did a lot of hiring and I never blinked at the idea of hiring someone who had a coding camp in their background instead of a college degree.
Google “coding bootcamp.” For reals, yo.
Google is my friend, I know.
A few universities will do them too. For me I was surprised how many free resources there are out there to learn to code. From online courses to tutorials. I was also under some assumption that you needed expensive software to write code or pay for licenses to use the languages.
You will note that the degrees of the people who are bitching tend to say things like “Gender Studies”. They can’t get these jobs, and have been taught it’s not about individual qualifications but group identity, therefore no women can get these jobs.
Cleveland! We’re number 9! We’ve got over half of the corruption convictions of Chicago over the 40 years, I think we’re punching above our weight here.
So, absent TDS, I don’t get the violent opposition to the very idea of building a wall.
*scratches chin*
You know, I think you might be on to something.
She’s been making 65K+ for the last couple years. Flunking out of college might have been a good thing in the long run for her.
“But she’ll never amount to anything, without a college degree!”
*runs in circles with hair on fire*
If she really wanted to make some money, she would have learned how to weld at community college or become a plumber.
“The Reality of Transgender & Gender Science – Dr. Debra Soh”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY5eOHnQU5A
If it was good enough for John Stuart Mill, it’s good enough for you.
But the idea of handing out an equal lump sum of free money to all with no strings attached isn’t just a pet project of woolly-headed leftists. Since the late 18th century, UBI hasn’t been seen as a form of welfare so much as a way to get rid of welfare entirely. That may explain why it has attracted such an eclectic group of supporters over the centuries – and may account for its renaissance today.
Circular reasoning is circular.
This part is correct, however:
Other advocates for a universal basic income in the 1960s and 1970s had different ideological sympathies, but more than a few agreed that the welfare system was broken. The economist John Kenneth Galbraith, writing in 1966, argued for a “minimum income.” Anticipating the claim that it would “destroy incentives” to work, he retorted: “Yet we now have a welfare system that could not be better designed to destroy incentive if we wanted it that way. We give the needy income, and we take away that income if the recipient gets even the poorest job.”
And we return, again, to the fundamental flaw in any argument in favor of UBI. There is a vast government apparatus which has evolved to administer the current nightmare. No one with a shred of sense or sanity thinks that will be dismantled. None of the
peoplebureaucrats currently dependent upon it will be allowed to lose their jobs or influence.And nothing about UBI will curb the innate urge of homo bureaucratis to meddle with citizen choices for political ends. Rate of increase to the UBI will be main political issue going forward.
No strings attached? Clearly a person who believes in fairy tales about government.
None of the
peoplebureaucrats currently dependent upon it will be allowed to lose their jobs or influence.Even if we could be transported to some fantasy land where the then entire welfare apparatus selflessly gave up their positions and power, the UBI still wouldn’t kill the welfare beast. People make bad decisions. And, unsurprisingly, poor people make more bad decisions than everyone else. And when they wind up blowing their UBI allotment, few if any of the people saying that the UBI is some sort of welfare killer are going to simply say “Oh well. Too bad. Screw ’em” No, we’re going to hear all the usual sob stories about kids with crappy parents, and people who just didn’t anticipate this extra expense. And blah blah blah. And almost immediately, they’ll reconstruct the welfare state on top of the UBI.
^^^this^^^
I am imagining some kind of scheme where people’s UBI is taken from them in garnishment or civil suits. I can see a whole industry growing up around that.
The people pushing UBI are really just looking to start yet another govt boondoggle.
^This.
And there will be many landlords who don’t want to rent to the new welfare class and would price their properties out of reach of UBI recipients. And then the howling and new regulations will start.
Yep. It’s inevitable.
“Vegan bride uninvites meat-eating guests from wedding
A bride-to-be has a lot of people talking about who she is and isn’t inviting to her upcoming wedding.
Not only does the woman want her guests to eat vegan on her wedding day, she wants them to give up animal products forever.
Anyone who refused was promptly uninvited, including her mom and two cousins, who were bridesmaids.
This might have stayed a private matter, but the bride posted something in a Facebook group called, ‘Vegan revolution,’ asking for advice about her omnivore family guilt-tripping her into hosting “murderers.”
As for reasoning the bride, who is 20, says even though her loved ones were originally invited and agreed to a vegan menu, she couldn’t go forward knowing they would go back to eating meat the next day.
She also claims many in her family are anti-vegan and will attack her vegan friends.
At least one of those family members responded, saying they have been nothing but supportive and are hurt by the bride’s decision.”
https://abc7chicago.com/5144493/
TW: autoplay
And there was much rejoicing from them.
She sounds level headed and nice. I bet that marriage lasts forever.
What is it about brides not recognizing that weddings are a chore, not a treat? This is like being uninvited from helping your buddy move, except in this case your buddy is a militant vegan and not really your buddy at all.
OH SO WHAT NOW I JUST HAVE TO STAY HOME EATING PORK RINDS IN MY SWEATPANTS AND NOT NEGOTIATING COUCHES AROUND TIGHT CORNERS? THANKS, ASSHOLE.
My brother and his wife are “recovering alcoholics” so they had a booze free reception. Why punish the rest of us if you can’t drink responsibly?
Now that’s just cruel.
The appropriate analogy would be that they not only had a dry reception, but insisted all their guests give up alcohol for the rest of their lives in order to attend.
I know it doesn’t rise to the vegan story level, but a booze free reception is bad enough. Instead they had a coffee bar with a lone barista making drinks.
That is some fine journalism?
Who: I don’t know. A bride somewhere
Where: No fucking clue
When: Again, not too important I guess
What: A wedding that was vegan. At least they got one of the answers
How: Facebook?
Uffda. How did this get on the air?
Most local news outfits are getting all their “human interest” stories from social media now. And here’s why….
She also claims many in her family are anti-vegan…
Yeah, with an asshole like that as their closest example of veganism, I can’t possibly imagine why they might not be terribly fond of vegans.
Why would anyone not like people who use passive-aggressive tactics to control their behavior?
Now, you have to cook a special meal just for me because I cant eat the one you already made.
If you’re polite and mention a dietary requirement beforehand, I’ll do my best to accommodate. If you’re snotty, or bring it up after the meal is plated, I’m less inclined to care.
No, hon, they’re anti-you.
I’d agree, and then make a big deal of eating a whole bunch of meat the next day.
She also claims many in her family are anti-vegan and will attack her vegan friends.
Progjection.
“The fact that one robbery was faked does not mean robbery is not a problem. The fact that there is one false rape accusation does not mean that there’s no rape. We have to cover these issues as trends and as patterns”
https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1097257831718359040
“That fact that we can’t find any real hate crimes doesn’t mean hate crime is not a problem.”
The fact that there have been about a thousand fake hate crimes in Drumpf’s Amerikkka doesn’t mean there are no hate crimes.
-Prof. Brian Stelter.
Wow. That is a humdinger right there.
“The fact that one robbery was faked does not mean robbery is not a problem.
Yes, but the fact that people fake robberies should cause you to analyze any claim with some skepticisim and require evidence
The fact that there is one false rape accusation does not mean that there’s no rape.
Same as above
We have to cover these issues as trends and as patterns”
Wrong. If you start including False positives in your evidence of trends and patterns you are going to be wrong.
Finally as UCS points out, there are relativily few “Fake” robberies compared to actual robberies. But it seems that all the big Hate crimes that get national attention end up being hoaxes, at this point it would be more accurate to say “Just because one Hate Crime was real does not mean Hoaxes are not a problem”
Straw-man.
Keep digging that hole Brian.
Thank you Donald Trump. The masks are off. I never realized how fundamentally dishonest most of the press were. I knew there were bad ones out there but never realized how many and how bad.
“Factually wrong but morally right; this is CNN”
/modified from one of the replies.
I hope the inventor of autoplay video is in Hell and getting raped hourly by semis.
WHY NO MENTION STEVE SMITH? HAPPY TO RAPE.
SMITH SMITH LOVE IS LIKE A TRUCK!
STEVE GOT PETERBUILT.
My browser doesn’t auto-play but it still seems to be loading in the background even with an ad-blocker. I need to play around with more to see if I can stop that shit.
Would it be more painful if the were raped with completely hard dicks?
Seems like getting raped with semis would be easier on the damned.
But that isn’t my scene so I’ll defer to your expertise.
What makes being raped by a semi so awful is that you end up with both a semi-hard dick *and* a thumb inside you.
LOL I thought you meant semi-trucks, which I think would be worse than STEVE SMITH.
That’s what I thought of, too.
However, you underestimate STEVE SMITH. And for your sake, you will only have to estimate.
Not only does the woman want her guests to eat vegan on her wedding day, she wants them to give up animal products forever.
Yes, Your Highness. Your wish is my command.
I hope the inventor of autoplay video is in Hell and getting raped hourly by semis.
…while rats gnaw at his scrotum.
Right next to the guy who invented single slotted screws.
Hey now, that was part of the initial development of the screw. While there were improvements, the original guy doesn’t deserve the hate for people continuing to use the starter design.
Torx or GTFO.
Look, you can have whatever interface you like today. But they guy who invented the single slotted screw is the guy who invented the screw. You wouldn’t have the fasterner at all if not for him.
It isnt about what he deserves.
*Once upon a time craftsmen made their own screws so there as many different threads/sizes/head designs as there were craftsmen.
Last time I looked at a hardware store, there were more threads/sizes/head designs than there were craftsmen.
I blame automation.
My browser doesn’t auto-play but it still seems to be loading in the background even with an ad-blocker. I need to play around with more to see if I can stop that shit.
I have given up trying to stop it. The best I can do is keep the sound turned off. At least I can’t hear anybody yammering at me as I’m trying to kill the goddam video.