Good morning my Glibs and Gliberinas! And what a glorious morning it is for everyone including Russia Truthers as The New York Times is giving them hope with this article. In the end, it makes no difference anyway what the actual report says, they’ll see what they want to see.
Meanwhile, the exposure of the intelligence community’s malfeasance is starting to be dripped out.
14 year old boy found wandering Kentucky claims to be a boy who disappeared 7 years ago.
Crazy Eyes acting tough with her retarded fan base on Twitter by having imaginary conversations with Trump. The man has been audited every year. Like most things Trump, I can’t imagine after all this time anything seriously damaging having not been revealed yet.
If I owned any Boeing stock, I’d be selling it.
Was Casimir Pulaski actually a chick?
Man slaughters and butchers neighbor’s pet pig for no apparent reason.
That’s all I got for today. I’ll leave you with a song and move along with my day.
Comments
560 responses to “Thursday Morning Links”
Thot Thursday! First!
https://thechive.com/2019/04/03/bikinis-11/
Sorry Swiss…
On topic:
AOC is the embodiment of everything her generation gets criticized for; she’s intellectually shallow, yet believes herself not to be, self-absorbed to the point of obsession and mistakes playing TUFFGAI on the internet for actually accomplishing anything.
Collectivization of generations is stupid, but if you had to, you couldn’t pick a better standard-bearer for Millennials than her.
I’m sick of the finger-wagging and head-shaking from these creeps. She and the others have this head tilt thing going on when she speaks that just screams hectoring and pure nag.
They’re like the KKK of Moral Supremacy.
And this is why they like socialism so much: it provides the framework for top men like them to tell the plebes what they can or can’t do…
Well they think they’re going to be the chosen Vanguard/Philosopher Kings in the new commue utopia. More than likely they’ll end up in a ditch along with everyone else.
I didn’t say they were smart enough to learn from history on purpose. The fact that these social revolutions always start with the first wave of people sent to camps being the non-believers, and every subsequent wave – and there will be many – being comprised of true believers that just stood in the way of the real top men’s power consolidation, is not a lesson these people have learned. After all, when you really believe these evil movements using the claim to being capable of delivering social justice but never succeeding in doing so, have not succeeded because the right top men have not been in charge and/or the countless brutal and murderous examples we have were not the real thing in action, you can hold fast to the belief this shit can be made to work.
The very definition of insanity: doing the same shit and expecting a different result…
She might be the most vainglorious person I have ever encountered in my lifetime, and that is a damned high bar to clear.
Obama is laughing in the background.
“AOC is the embodiment of everything her generation gets criticized for…”
So true,
#notall
*looks around at people my age*
#onlymost
45>10>64>74
25-6-4
Damn, that song remind me of a specific girl from the past. Not sure why – it wasn’t “our song”.
But it was the best song that band ever did.
Great guitar work from Terry Kath, too. (I was going to say Gerry)
That horn ending is terrible, though. Using clashing intonences isn’t inherently bad; but you have to (IMHO) resolve them in key.
I think it is symbolic of the guy (in the song) finally falling asleep and not finishing the song.
Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, eh?
To the woodchipper!
Those of you who come roaring in to paste in your own prepared…. stuff, right off the bat. Ask yourself “does the person who got up, made the links, scheduled them and now looks into the comments feel good about seeing this first off?” If the answer is “No”, you may be OK, and educable. If the answer is “I don’t care” – you are either amoral, immoral, or a sociopath to some degree. If the answer is “Yes”, you might just be nuts.
What happened to manners?
Are you trying to drive away all the Glibs, Swiss? WTF?
But then, the comments section will be orderly.
Wow, I wish I could commit to this bit a little better, but I’m gonna bail here, because the next thing I’d would get me jailed.
No insult intended, UCS (or Swissy)
If I wasn’t in the office, I’d hunt down the climatic scene from the World’s End.
In Unciv’s world the trains run on time.
We cleared the schedule. There are no trains. No train can arrive or depart early or late.
I, the linker extraordinaire, wouldn’t dive bomb the first comment unless there was something of epic importance (not that boobies aren’t important).
#notmyfight
hose of you who come roaring in to paste in your own prepared…. stuff, right off the bat. Ask yourself “does the person who got up, made the links, scheduled them and now looks into the comments feel good about seeing this first off?” If the answer is “No”, you may be OK, and educable. If the answer is “I don’t care” – you are either amoral, immoral, or a sociopath to some degree. If the answer is “Yes”, you might just be nuts.
What happened to manners?
It is your (collective) house and you set the rules, so if that bothers you (collective) it is rude to do it because you are our hosts. That said I don’t think it is inherently discourteous as the links posts are at least as much a home for random conversation as they are a news source going back to TOS. I enjoy the links, and appreciate the effort TPTB put into them and into maintaining this site, but I also enjoy JATNAS thoughts, and Q’s hindbrain fodder, and I think most do likewise.
Maybe a post from Swiss et al. about what they would like to see from us would help? No pouncing ‘firsts’ with prepared content? No OT links/screeds for 15 minutes after the links go up?
Agreed. Manners are all about shared expectations of behavior. I don’t feel like its bad manors to post ones own links because I don’t think everyone shares the expectation that its not something to do.* I think the community norms that evolved have been that the comment section first-and-foremost is a place to BS with friends, and second is a link factory (no matter if its in the OP or a BYOB link.) Swiss, you obviously feel different, and a clear, straight forward statement of what the hosts expect would probably be more productive than the occasional back-hand grumble.
*I don’t like the cheesecake links because I don’t like cheesecake links, but that’s another topic.
I don’t feel like its bad manners to post ones own links because I don’t think everyone shares the expectation that its not something to do
The fact that Q apologized to Swiss in the OP makes me lean in the opposite direction.
All of the “frequent offenders” are well aware that it at least torques Swiss off, if not most of the Founders.
Personally I don’t care, but I get it. I’ve had more than a few articles where the topic of the article is hardly discussed and the comments are littered with continued conversations from the last thread, tits links of various sorts, and random OT stuff. It doesn’t bother me (okay, the profusion of tits links annoys me because I’ve accidentally clicked into them while scrolling on the phone at work or sitting next to my wife), but I can see how some would perceive it as a slight.
“accidentally” clicked
?
(seriously though, it has been a serious concern the 1 or 2 times it has happened. I work in an open office environment, so there are 6 pairs of eyes in view of my phone screen)
I can only speak for myself when I say that I personally don’t care. Warty goes into incoherent rages, so that might be a discouragement. Swiss gets annoyed and he starts adjusting his telescopic sights. SP is just mystified at why people want to look at bad tats, stupid selfie poses, duck lips, and massive silicone bags.
We’re not, that’s the matrix around the actual gems.
I’ll put myself in the mystified category as well. However I’m mystified about why people bother to click into those links at all. You can go to one of thousands of sites and get exactly what you want, be it hair color, bust size, ethnicity, tats or no tats, and with 100% less clothes. It strikes me as antiquated as a bunch of 12 year olds huddled giggling around mom’s lingerie magazine.
Very late to the conversation but my general rule is to stay on topic for the first hour or the first one hundred comments. Whichever comes first.
If the answer is “I don’t care” – you are either amoral, immoral, or a sociopath to some degree.
Aren’t you the same guy who said they didn’t care whether Winston was OK with the Mom jokes being a featured article?
You’re not wrong about the manners of OT posting, but I think you protest too much.
An internet alias having a Mom joke does not equal an author being ignored.
Methinks you missed the mark.
I guess I just don’t see it that way. The Glibs team has built a community here, with its own quirks. Call it emergent behavior if you want, but that kind of organic growth (you might want to get that checked) is the kind of stuff that really makes a site like this special.
Q’s, JATNAS’s thoughts, UCS’s allergy to flavor, they all warm the rotten chambers of my dead libertarian heart. So, if I were in your shoes, not that I am, I’d be proud, not upset.
Not trying to judge though, just putting out an alternative view.
What happened to manners?
Why does this make me think of the old joke about throwing Peanuts in the lake?
It’s all part of the ribaldry here – the main reason this is my favorite place to “hang out.” I appreciate Q as much as TPTB and all the Glib commentariat. I love you guys. /sniffs
It’s a pretty sure bet that the Brits act as a clearinghouse for data on US citizens that was collected illegally. One US agency feeds it to the Limeys and the Limeys feed it back to another US agency.
Expose it all.
Foreign governments spying on US citizens including federal officials. Apparently with the blessing or at least acquiescence of US intelligence agencies. No, not a problem at all. You see, these are “friendly” governments, governments which share our values and interests.
This was status quo behavior under the Obama admin from the moment they took power and started collaborating with the people that saw that empty suit as their liberal savior after evil Boosh. Obama appointees routinely lied, cheated, and broke/circumvented the law. Shit, people still forget Holder ran an operation to smuggle guns into Mexico in the hopes the cartels would use them to kill Americans, all so they could then use that to fuck over the American people’s 2nd amendment rights. And that is only one of the many such clearly evil and illegal ops they ran and got away with.
Obama weaponized it, but that fuckstick Bush and his lapdog Congress created the system.
Not arguing otherwise, but I don’t think that the Boosh admin morons realized they had opened Pandora’s box by doing what they did, because they thought nobody would dare do what the Obama admin did and got away routinely (because the press had no interest in calling them on it like they would have done a republican administration).
It’s govt surveillance by proxy-our intelligence agencies are technically not allowed to perform domestic surveillance but the Brits et al can spy on US citizens as much as they can get away with. Then the US obtains the data that was collected by the foreign agencies and gives data in return. It’s a simple workaround that I’d bet my life is occurring.
^This. But the stench of treason is still on it.
For those that wanted the facts and not the made up shit to cover the facts, check this tid-bit out:
““A nonprofit group partially funded by billionaire activist George Soros paid firms tied to Fusion GPS and dossier author Christopher Steele more than $3.8 million in 2017 to provide research and analysis to “government entities,” according to IRS filings.
The payments made by The Democracy Integrity Project are more than three times what the DNC and the Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS and Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign to investigate Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia.””
This was not the only thing Soros was helping the Obama admin with. Wait until the details on the whole Biden/Clinton/Obama – Ukraine connections are revealed and you will see the real conspiracy was between the Obama admin and foreign powers, in order to enrich democrat polls and people connected to big donations to democrats, with Soros playing a key role in helping pay for some of it (the other money came from American tax payers, making it definitely some high level criminal shit).
Yep. And that latter part has to stop. Sure the Brits are spying on us, we are spying on them too. But to pass the results of the spying to the “opposing” agencies is horribly wrong. I think we have an extradition treaty with Britain. We should charge the head of the SIS with a crime and ask for him to be extradited to face trial in the US>
Never happen. But I’d settle for a US intel official spending the rest of his life in Leavenworth.
Start with Brennan the perjurer.
Ham and bacon are always a reason.
Great minds…
“Pet” pigs are absolutely disgusting. Being slaughtered is their purpose in life.
The sad thing is that they are quite intelligent for herbivores.
Which makes them even worse pets. My wife’s friend got a “miniature” pig that grew up to be a 250 lb hog. The thing squeals incredibly loud then purposely craps on the floor if it’s every want and need isn’t satisfied.
Agreed.
Dogs see themselves as members of a social unit, and generally want to fit into that unit.
Dogs will do similar things if not properly socialized.
Dogs have been domesticated for thousands of years. Pigs were always farm animals.
Wait…so that’s frowned upon?
(quietly reconsiders upcoming salary negotiations)
So pigs have the attitude of cats and the cleanliness of dogs. The worst of both worlds.
I have first-hand knowledge that if a cat suddenly doesn’t like where you put the litter box, they will show you where it should be.
Omnivores. They’ll eat carrion in the wild and anything you throw them in captivity.
Like people.
Like a Pierson Puppeteer?
+1 Hindmost
“How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?” — Speaker to Animals
I dinthearnuffim.
Omnivores
Pigs can be incredibly intelligent. We had one on the farm that was smarter than the dog. She was the only pig I ever got attached to. I mean, I still ate her, but the first bite was a little hard to swallow.
I almost choked on that pun.
Bacon…it be callin’ me.
Pork chops…. hmmmmmmm…
*calls AlmightyJB
I’d normally agree, but it’s not like he found the pig wondering and thought “cool, free bacon”. The man was asked by an officer to watch the pig while they go and get the owner who was looking for it and right after agreeing proceeds to slaughter and butcher the thing. The officer comes back to find the man mid butchering. Did he think he would get away with it? Did he think the neighbor wanted it butchered? Strange.
Well, he was still watching it.
Maybe he was trying to make a silk purse?
“It made a furtive movement.”
This – the guy feared for his life.
The article said that the guy watching/butchering the pig was someone known to police and also not the property owner where the butchering was done, so I’m going to guess a few screws loose. Which raises the question of why the pig was left in his custody.
The pig identified as a cop
Pork loin.
Yes.
No apparent reason? Bacon is always a reason.
Man slaughters and butchers neighbor’s pet pig for no apparent reason.
He must have mistaken it for food.
My cousin’s father in law used to go on Craigslist and find people giving away pot bellied pigs, goats, or any other variety of nominally edible livestock, “adopt” them, and promptly slaughter, butcher, and freeze them.
Promptly? No flushing period with quality feed, vet checkup, even just some observation time for signs of illness etc.
I’m assuming nobody ever ate their potluck contributions.
Some on Mueller’s Team Say Report Was More Damaging Than Barr Revealed
Some on Muller’s Team need to put up or shut up.
More damaging to who? whom?
I have no idea what the final report is going to say but, as several have noted here, it seems likely there would have been some leaks from somewhere if there was something damaging.
I guarantee the Democrats don’t actually want it released. It’s far more useful as an unknown that they can allude to but never have to prove anything.
Much like the golden showers dossier, what could be in there is more useful that what is actually in there
It will most likely read like Trump is actually Hitler without naming a single actual crime and depend on a bunch of completely irrelevant stuff
Semi-serious question:
If the grievance-peddlers get their way and shoehorn LGBTQ+++ amendments into the Civil Rights Act, and I start identifying as a masculine-presenting, M-F transgender lesbian, do I get free shit?
IANAL, but I’m trying to understand how the courts would go, even with a FYTW clause.
You will be disqualified because you neither want your dick chopped off or have post op titties Q. And no, delivering daily titty links is not enough proof of your newly acquired LGBTQXYZ creds….
Now hold on, Alex. The thought of Q undergoing gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy has great comedic potential.
Putting the bosom back in Bosom Buddies.
[applauds heartily]
If I got implants, I’m pretty sure I’d lose my job and my house cause I’d never stop staring at myself in the mirror.
Don’t worry, Q. We’d form a support group for you.
“support group”
Like a brah?
Someone isn’t familiar with “non-op” trans.
And being on hormones doesn’t matter either.
Merely declaring yourself to be the opposite sex is enough for most anti-discrim legislation to kick-in.
I predict a lot of trolling.
The thing about having overlapping and mutually exclusive categories of protected classes is that it is entirely up to the whim of the court hearing any particular case as to how to properly balance the competing interests. Which is why protected classes are such a mindbogglingly stupid fucking idea.
Which is the problem. If rights conflict, then one thing is not a right.
^This.
Which is the problem. If rights conflict, then one thing is not a right.
This sounds good and is emotionally appealing but I think it is demonstrably false. There are always fringe cases where rights conflict and judgment is necessary. Obvious examples are found in abortion and open borders. The right to life is certainly a right. The right to control over one’s body also is certainly a right. In this one area they conflict and some judgment is necessary. Likewise with the right to travel and the right to exclude, although in that case you have the additional issue of whether a collective right can exist.
You would also need for a court (*cough* Ninth Circuit *cough*) to rule that you were entitled to free surgery and hormones, and that will probably be carried in on a much broader ruling about a positive right to health care and that gender reassignment was bona fide health care and not cosmetic surgery.
But here’s the brilliance; if I’m masculine presenting and just identify as female, I don’t necessarily need hormones or surgery. I can continue to be my shitlord self, but in sheep’s clothing.
And I get all the tasty benefits of protected class-ness.
I’m sure some court will decide to put a “reasonable” test on it.
You get to file a discrimination lawsuit against any non-individual that refuses to participate in your delusion.
All government employees and corporations will subsequently be required to pretend that you are something that you’re not. It will be even more interesting for doctors and hospitals.
+1 IT IS MA’AM!
Floridaman wannabees.
Obviously these guys are dumber than dogshit, but I’m struggling to find anything I’d consider a crime in an ideal world.
according to police who arrested the pair for felony assault
Uh…wut?
He figured those kind of excuses work for the cops.
And for people falsely claiming hate crimes….
Yeah, the only evil involved is the cops busting them.
Don’t marry a narc.
Carlos Ghosn tries to talk to the press – gets re-arrested in Japan on more trumped up charges and sent to gulag.
The Japanese legal system is getting international exposure as a complete farce. France and Brazil should seriously be raising hell with the Japanese government.
Our legal system is a farce too Drake. The fact that we still have people demanding the president be frog marched for winning an election they rigged for Clinton, while Clinton, Obama, and a slew of Obama admin criminals avoid the prison time, makes us a banana republic squared. I won’t even go into the Jessie (he lost the “U” with me too, if I can quote Chris Rock) story…
We have people demanding… They actually did simply because they didn’t like a business decision he made.
Japan is a sovereign country and have every right to tell France and Brazil to go fuck themselves.
Also, Ghosn has to be a corrupt piece of shit for a goddam zaibatsu to have a problem with his creative accounting.
He was going to merge Nissan with Renault. The Japanese government and some of the Japanese execs didn’t like that – so they lured him to Japan and charged him with a load of trumped up crimes. He’s a French and Brazilian citizen being held and questioned in a prison without access to counsel and without any prospect of a trial anytime soon. Of course they should be raising hell and asking hard questions.
A Polish transgender calvaryxir?
I am a lesbian half-dragon/half-phoenix trapped in a man’s body!
Kinky!
Hey, if you are gonna play the game, play it for keeps, I say…
I bet Gen. Xe road a gelding.
BTW, I love how the headline alludes to DNA evidence. When I saw it, I thought they had enough DNA that proved the Sir was a Maam. Then you find out that the DNA linked a skeleton with a descendent of the Gen. And the only “proof” that the general was a chick was that the skeleton had girly looking bones.
Is this real science or 1990’s – every great American was actually gay – rehashed for the Trans Crowd?
I’m going to guess the latter.
“It may be that contemporary consciousness raising feminism does not respect women, for it sees them as incapable of nuance and of being able to handle sexual situations. The coarse short order cooks who harassed the young 15 year-old hostess weren’t feminists. But they acted on the very premise that feminists once claimed as their own: they treated my younger self as someone tough enough to handle my own sexuality.”
https://quillette.com/2019/04/04/notme-on-harassment-empowerment-and-feminine-virtue/
This is what got Chrissie Hynde in trouble with the feminists.
I know when Dolly Parton has been asked about the music industry she always says that she never slept with anyone she didn’t want to.
There’s gonna be an adjustment because of uncle Joe. All that “it doesn’t matter what your intentions were” and “every accusation has merit” bs will become “so last year.” There’s an ocean of teenaged girls looking creeper out on film, but they should just realize that old guys like kissing and smelling their hair and not be so prudish. Amirite?
Yeah, it’s gonna be interesting
Congress: “We’re going to need a copy of the President’s tax returns from 2013-2018.”
45: “No, I’m ‘under audit.’ ”
Congress: “We didn’t ask you.”
Are you threatening me?
The man has been audited every year.
Yea but what good is being drunk with subpoena power if you don’t use it?
I’m going to need the tax returns of every member of Congress first.
And AOC, I’ll need to see your boyfriend’s return too – the one who invested your campaign cash in his business.
We need to see Beta’s as well.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke paid roughly $110,000 in campaign funds to a web development company while either he or his wife owned it, public records show.
Beto for Texas paid Stanton Street Technology Group $58,544 during the 2011-12 election cycle, $39,060 during the 2013-14 cycle, $9,290 in the 2015-16 cycle and $32,778 during the 2017-18 cycle, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“See he does his own coding!”
— Next issue of Texas Monthly
I guess if the IRS didn’t find anything wrong AOC sure can.
She has a degree in Economics, so she’s totes smrt about money.
That actually made me laugh your holiness.
Yeah, aligning yourself with the IRS will really win over the people who voted for Trump because they were tired of the Swamp.
And how silly is it to demand tax returns? It isn’t like every April Trump hunkers down with TurboTax to fill out his return. But of course, the lefties think Trump is so evil that he has some team of accountants who are willing to blatantly break tax law because he personally told them to.
You’ll be enjoying the taste of crow when those 1099’s from Russian Intelligence and the W-2 from the Kremlin are produced.
Street cannabis ‘contains dangerous amount of faecal matter’
Good shit?
“Dude…” [coughs and passes]
Boo!
Well, the hippies love them some organic farming, after all.
Are we talking about hippie shit cultivation?
Same with those donkey shit cigarettes I bought in Tijuana.
+1 kiestered contraband
If I owned any Boeing stock, I’d be selling it.
Perhaps but I thought I heard that the plane went down because the pilots incorrectly implemented a needlessly complicated stall recover system.
recovery*
Boeing is a GSE for all intents and purposes anyway, go ahead and hold onto the stock.
Boeing did the same shit Tesla does: it sold a cheaper model with software disabling capability that went counter to the usual training for that procedure, and a more expensive version where things worked as expected. I can’t see them getting away with this considering people got killed not once, or twice, but because of several crashes caused by this low end software producing behavior counter to the very training they give pilots to handle the stall case they encountered that resulted in numerous crashes. They are going to be fucked over for this. At least I hope it ends this practice of using software to shaft consumers on a product by offering the same base hardware at different prices.
Boeing sales rep – “Oh, you want the non-crash gold edition release. That’s not standard, and you get a mousepad with it.”
Differing reports apparently: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47812225
“Pilots “repeatedly” followed procedures recommended by Boeing before the crash, according to the first official report into the disaster.”
Yup, as I mention above, the problem was that they had the low end software which is not compatible with the training they receive (and is instructed by Boeing) to handle the situation they encountered, and results in a fatal event. Had the plane had the more expensive software installation, then their actions would have been correct and the plane would likely not have crashed. There is no excuse I can see Boeing using to get away with this shit.
That plane went down like a prom date after a bunch of wine coolers.
I was just thinking the opposite. High profile bad press depresses the price and a year later we’re right back where we started except those that buy now get a 20% return.
Morning Banjos!
Mornin’
I know I left my shocked face around here somewhere…
https://victorygirlsblog.com/george-soros-democracy-integrity-project-was-key-funder-of-steele-dossier/
Accurately reporting George Soros’ political spending is exactly the same as publicly declaring that American Jews have dual loyalty, AIPAC pays bribes to US congressmen, and Israel uses tricknology to keep the Palestinians down.
Who is the equivalent behind the scenes villain in the comics to this little shit disturber?
Fucken sniveling rat.
Soros funded a lot more than that dossier Q. I suspect that eventually this information will come out, and it will be damning. It seems that the Obama admin was running several operations in the Ukraine back in 2013-2016, especially around their elections, where tax payers funded some of the efforts, and Soros paid the difference. As part of those things, the Ukraine’s intelligence agencies helped the Obama admin spy on US Citizens (especially that asshat Manafort) and also gave a lot of powerful connected democrats some real sweet deals (Biden’s son working for an Ukrainian gas company that was under investigation until Biden demanded they fire the AG investigating this corrupt entity is just one of those).
Ukrainian intel was a key player in the Obama admin’s efforts to entrap the Trump team in their collusion scheme as well. The desperation to keep the Trump story going, now by claiming that despite the whole Russia thing being a damned lie, he obstructed justice, is to prevent him from demanding they investigate all the corrupt shit that happened under Obama and that democrats thought would never see the light of day when Hillary won the election and proceeded to double down on using the weaponized intel & justice agencies to fuck over political enemies of democrats.
Interesting website.
“A nonprofit group partially funded by billionaire activist George Soros paid firms tied to Fusion GPS and dossier author Christopher Steele more than $3.8 million in 2017 to provide research and analysis to “government entities,” according to IRS filings.
The payments made by The Democracy Integrity Project are more than three times what the DNC and the Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS and Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign to investigate Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia.”
I don’t think “integrity” means what they think it means.
Meant as a response to Q…
After Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his Russia investigation found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, some Democrats have been continuing efforts to investigate the president’s business dealings and other actions.
“I have it on good authority that President Scofflaw’s limousine was double parked during a bank meeting. Impeach!”
The real reason to impeach Trump is that he eats burnt steak topped with ketchup. That’s un-American.
House Judiciary panel to grill Google and Facebook on hate speech
Good thing hate speech=free speech. Grandstanding tickets who know they can’t do anything but want to waste time and money
Well fuckers corrects to tickets on my phone. How bout that
I would like to see the algorithms Facebook & Google use to look for and remove content they consider hate speech. Remember that these two took it upon themselves to police hate speech. Nobody compelled them to do so (well the fact that they are left leaning shit stains might be proof of a compelling motive, but I am going to skip that for now) by force of the law.
#nationalhuganewspersonday
Make sure y’all go out and find a newsperson and give them a big hug today. They’re heroes, and they need love.
When everyone is running away from a dumpster fire, they’re the ones running in.
#metoo won’t feed itself.
That’s assault!
Newspersons are objective, hard-nosed champions for truth… but give ’em a hug because their narrative didn’t pan out?
Should we sniff their hair too?
Asking for a friend.
Joe Biden will be right on that.
I thought it was national teach a newsperson to code day?
I wonder what might’ve changed recently?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nordic-countries-high-rape-figures-gender-a8851456.html
It’s a Scooby-Doo mystery…
Global warmingclimate change.Dammit, “global warming” was supposed to be strikeout.
You calling for an edit fairy? Have not seen that in a while…
I just had an intense conversation with my buddy last night over this. He’s a high IQ, open minded, engineer and catches on quickly so he understood what I was saying and was open to it. The gist was the claim – and he’s not alone – just look outside and you see the weather is messed up.
This is true. The eyes do not deceive. In one 10 minute drive to work earlier this winter it snowed, hailed and rained.
But I took the track of a) we act like this is unique and has happened before to which I further cautioned against the data because they tend to manipulate them to convince people this is in fact all new and b) don’t let your perception dictate the science. If you do that you’re vulnerable to faulty premises which give rise to bad public policy doomed to fail.
I blitzed him and finally he relented understanding there’s a difference. People don’t pay attention to how the jargon evolves. For example, global cooling to global warming to suddenly climate change. It’s like someone said, ‘fuck it. We can’t keep looking stupid. Just go for the ‘stick to your wife’ cookies’.
Same with the ‘97% consensus’ as if science is predicated on consensus. Or the homage to Salem Puritan culture ‘denier’ which I’m almost sure was done on purpose.
That’s harder to drive home I feel. Connecting those dots. It took me almost 20 years to finally accept this is about social and policy control more than it is climate change.
When society did away with old time religion and it’s apocalyptic predictions, people, still driven by the need for a grander purpose or design, were left with a vacuum that was filled by all these end of world cults. The AGW cult, and have no doubt that is what it is, is a movement that preys on the need to be part of something big that so many people have and can’t fulfill because they abandoned the old time religions. Once you are on board with the whole claim that what is happening is unique (and facts to the contrary be damned), suspending logic of any kind in order to validate the cultish belief that the end is nigh, is easy. Even for highly intelligent people.
Very well said!
Almost every single place I’ve been has this joke: “If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes.”
Yep. And every location acts like it unique to their locale.
Well, it is unique to their locale, at the particular time. Its uniqueness all the way down.
I meant acts like the phrase is unique to their locale.
Sort of like Minnesota claiming “Midwest nice” as their own.
And if you don’t like the climate, just wait 12 years!
Weather changes!
“The fact that a sexual partner says ‘no, I don’t want to’ before sexual intercourse or between intercourses, is not always a sufficient signal to the other person that consent and willingness to continue sex is not present.”
So that makes it sounds like there might be a lot of morning after buyer’s remorse going on which is a more complex situation. Are these #metoo rapes or rape rapes?
STEVE SMITH HAVE NO REMORSE. HIM NOT BUYER EITHER!
All that’s getting me through this week is the thought that it’s under two weeks until vacation. Of course, it’s also a bit of a pain that I travel for work next week.
The Democracy Integrity Project
We don’t want our clear and perfect version of democracy contaminated by the preferences of other people. And we’ll stop at nothing to preserve it.
The real reason to impeach Trump is that he eats burnt steak topped with ketchup. That’s un-American.
I’d certainly take that into consideration at sentencing.
More woke Gillette
Get out there and slay the day!
Damn my eyes!
Eyebleach
Oh, yes. Thank you for that.
*shakes fist at Slammer*
put a TW on that one Slammer!
Not safe for breakfast?
Kinda small for my tastes….
I should have known better than to click that.
I appreciate you guys being the canaries. I’m not going in there.
All this time we’ve been told the sea level rise was due to climate change.
Eye bleach.
https://archive.li/JSvZa/b3e978777d7267069f75398226de6d5550555be1
Thicc?
No, what we used to call morbidly obese.
The thing is, assuming it’s not a health condition of course, if she’d shed pounds she a) won’t die younger and b) actually look pretty.
^^^Shitlord!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“actually look pretty”
You actually probably don’t want to see her after she’s lost all that weight, buddy. The skin doesn’t automatically tighten back up, it just no longer has anything to fill it up. They can get surgery but that’s pretty expensive and painful. A crap ton of long incisions, multiple surgeries, etc.
Probably but I was focusing on the face.
Still, she’d probably feel and look better.
The face gets saggy, too. Many people hate the sagginess of their “new” bodies and start putting the pounds back on.
But there are immediate and tangible benefits to the weight loss. And the surgery actually improves health because your heart and organs no longer have to support all that extra flesh.
They seem to have really gotten the gastric surgeries down and that does keep the weight off.
Doesn’t the skin eventually adjust with time?
to the best of my knowledge…
Some. but overcoming large body size changes, the skin may not tighten up to an adequate (i.e. not flapping in the breeze) amount.
I went through Basic Training and AIT with a really nice fellow who joined up specifically to have the Army pay for the surgeries. He lost something like 200 pounds and was essentially wearing another person with all the extra skin. He had to wear a girdle and lots of Ace bandages for morning runs but he stuck it out and got it done.
Oh come on. That was from a comedy show right?
Conclusion of John Candy’s arc in the extended version of Stripes.
That’s good marketing. People with more surface area probably go through razors faster.
Cutting contact is what wears out the razor. I don’t know how hair follicles work; as you increase in size do you get more hairs or do they just spread out?
As I understand it, the research says that eating in a calorie surplus alone *probably* causes more hair follicles to form, and increasing skin surface area *probably* causes more hair follicles to form.
Looks like she ate the day.
Heh I just got a free “boys first razor” from them in the mail. Addressed to presumably some previous resident. “Happy 18th Birthday!” One of those alien-looking jobs.
Mo’ Gravy: Desperate Democrats now try to outpander each other for 2020
All the normal “free” shit and Biden thinks that 12 years of school is “no longer enough”. I wonder why that is, Grandpa Grope. But this stuck out.
In a conversation with NPR about his memoir Shortest Way Home, Buttigieg says that the 2020 election should be focused on what he calls “inter-generational justice.” He says he worries about what the United States will be like in 2054 — the year he would turn 72, the current age of President Trump.
Inter-generational debt slavery somehow does not factor in to consideration.
Over/under on when Trump starts doing the same thing?
Only 4 beers?
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/newlywed-downed-4-beers-flight-went-homophobic-rant-attacked-flight-attendants-way-honeymoon-091737033.html
What a lightweight.
A man on an easyJet flight was supposed to be on his way to Egypt, where he was set to celebrate his honeymoon with his bride. Instead, he has been handed seven months in jail after he drunkenly assaulted two flight attendants and went on a homophobic rant.
4 beer queer.
video from the flight
Lucky bride. I’m sure he won’t beat her everytime he gets drunk off a few beers.
4 beers is very, very sad.
I’m sure he was an asshole before he drank them. I can drink all day, beer or liquor, and never act like a little bitch.
#metoo
You must have to just be a miserable person to always be an asshole when drunk, right? I don’t get it.
Time is racist.
https://news.wsiu.org/post/brittney-cooper-how-has-time-been-stolen-people-color#stream/0
Just when I think they can’t get any stupider.
And fatter
Dedicated
https://twitter.com/ProfessorCrunk/status/1113237199879905280?s=20
“associate professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University”
She’s a professional idiot.
Only an associate!?
How hard can it be to not go straight to plain professor? It’s nonsense after all.
This is even dumber than the Labor Theory of Value.
Alien. Asks time:
Rufus (eating a sangwich made by a woman): It’s 3:46 pm.
SJW: Time is the spatial point between where white Western frameworks force me to say 3:47pm but in reality – or some such – it’s not to some black or brown people under the metaphorical Doc Marten boot of an imperial Western person of white privilege. It’s important for us to understand time is not the same for all of us and that…..
Alien zaps SJW.
Alien to Rufus: Thanks.
Rufus: No anal probe?
Alien: That’s a galaxy-ban myth dude.
Shit man, that’s stupid.
Which is sad, because there is a really interesting history of human timekeeping that has nothing to do with race, but has everything to do with human perception of time before and after introduction of objective timekeeping mechanisms.
Before these clocks, people saw time as cycles and rhythms, specifically, that *change*. Summer days are longer than winter days, etc. Our bodies circadian rhythms use the dawn and dusk to alter *each day* so that our rise and sleep cycles are indexed based on the dawn and dusk modulated by sex and age. Young kids wake up early, as do old adults. Child bearing adults sleep in a touch later, and teenagers sleep in much later and stay up much later (about 3 hours shifted from child bearing adults.) Women wake up earlier easier with kids than men, too.
This lead to early sex and age segregation of work and social cliques. Teenagers have time in the late evening to develop peer groups and perform nocturnal tasks. Older adults take care of children, using their greater knowledge but weaker bodies to a task well suited for that. Child bearing age adults do the other physically stressful tasks with teenagers during the day, etc.
Then, objective time keeping comes, and people start to synchronize their towns/clans around those. A big loud noise every day at exactly X:00 and everyone gets up, etc.
This has nothing to do with race, and nothing to do with spending time versus wasting time.
Chinese towns had this. Muslim towns had this. Midevil European towns had this. All before the industrial revolution.
No no no… the Industrial Revolution introduced the workday and the Industrial Revolution was a creation of white Western civilization.
Therefore the workday is white supremacist.
Are you a clock salesman?
Ouch! I just strained my eyeballs from extensive rolling.
I thought time was better to
colored peoplepeople of color. ///blackdontcrackSay what you want about Jeff Lynne, but it was a good album.
What was time again?
Does anybody really know?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBuUUBrC9eQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTIPCc1nKYQ
I have no idea what argument Cooper is even making. Her mom, however, sounds pretty great.
I have a cat named Cooper. I’m pretty sure he’s smarter than Ms. Cooper.
Shoot, calculus and physics must be a breeze in Wakanda.
When Δt is anything you feel like, I bet there are some elegant solutions to engineering problems.
“How is that building hanging there?”
“The foundation has yet to experience a change in time.”
And just like that, inertia is no longer a consideration.
*invents first portable wormhole*
Bullshit – you don’t want to “move forward”.
Let’s assume she really believes this for sake of argument. My respons to that statement would be: Who is we? Define acknowledge. Then we can go from there.
Preposterous
Republicans are certain to argue that the request for Trump’s taxes is yet another example of unreasonable scrutiny by Democrats frustrated with indications that Mueller’s report will not doom Trump’s presidency. One reason that the request appears to be comparatively narrow — for returns between 2013 and 2018 — could be to confine the search to the period immediately before and during Trump’s political career and to stave off accusations that the Democrats are embarking on an illegitimate fishing expedition.
A fishing expedition? That’s crazy.
The Democrats are merely engaged in the sort of fastidious exercise of their Constitutional responsibilities which has characterized their behavior for decades. They have a duty to uphold.
I think the Senate should start subpoenaing all of the Congressional Democrats for whatever random shit they want. Start with AOCs campaign finances.
The Committee’s announcement calls social media platforms “world-wide conduits to spread vitriolic hate messages into every home and country.” During its hearing on the 9th, it’s hoping to examine hate crimes, the spread of white identity ideology and the impact of white nationalist groups on communities. It’s also hoping to conjure up and foster ideas on what the platforms can do to squash white nationalist propaganda.
Well within the scope of their responsibilities.
Commerce clause.
It’s like they want white people to organize as an identity group.
Indeed. I have an article coming up on this, but I’ll give a teaser; they share a lot of qualities with a millenarian cult like ISIS. They are trying to set up a final, apocalyptic showdown between good (goodthinkers) and evil (the unwoke and whiteys) which will usher in a golden age.
That’s been my position for awhile now. You can’t push identitarian horseshit and demonize an identity group by skin pigment and expect another result.
Thanks again to whoever it was for sharing that 59 egg ways video. I just made tomato eggs and they are delicious. A nice heavy vodka sauce in a wee pan brought to a simmer, made a divot and cracked a couple eggs into it, covered pan and poached the eggs until done. It’s really, really yummy.
There must be 59 ways to egg your lover.
*NARROWS GAZE*
Not sure if this is more or less idiotic than the “time is racist” article.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolyncenteno/2019/04/03/what-if-toxic-masculinity-is-the-reason-for-climate-change/#7202eb8337e4
When a person walks out of the grocery store holding an eco-friendly canvas bag instead of a plastic bag, what gender do you think they are? Most likely, your unconscious bias answers that they are female.
I carry my groceries in my foreskin like a marsupial pouch just to assert my alpha male dominance.
By strange coincidence, I make beta carry my groceries in their foreskin to assert my alpha male dominance.
A real Chad doesn’t worry about groceries. A real Chad expects one of his girlfriends will bring groceries over to do the cooking when he’s ready to nosh.
Men are more receptive to something that would keep their family safe versus being eco-friendly.
Men are the worst.
Death cult, I tell ya.
“We need to overcome our unhealthy judgements of gender incongruence. And men need to be confident in their self-identity and decide to live a sustainable lifestyle without caring what other people think.”
Be confident in who you are, by being what everyone expects you to be without caring what they think.
I’m self-confident about my choice to burn tires in my front yard while dumping used motor oil down the storm drain.
I set batteries on fence posts and shoot lead bullets at them, while throwing my empty aluminum beer cans wherever the hell I like.
Pussy, real men use lead beer cans as well.
the “time is racist” article
CPT?
Reading through the previous afternoon links…
The meat is some of the last to go for most animal kills, at least for the truly edible parts. It has the least nutritional value. Brains, eyes, guts usually go first. Our ancestors ate many of these parts for the same reasons.
The most accessible nutrients, until the invention of cooking.
So cooking adds nutrients?
St. Louis Public Radio Loses Longtime Host Over Telling Woman ‘You Look Great’
Fucking Puritan snitch jackasses…
I’m guessing that a 80 year-old saying “you look great” to a 75 year-old has different connotations than youngsters using the same phrase. I bet Fourscore is going to be shocked to find out he is a serial lecher.
No one ever tells me I look ‘great’. I hear ‘awesome’ bantered around, a couple weeks before a birthday or Xmas but its a scam to try to encourage me to unzip my coin purse. I have friends (and so do you) that look younger than their chronological age. That bothers me a lot but I avoid mirrors as much as possible.
Actually I like looking old ’cause I am. I blame my ex-wife. True story, I used to tell her “You can make my hair turn grey but you can’t make it fall out.”
KU offers ‘angry white male’ course
Need to start cutting funding to schools for espousing racism.
The opening lecture
I was disapointed this wasn’t Sam Kinnison from Back to School.
The Department of Shitlord Studies at Scruffy U will be offering a course next semester entitled “Women 101: Sluts, Basic Bitches, and Golddiggers: Everything You Need To Know”
So was it pro- or anti- angry white male?
I heard this during the drive in to work: https://academicminute.org/2019/04/karen-gaffney-raritan-valley-community-college-race-as-a-social-construct/
I responded thusly:
So far my comment has not made it out of moderation.
You expect them to ever let that set of questions post?
However, race is a social construct. There isn’t a genetic test that will identify race in the same way you can identify sex.
All taxonomies are social constructs.
All language is a social construct.
A term that is completely non-unique has the same value as one that doesn’t exist.
Ergo, “social construct” is a nullity.
Elegantly put.
While I suspect there is a useful definition of “social construct”, I’m not sure I know what it is or even whether it has been invented yet. Perhaps “a bundle of expectations (or cognitive biases?) that are widely held in a given social group or community”?
If this is our definition, then this sentence:
Most scholars who study race and racism generally agree that race is a social construct, not something that is biologically real.
Misses the mark by 3 – 4 letters. I think you can argue that rac
eism is a social construct, but not race.okay, I take back social construct.
Race is a not a testable genetic trait.
I’m still digesting, Leap, but my initial reaction is that definition of “social construct” is almost indistinguishable from the application of the term to everything that we describe with a word, as all words are “social constructs”.
Every word is an abstraction, a categorization of the unthinkably complex real world/objective data into a necessarily simplified abstraction.
Every cardiac rhythm is unique – none are identical to any others, whether between people or even the same person from moment to moment. We abstract them within certain ranges and patterns with descriptive terms that we find useful and, hopefully, test against their effectiveness in obtaining desired results.
Every tree is unique, as well, We abstract them into descriptive categories (“oak”, “pine”). That doesn’t mean oak trees and pine trees are social constructs (which is the cognitive error that a lot of people using the term fall into).
The stolen base of “social construct” is that all words are arbitrary, all classifications are arbitrary, but the pejorative term “social construct” attempts to delegitimize certain words and classifications because they are “arbitrary”, as if all words and classifications are not.
If you want to attack the usage of a certain word or classification, then do so on some basis other than it is arbitrary. As you say:
MLK didn’t say get rid of race because its arbitrary. He said to stop judging by race because it is an injustice to do so. And a lot of people believed in that.
>I’m still digesting, Leap, but my initial reaction is that definition of “social construct” is almost indistinguishable from the application of the term to everything that we describe with a word, as all words are “social constructs”.
That’s because that definition of “social construct” is indistinguishable from the application of the term to everything we describe with a word.
Tagging of phenomena (or perception, more accurately) is literally the basis of intelligence. It allows for the discrimination between alike and different, which is the most rudimentary logical test.
These tags were not handed down from God. They are not imprinted on the universe (the way that say formal logic is.) They spring up from humans needing to do something with all the sensory input they get.
Do you know much about machine learning? its the difference between feature engineering and a deep-learning network. In feature engineering, you take a really complex signal and make features. They may be arbitrary or they may not be. But in any case, you look for a weighted combination of the features that help you classify the signal in some way. These features are social constructs.
In a deep-learning network, there is no feature engineering. You just hook the input signal up to the network and let the network drink from the firehose. There is no social-network step there.
Humans do the feature engineering route, not the deep-learning route, when we classify by race. Those features are based on phenotype (skin color, eye shape, nose size, hair texture,) social situation, and heredity.
that definition of “social construct”* is indistinguishable from the application of the term to everything we describe with a word.
*a bundle of expectations (or cognitive biases?) that are widely held in a given social group or community
I believe you are correct, sir.
you take a really complex signal and make features
Would it be accurate to say you detect patterns and “flag” certain of them as significant? I think the identification of patterns and definitely the flagging would be arbitrary at some level.
hook the input signal up to the network and let the network drink from the firehose
So, raw, unfiltered perception, which is the way all perception starts, I believe. We do a great deal of the filtering at an unconscious (and maybe even a hardware/neural level); what we say/believe we perceive is actually heavily edited and abstracted. As the philosopher said, “you don’t see with your eye, you see with your mind.”
Once you set up your deep learning network with an input of “perception”, what does it do next?
Become virulently racist.
Yes, that’s the next part. In feature-based machine learning, you get a raw signal and you want to classify it in some way (e.g., get an image, does it have a cat in it (y/n)??) You design a shit-ton of features. These can be completely mathematically arbitrary (partition it into groups of pixels of size 1, size 2, size 3, etc and find an average intensity; do an texture analysis and get a measure of texture frequency for each group; extract the most common color for each group) or they may be non-arbitrary (I know that kitties usually take up 50% to 66% of the space in cat pics, so see if there’s a blob that takes up 50% to 60% of the space in the picture)
Now you’ve got a shit ton of features. Too many for good results. You train up your network by finding out which ones are the most “discriminant” aka help you discriminate between “Kitty yes” and “Kitty no.”
You do this buy [Really fucking complex math], that results in a weight for each feature. Useless features have weights of (or around) 0. Highly discriminant features have higher weights up to 1. A 1 would indicate that the single feature is perfectly discriminant.
Now, you select your N most heavily weighted features (or all features above a minimum weight) and you make a function with them. For each feature, it will give you a 1 if the feature is in a new test image and a 0 if the feature is not in the new test image.
For example, one feature may be “Is there a blob between 50% and 66% of the image) and it may have a weight of 0.33. The function has a couple or dozen other features.
When a new sensory input comes in (a new image), you run the function. Part of the function includes the blob test, which will result in “no” aka a result of 0 or “yes” aka a result of 1. You multiply that result by the weight (either 0*0.33 or 1*0.33) and add that up with all the other feature tests in your function.
This give you a confidence value for the new image. Big confidence value (aka close to 1) = likely to have kitty. Low confidence value (aka close to 0) = not likely to have kitty.
If you need a binary choice (y/n) you say “any time I get a confidence value above M I think its a kitty pic.” If you pick a number close to 1, you will exclude a lot of pics with kitties but will be pretty sure the ones you pick have a kitty for sure. if you pick a low confidence value, you’ll be over-inclusive and probably get some doggos and dust balls included in your kitty pics.
>Once you set up your deep learning network with an input of “perception”, what does it do next?
Ok, with deep learning, you need to understand the above. But here’s the difference.
You get the input signal and you *do not* do that part where you design a bunch of features. You start out with a network of tests that go in order from least granular to most granular. In images, most granular is “Is it an image (y/)” there is only one test on this level. Then the next level is “What do the big textures look like?” Think of that as brush strokes or the black outlines in a comic book, and “look like” is some mathematical measure of them (length, curve, color, etc) Then the next level is “What do the small textures look like?” because you know that big textures are made of small textures. This would be say pixels within a particular brush stroke.
Each test in a network has inputs and outputs. The input for the first layer is where you feed the image. The output is yes and no. You hook the no up to a “you dun fucked up” error message. You hook the Yes up to every test in the second layer. The second layer tests may each output yes/no, or they may have integer values 1,2,3,4, etc. In any case, you hook each output possibility to each test in the next layer over and over again. That’s why deep networks look like this.
“But Leap, aint each of those tests a feature?” you may ask. Yes, yes they are. But, we have no idea what they mean or what they do. They are mathematically arbitrary. If you try to figure them out, you are going to get a Pandora’s box of robot nightmares.
But in any case, you do the same [Complex Math] and get a bunch of tests with weights close to 0. You can discard those, and you are left with a classifier that you can feed new images into, just like in feature selection.
The human brain, as I understand it (I know more about silicone computers than the ones in your skull) does feature-engineering learning for complex stuff like racial classification and deep network learning for really basic stuff (is this light hitting my eye bright enough to provide a sensation? Are those vibrations hitting my tympanic nerve enough to create a sensation?)
I will freely confess that the bottom has dropped out from under my feet on your last few comments.
“But Leap, aint each of those tests a feature?” you may ask. Yes, yes they are. But, we have no idea what they mean or what they do. They are mathematically arbitrary.
In fact, that is exactly what I was asking. They are “mathematically arbitrary”, but aren’t the features also arbitrary?
This takes me back (in a good way) to my senior year philosophy seminar on Godel Escher Bach, which featured all three profs in the department and me and my buddy.
Completely by accident, I took the final in the class sky-high on mushrooms. Turned out to be the smart way to do it.
>They are “mathematically arbitrary”, but aren’t the features also arbitrary?
Some of the features are arbitrary. Some of the features are generated based on prior knowledge.
A human scans a bunch of instagram photos of kitties and sees the blob and decided that “Big blob taking up 50% to 66% are found in a lot of kitty photos” and codes up that features. That’s not arbitrary, that’s based on previous knowledge.
There is none of that in the deep network.
RC – Social Construct is the way that we turn complex objective data into less-complex tagged data.
I’ll give you an example from the medical field (because the closer to fundamental science the clearer this is):
You know what a cardiac rhythm generally looks like, right. Its a squiggly line. It takes a highly trained brain (human or machine) to classify (tag) that squiggly line into a main rhythm/secondary rhythm/conduction abnormality/wave abnormality/etc etc etc
Those tags are the social construct. They are a lens through which a person can look at the rhythm and classify it. Then, they don’t have to keep the whole strip of paper in their mind, they can just keep “sinus bradycardia” in their mind. Compared to an analog wave as long as their leg, “sinus bradycardia” is just a few bits of data.
They can use this to look up diagnoses that are tied to “sinus bradycardia” in a look up table in their head (which is a social construct) or to communicate to another person “This person has sinus bradycardia” (communication is by its nature social.)
But there is no list of main rhythms and secondary rhythms imprinted on the universe. They were developed by people looking at cardiac action (actually, by a line graph that plots pressure in Y and time in X, this graph being a social construct…)
You could imagine a parallel universe where a completely different tagging scheme was developed. They wouldn’t have main rhythm and secondary rhythm, etc. But they would probably have *something* that compresses cardiac action down to a few bits of data that can be used to look up other information and to communicate with.
Now, these are not arbitrary. They are influence by the starting condition (actual cardiac action and the measurement tools thereof) and they are created to fill a purpose (match those actions with diagnoses and for communication). And they have value, because they make repetitive tasks easier (ie use less data.)
But they are not perfect. It is entirely possible there’s some cardiac condition that shows normal or healthy on all current tags, but that nevertheless is fatal for some people and missed when cardiac action is viewed through the layers of social constructs we have to interpret it.
With race, its much the same.
Racial classifications are influenced by starting conditions (phenotype, social grouping and hierarchy, human instinct) and they were created to fill purposes (quickly classify people, build ingroup/outgroup distinctions, sometimes to enforce slavery or other illiberal cultural structures)
But they aren’t
.
MLK didn’t say get rid of race because its arbitrary. He said to stop judging by race because it is an injustice to do so. And a lot of people believed in that.
This current “race is a social construct” crowd have an implied “and its arbitrary and will be of no cost to anyone to give it up.” Lots of people *do not* believe that and can’t get on board with that thinking.
A genetic sex test that only identified XX or XY would be about 99.9% accurate. If you add on XXY as a third option, you can add a bunch more 9s on (maybe only 1).
So when I say time has a race, I’m saying that the way that we position ourselves in relationship to time comes out of histories of European and Western thought. And a lot of the way that we talk about time really finds its roots in the Industrial Revolution. So prior to that, we would talk about time as merely passing the time. After the Industrial Revolution, suddenly, we begin to talk about time as spending time. It becomes something that is tethered to monetary value. So when we think about hourly wage, we now talk about time in terms of wasting time or spending time. And that’s a really different understanding of time than, you know, like seasonal time or time that is sort of merely passing.
Yes, there is a difference in one’s perception of time depending on whether there is progress or not.
If every day is just like the day which preceded it, time is mostly meaningless. If one can look forward to tomorrow, and all the tomorrows to come, as being better than today, one’s perception of time, and the value one puts on the future, are radically altered.
That’s why they hate the Industrial Revolution.
Not sufficient.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8776318/condoms-pack-opened-two-people-consent-sex/
Since consent can be withdrawn at any time for any reason, the only way to have doubleplusgood sex is to wait for the invention of brain wave monitoring devices that instantly signal a microsecond of unconsent.
“Turn your key!”
“Its time for the nuclear option, baby.”
Question for hunting glibs – a character wants to lure a predatory beast into a trap, but due to circumstance is not permitted to kill a smaller creature to use as bait. (It’s a test with artificial restrictions.) How might he go about getting the predator into the trap he’s preparing?
Note – the character does not know what type of predator he might catch, he’s just looking to snare something impressive.
Submitted without comment
https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/grizzlybear-menstrual-odor.htm
Doesn’t help Him.
Does he have a niece?
No, and he’s not allowed help from other people.
She doesn’t have to know?
I’m envisioning a panty raid scenario.
He is the bait.
Too much like the “Rite of Passage” story I posted here, and does not demonstrate the character’s knowledge.
Now my mind has gone into rules-lawyering the challenge. If he catches a rabbit to use as bait, it’s over and he’s caught a rabbit.
But since the challenge is “A beast of the forest” what happens if he catches a fish? Hrmmm…
I’ve been waiting my whole life for this. I know the answer.
First, he goes out into the woods with an axe and fells a few young saplings (I assume this is not a beast for the forest, right JRR?) While they are green, he strips the bark into long, flexible strips, and makes long thin laminates of the green wood.
Next, he digs a trench, starts a fire, and when the fire is a giant heap of coals, shovels the coals into the fire. Cover the fire with soaked leather (or palm branches if its that climate), and feed the leather with a slow, steady trickle of water, just enough to keep the steam going. Make a rack above the ground, lay the strips and laminates on the rack, and cover with another layer of wet leather.
Steam the wood for ~8 hours. After that time, it will be very soft and pliable.
Have him weave the wood into a rectangular prism about 6″x9″x18″, with one of the 18″ faces half gone so that things can be placed into the prism.
Have him place fruit and honey into this prism, and place it in the trap.
I have it on good authority that no bear can resist this kind of bait.
I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.
I’m glad we were here to witness it. Congratulations!
Can he form some sort of rudimentary lathe?
UCS is writing Macguyver novels?
Sean – No.
ChipsnSalsa – Not in any reasonable time frame.
Galaxy Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQzg1vpxnnY
I like this idea. Something with a lot of coconuts and twine. Also, a functional radio.
The climate is a temperate woodland of primarily ash, fir, and pine. So the palm branches would not be available. Saplings are, and do not cound as beasts by any stretch within the context of this circumstance.
Sourcing the fruit and honey might be difficult, given that it is the same parameters as the Rite of Passage story, and he has to find or make most of what he can use. I don’t know if he’d have any leather of sufficient size to use in this context.
I don’t know if he’d have any leather of sufficient size to use in this context.
Some sort of apparel – coats or boot.
I’m sorry no one else laughed at your Yogi the Bear joke.
*Head Explodes*
Thank you. I thought I was on crazy pills.
Speaking of social constructs. You used the word prism, and I couldn’t avoid picturing a normal glass prism. Now it’s less of a joke and more of a revelation.
Maybe…
I was only thinking with regards to feasibility, since my mind is stuck in the problem the character is facing.
I’m not a hunter, but what I learned from watching Life Below Zero is that they mostly lure them by making sounds/calls. One guy actually carried around some antlers and sort of knocked them lightly against tree trunks and limbs to make it sound like another animal going through the brush.
Never seen that, but I’m also not a hunter.
He’s not allowed to kill the bait animal – so use a live bait animal and let the predator kill it. It was going to die one day anyway so what’s the big deal?
Do you even “ritual ceremony” brah?
Because he’s over-cautious, and doesn’t want to risk being stuck with the bait if it perishes prematurely?
Does the character have particular fieldcraft skills? Can he read trails, etc? While not able to kill or capture a smaller creature, could he set up near a game trail and just pick off what comes along?
He has book-knowledge. He probably wouldn’t recognize an animal trail in the flora.
I’d suggest just writing a different book.
; )
I don’t think you are going to lure a true carnivore without meat.
As noted, bears (which are ominivores) can be baited with other stuff, mainly sweets. Bear hunters often bait with cookies or donuts. It is in the dim mists and I cannot dredge up the details, but I successfully baited a bear with a mixture of honey and . . . something else that was heated with a small sterno until it was scorching around the edges.
Calling is an interesting option, but might only work in very narrow circumstances – for a particular animal at a particular time of year (during the rut). That said, most coyote hunters are quite successful calling coyotes with distressed rabbit or similar calls. That said, calling or any kind would require some skill and experience.
I’m thinking it might be within the parameters of the test to use fish. Because the fish do not count as beasts of the forest, the trial won’t end if he catches one.
I once lost a bet to an old coot back in Allamakee County who claimed he could call in a coyote with nothing more than a blade of grass, which he held between his hands and blew through to make a piercing shriek.
It took an hour or so, but damned if a big dog coyote didn’t come in looking for the source of that awful noise. I promptly popped off three shots at it from an old .36 Navy Colt’s and missed all three, prompting the old man to laugh at me and then demand the five bucks I’d bet.
Dammit.
is it ruttin’ season? estrous scent if you knew the animal. are you talking large feline predator? i don’t think there’s really any sure fire way of getting them to go where you want. but basically start with scent and work out from there to the other senses.
I have no idea what time of year it is other than “Not winter” It might actually be early autumn, given the clues from the rest of the work and previous books. (Week or two after the Golden Jubilee of Prince Kord. Prince Kord took the throne after a campaign season, with his story starting in a non-winter time and not being snowed on.)
that’s too early for big cat and wolf mating season. if the character is not an experienced hunter, then he aint catching an impressive predator. they will smell and avoid him.
but in the land of fiction, anything’s possible! you could capture scavenger birds and keep them squawking in cages low to the ground. a predator would think these birds must have an “easy meal” and investigate hoping to get leftover scraps of herbivore carcass. after all, if the birds haven’t been scared off, then it must be safe. predator approaches from downwind. our hero covers hisself in birdshit so as to go undetected. pred steps in a snare. boom! caught. now pred goes apeshit staring at our hero with murderous rage in its eyes. unsuspecting jogger enters the glen and says, “hmmm you smell like feces.. human feces.” /rimshot we all laugh riotously
you could capture scavenger birds and keep them squawking in cages low to the ground.
I like this one. One of the coyote calls that some people use is a crow or raven call, which works for just this reason.
Of course, now you have to capture some scavenger birds. Which could be an amusing side-story of its own.
But difficult with his available supplies/skillset.
The thing about predator birds is that they will come right back if you scare them off. So he could find a dead animal that had crows, etc. on it, walk right up, set up a trap or a hide, and they will be back shortly for capturing.
I’ve never tried it, but I know from observation that if you aren’t actively harassing them, they stick around in very close proximity.
I was thinking more of “How would he make a cage that would hold them?”
A net would do and would be easier to make.
Of course, it would probably be easier to kill a predator than get its estrous scent.
I couldn’t say specifically for predators, but most rutting seasons are quite short – a few weeks – in order to make sure the offspring is delivered at the optimal time.
i assume he would buy scent at the local Cabella’s.
Reason to hate Facebook #1,000,000: They’re asking for some users’ email passwords now it seems.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/beyond-sketchy-facebook-demanding-some-new-users-email-passwords
It’s time to find another service to keep in touch with those old friends from high school that you didn’t care enough about to truly keep in touch with anyway.
What did people do back in the 70’s? They must not have had any friends or families.
I can only think that they’re shifting to the blackmail business model. I guarantee plenty of people will fork it right over though.
Nothing to worry about. I’m sure they will protect that data very carefully.
I can only imagine the meetings that will spin out of that data breach.
Unless you set up a pure dummy account that you never used, who would be stupid enough to give Facebook unlimited access to their email?
You would be surprised. People just click through anything that comes up to prevent them from getting to what they want. Look at how many people gave various apps permissions to shite on the Android phones.
Who will save us from teh hate speech and teh scaryness?
Australia’s parliament has passed new laws to criminalize Internet platforms for failing to remove violent videos and audio, after an Australian gunman livestreamed himself shooting worshipers in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Under the new legislation, social media executives — among other online content or hosting providers — could be imprisoned for up to three years and companies could face penalties of up to 10% of their annual revenue if they do not remove violent content in an “expeditious” manner.
The bill passed on Thursday local time with cross party support but faced criticism, including that it could cause increased censorship and that the process was rushed.
——–
Porter said the legislation is intended to make companies take responsibility for the spread of video or audio of “abhorrent violent conduct” – defined as terrorism, murder, attempted murder, torture, rape and kidnapping.
“There are platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook who do not seem to take their responsibility to not show the most abhorrently violent material seriously,” Porter told reporters in Canberra on Thursday, The Guardian reports.
What could possibly go wrong?
I can’t wait for the Ozzies to serve extradition papers on Zuckerberg.
I’m sure they’ll grant de facto waivers to the approved outlets.
“it could cause increased censorship”
Umm, it IS censorship.
And how do they intend to enforce this fascist bs?
With surveillance, snitches, door-kickers, chains, and cages?
The video that started this power-grab WAS removed in an “expeditious” manner by someone in the vast army of censors that FB already employs for this purpose. The fact that taking it down doesn’t magically make it disappear seems to be lost on idiot pols who don’t understand how the internet works.
It’s feigned ignorance being used as an excuse for a power grab and the restriction of information.
Harrumph.
link to Australia law maybe.
Was Casimir Pulaski actually a chick?
If so, it’s impressive that he was able to rock that ‘stache.
She identified as male. Therefore not a female despite biology. Therefore cannot be hailed as female war hero.
/sjw heads explode.
Pfft. Banning Walmart and Target? That’s for chumps. Cleveland is going after the next big scourge: so-called “dollar stores”. The best reason for banning them:
We had to destroy the store to save it?
The whole article contains other wonderful reasons for banning them, such as:
*They employ less people than a grocery store
*Their business plan is to saturate a market
*They don’t carry enough fresh foods
Dollar General’s response was pretty good as well.
FFS. How many were for medical assistance required? Or a fender-bender in the parking lot? And, I wonder how many bars in his ward far exceeded that count?
Blaming dollar stores for the high-crime rates in neighborhoods that tend to attract dollar stores is pretty low even for the brain trust that runs a city like Cleveland.
Yeah. I pulled up his ward boundaries. It’s a completely non-gentrified area of the near east side. Mostly areas I wouldn’t want to walk through, let alone drive through.
Step 1: Ban stores in bad neighborhoods that generate a lot of police calls.
Step 2: Bitch and moan about how racist capitalists are because there are no stores in bad neighborhoods.
Step 3: Shakedown!
WTF
When you put stores in communities no one will bother with you’re going to see robberies.
WTF? These Are local businesses. If the people in the area can’t afford to shop at the more expensive places, let the places they can afford move in. You’re not going to get anything better until gentrification rolls through.
In the areas I’m sure these people are complaining about, there’s usually one or two abandoned grocery stores there. About every 3-5 years, someone decides they’ve got the plan to make it work this time. They lease the building, build it up, and go out of business in about 6 months. And doing a quick Google Maps search, what I see are clusters of Dollar store chains. Which makes me think that some of them are using the leader’s market research for locations. Several years back I was in a training class with a higher up from a drug store who was bitching about their competitors doing that. They’d find a good location, start planning, and the competitor would buy a location on the opposite corner from them.
Which makes me think that some of them are using the leader’s market research for locations.
That’s exactly what they are doing.
The Burger King plan?
https://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2008/03/25/game-theory-tuesdays-hotelling%E2%80%99s-game-or-why-gas-stations-have-competitors-nearby/
I’ve noticed some of the old-timey supermarkets I grew up with in rust belt towns have turned into dollar stores. Hardly surprising when Tops or Wegmans opens up a gigantic superstore a couple miles away.
Happens in the cities as they expand outwards, too. A new shopping center springs up, and the old ones start filling up with dollar stores, rent-to-own, furniture outlets, pawn shops and payday lending places.
“the leader’s market research for locations”
90% of which is a developer contacting them. By some fishy coincidence, competing retailers were also contacted by the developer.
But gentrification is bad. And ghettification is bad. The cities want everything to stay same – except the property tax rates which cause most of the change.
Dollar stores have exploded in places where Walmart is the big-box alternative. Don’t need enough to make the trip to Walmart? Go to the Dollar Store.
So Cleveland pols hate poor people.
Yes they do, but they keep wanting to make so many more of them.
Not a surprise. Walmart hate was always about hating poor people. Walmart is no longer the bottom of the market, and more and more people of very limited means have been moving away from Walmart and to Dollar General and 5 And Below.
Ergo, the middle class and up now bash these stores in order to show everyone that they aren’t anything like those poor people and are in fact much, much better than they are.
That’s a roundabout way of stating that the legislation was written by the SEIU.
I hope it wasn’t deep dish
Great-grandmother, 94, finally tastes pizza for the first time after vowing never to touch Italian food because her prisoner of war husband was starved by Mussolini’s troops
She has so far tried a ham and pineapple pizza
Cucked her dead war hero husband for Hawaiian.
So, technically, she still has not tried pizza.
I think Doom got a job at the Mail and he’s trolling us.
Dear Mariella: My partner is better looking than I am and I worry he’ll leave me
Insecurity is really sexy.
Dear Minor League: A blowjob a day keeps the floozies away
Amen.
It is really that easy. Forget about what’s going on inside your head and keep his little head happy.
Mariella replies I wonder how many men have been tempted to write to me about their worries regarding their ineligibility for the stunning wife they’d managed to snare. I’ve been trying to do a count of how many letters I’ve had in the past 20 years from men who felt in any way inadequate or insecure about their worthiness for their partner. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear I’m struggling to come up with one!
Oh fuck right off. To the extent that’s true is largely because men are more realistic about their expectations and prospects and don’t go shooting at game they can’t hit.
In a man it would present as jealousy and over-protectiveness, and I’m guessing she’s had plenty of questions about that.
Men don’t write letters to Dear Whomever columns. Duh.
btw Mariella Frostrup is a MILF or more like a GILF.
If only there was some way of raising animals for consumption. What is that called again?
Deadly appetite: 10 animals we are eating into extinction
etc
“Poor people are eating all the cute animals!”
The most successful bird on earth is still the chicken. The problem isn’t that we like to eat these animals, the problem is that there are no property rights that encourage people to see them as a long term investment.
Norm Macdonald tells one of his classically overlong stories about taking care of his neighbor’s cat, and the cat has a seizure or something. So after taking it to the vet, the vet gives him the good news and bad news: they bad news is, there’s an expensive treatment with a low probability of success. “What’s the good news?” Norm asks. “Well… it’s just a cat.”
I’m not against humane treatment and conservationism in principle, but, you know… it’s just a chicken. (Or salamander, or whatever.) Actually, maybe the key to saving species is to demystify and desanctify the whole Goddess Gaia attitude about nature. Turn your nose up at profiting from salamander farming if you like, but watch it save a species from extinction.
I have often wondered if woolly mammoth and mastodon were especially delicious as archaeological evidence seems to show that humans ate every last one within 1,000 years after finding a new continent stocked with them.
I think it’s more due to not co-evolving with humans and therefore developing survival strategies, size alone being a relatively poor defense against such a clever animal.
I never quite figured why early man chose to eradicate the mammoths and mastodons (but not the elephants?) but did not eradicate the elk, moose, bison, etc. as well. It seems there was something more attractive about the biggest targets even though they were more dangerous. Put a stone-tipped spear in my hands with a band of humans and I can’t see why I would choose the larger target – unless there was something about it that was better.
Not necessarily a choice. Low replacement rate combined with aggressive hunting would do it.
And contrary to popular belief, mastodon have a harder time hiding in trees.
I still wonder why mammoth and mastodon are gone for eons but elephants are still here. Why did man not eat them at similar rates? Is it possible that the two remaining elephant types were relatively more intelligent than the mammoths and mastodons to make a difference?
I’m going to go with Fatty Bolger’s suggestion. Elephants existed in the same regions that got humans the earliest, and would have adapted as we got better at killing things. Then we arrived in the Mammoth habitats very good at killing things. With their low replacement rates, the Mammoth simply lost the numbers game before they could adapt.
Cattle, chickens, pigs, and rabbits (and humans) are capable of reproducing at anytime rather than an annual estrus period. So there’s some logic to these being the most popular farm/food animals.
The book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” goes through the reasons why a all of the non-domesticated animals were never popular for domestication before. Ostriches and giraffes will instantly kill a man with their feet. The bite from a zebra takes out significantly more meat than that of a horse. Many animals simply won’t reproduce when domestication is attempted – even elephants in Asia have to be caught in the wild and will not reproduce after being caught.
Alternatively they may have just been easy to kill. If you can easily get a mammoth’s worth of meat at once, you are going to prefer to hunt mammoth.
Another alternative: bragging rights. If they were hard to kill, hunters would be eager to try so they could boast of their prowess.
“Alternatively they may have just been easy to kill.”
I understand that early man may have simply learned how to stampede mammoths and mastodon over a cliff using fire – and maybe that only worked as well with these big animals so it was less dangerous than hunting elk or moose.
You’d have to burn a forest to the ground to catch a squirrel with fire. He’d just run through a line of guys with torches, or find a path through a controlled brush fire.
I’m thinking of something like “mean free path” relating animal size and fire distribution.
Rather a case of comparative advantage. I imagine mastodon are harder to kill. But if killing an elk requires x amount of effort and provides y amount of meat, as long as killing a mastodon carries a lower multiple of effort than the multiple of the amount of meat it provides, it would be preferred. For example, if killing a mastodon requires 2x effort, but provides 2.5y meat, it is more efficient to hunt the mastodon than the elk. I suspect when combining what Scruffy says above with this formula, that is the answer.
I often look at things not from the numerical basis but from how it would feel to me.
If I had a stick with a piece of sharpened stone wrapped to the end would I choose a) something like a moose where need to penetrate 8 to 10 inches to hit the vital spot, or b) a mastodon where I need to penetrate 18 to 24 inches to hit something which would kill it?
Yes, the bigger beast will feed your tribe longer but if your tribe loses 1 or 2 of its “varsity” hunters every time you down a mammoth you would run out of hunters faster than you feed your tribe.
Or if you only lose 1 hunter every 5 mammoths, and one hunter every eight moose, but the mammoth provides twice the food, you’re better off attritionally with mammoth.
If someone were crippled or killed every time a given creature was hunted, it would pretty soon be off the plate and on the “avoid like mad” list.
I was guessing “one hunter killed/crippled every one or two mammoth” with one hunter every five to eight moose/bison. Maybe they had better methods or tactics than I am imagining.
It can’t have been that high or they would not have gone after such dangerous prey. Humans are good at thinking of ways to not get killed taking down creatures with many physical advantages over them.
Habitat loss. 14 people have to split one salamander, nobody can afford to eat them to extinction.
Ezra Klein is learning to embrace the Butt
In 2007, Mark Schmitt wrote a piece I think about often. In it, he argued that the contest between Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards was “not a primary about ideological differences, or electability, but rather one about a difference in candidates’ implicit assumptions about the current circumstance and how the levers of power can be used to get the country back on track.” It was, he said, the “theory of change primary.”
Obama won that primary, and in the short period in which Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate, he managed to push through quite a bit of legislation. But while Democrats broadly revere Obama, there’s a consensus that his theory of change ultimately crashed on the shoals of Republican obstruction. As a result, many of the problems Obama sought and failed to address — from inequality to climate change to wage stagnation to money in politics to gerrymandering — have worsened, and Democrats see President Trump as the poisoned fruit of those failures.
The central lesson of Obama’s presidency, Buttigieg argues, is that “any decisions that are based on an assumption of good faith by Republicans in the Senate will be defeated.” The hope that you can pass laws through bipartisan compromise is dead. And that means governance is consistently, reliably failing to solve people’s problems, which is in turn radicalizing them against government itself.
Maybe, just maybe, the American people did not revere Obama and welcome the enlightened legislation he pushed through as much as Ezra did. Maybe they do not yearn for paternalistic claptrap masquerading as “good governance” as much as the Democrats tell themselves. Maybe they worry less about “inequality” and “privilege” (even if it is just on some visceral, inarticulate level) than about being allowed to live their goddam lives without being talked down to incessantly.
Probably not.
Yes, “We have to pass it to find out what’s in it” is a completely bipartisan and good faith effort to find solutions.
And 8 years of being called racist for disagreeing with the administration certainly didn’t help Trump get elected.
Obama was fairly popular – as a person. His policies? Not so much. Hence the Republican wave after Obamacare.
As to his personal popularity, that was something I never understood. I couldn’t stand the way he spoke and his condescending manner. But that’s just me. Maybe a lot of people buy into the holier-than-thou schtick.
A lot of people love themselves a confident Top. Man.
The dude was a useless prick, however.
With most people, it’s not how Obama’s speaks to them that matters. It’s what their support of him says to everyone else around them.
People wanted to like Obama because it made them look tolerant and morally superior, not because Obama was some fantastic politician.
This in spades.
Spades? Racist.
A lot of voters who grooved to Obama’s messianic condescension now like Trump’s meandering, moronic, repetitious, atonal manner of speech. I don’t get either.
To be honest, I enjoy Trump – but only in very small doses. His tough talking New Yawk “schtick” also gets old, real quick.
It’s like soccer. Give me the good bits in five minutes, I don’t want to sit through two hours of this shit.
GHW Bush was whiny and incoherent
Cinton was smarmy
GW Bush was mush mouthed and incoherent
Obama was condescending and cliche driven
Trump is monotonous and rambling with no regard for complete sentences.
It is possible that modern attention spans and media have killed oratory and rhetoric
It’s like the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Give me the good bits in five paragraphs, I don’t want to sit through two hours reading this shit.
You can say that again, but with a different analogy.
Trump is actually funny though.
Agreed.
crashed on the shoals of Republican obstruction
Republicans ostensibly won elections to counter the Obama agenda, likewise for the Democrats now. But it is only “obstruction” when Republicans do it I guess. Also, I do not like this notion that the legislature is just there to rubber-stamp anything a president proposes. It is a separate, independent branch of government with its own delegated authority.
Klein’s big finish:
We are better at discussing what candidates want to do than how they will do it. That hole in our political vocabulary matters, as it makes it hard to debate the core question of any political campaign: How will the candidates actually make real people’s lives better?
Towards the end of our conversation, I asked Buttigieg for his vision of America’s national identity. “The only semi-convincing justification for American exceptionalism,” he replied, “is this idea that America represents a way of governing, a way of doing things, that makes us all better off.”
It wasn’t the answer I expected, but it frames the challenge for Buttigieg, and the rest of the Democrats, well: How does the party that believes in government make governing great again?
“How do we ram our agenda down the throats of Mister and Missus Joe Sixpack?”
And this-
” this idea that America represents a way of governing, a way of doing things, that makes us all better off”
Bullshit, you mincing Joan-of-Arc wannabe idiot. America was never supposed to be about making us all better off. It’s about offering individuals the best environment, and the best opportunity to make themselves better off.
How does the party that believes in government make governing great again?
Less is More
How do we get the country that was founded primarily on the principle of limited government to finally embrace our vision of unlimited government?
How does the party that believes in government make governing great again?
I find it odd that leftists cast Republicans as anarchist. Anyway, that government is best which governs least.
OT story: One time I was debating a leftist acquaintance and he tried to pull the Jefferson (?) line I mention above on me as an argument in favor of socialism by stating “it was said that government is best which governs least, not that government is best which governs not“. Because “least” definitely means “total state”. . .
Binary thinking, either all government or no government, etc.
nothing left to cut!
I find it odd that leftists cast Republicans as anarchist.
It’s the same way as the ancient polytheists who cast the upcoming monotheists as atheists.
Their idea of the American dream is “I get to have all this good shyte (the house with white picket fences, 2.5 kids, etc.) – when the real American dream was “I will get a shot at a job where, if I work hard, I will get the house with white picket fences…”.
Congress Launches Bipartisan STATES Act To Protect Legal Cannabis Once And For All
This is an article from last year, and it got the death-by-comitte treatment in the last congress. But, it was reintroduced today, so maybe it’ll get honest discussion this time around.
Good. I’d rather have this go through Congress than just have The Donald whip out his pen.
As to his personal popularity, that was something I never understood.
I seriously believe obama’s primary function was as a blank screen on which people could project their fantasies.
That would explain why every time I look at him I see ‘Two Girls, One Cup’…
I heard a lot of talk how Tesla was going to decimate BMW, Mercedes, and Audi…
Tesla’s Balloon Bursts in Q1; Deliveries Impress No One
Competition is a motherfucker.
January sales in Germany, for instance
Plenty of options for the ‘lectric lovers. Musk should have partnered with VAG (love that acronym!) five years ago.
I love the looks of the Audi A5/S5 – but man – I get frightened of the engineering / possible repair bills. My MINI and BMW experience have frightened me away from import cars for a while.
Looking at a Dodge Challenger – 6MT – for my next car, or another Mustang.
Hey, don’t overlook the Asians. They still make good stuff.
Lifetime repair costs on my 2006 Acura currently at $800. Was at zero until the alternator went out a month ago.
$800 for a new alternator?
It’s special magical Honda alternator 😉
::pines back to the early aughts when I paid $75 for a rebuilt for my 1986 Monte Carlo SS::
The most expensive alternator I can find on Rock Auto for my Silverado is $237. Cheapest is $105
Beyond the really expensive stuff, I can’t think of currently made Asian car that meets my needs. Especially the manual transmission, V8, can seat 4, RWD klnd of thing.
So no Acura, Infiniti, or Lexus can apply – and I don’t want a turbocharged anything either – so that throws out a lot of 2.0T cars like the BMW 230i (I know, German but manual transmission).
Yeah, not much left that meets all those criteria.
I don’t necessarily want to drive a muscle car, but here I am. I prefer something a little more sleeper-ish. Ah well the manual transmission is quickly dying. Surprised Honda still offers it on the Accord.
related: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g20734564/manual-transmission-cars/
Which makes me think that some of them are using the leader’s market research for locations. Several years back I was in a training class with a higher up from a drug store who was bitching about their competitors doing that. They’d find a good location, start planning, and the competitor would buy a location on the opposite corner from them.
I noticed, long ago, a clearly evident tendency for Walmart to come into a rural town and build a store right across the road from Kmart, in order to take advantage of established traffic patterns and shopping behavior.
*also, re drug stores. I couldn’t count how many places in and around Indianapolis where there were Walgreen’s and CVS stores on the same intersection.
And look at all those mom ‘n pop K-Marts done run out of business.
OT: EF visited her tax person yesterday. Apparently EF’s profit doubled in 2018. Happy news – minus the big fed tax bill.
But did they dig up evidence of collusion?
Her real name is Natasha and the whole half-Finnish thing was just a cover story for her Russian background. ::taps side of nose::
Tundra-
How much did you end up paying for that Volvo armored personnel carrier?
Auction ends in 5 hours. It’s currently at $15K – I’m sure it will climb.
Apparently EF’s profit doubled in 2018.
Hey- ten bucks is ten bucks.
there’s a consensus that his theory of change ultimately crashed on the shoals of Republican obstruction
Oh, FFS! Can we at least be a little bit honest here? Obama failed to push through the left-wing wish-list when he had complete control of the government. Republicans didn’t have the votes to “obstruct” Obama for the first two years. He failed because a lot of people in his own party realized supporting his idiocy would be political suicide for them. The Democrats had to settle for less than they wanted not to convince Republicans to go along, but to convince their own vulnerable members to go along.
Even supporting some of it lost them Congress. But this idiot treats losing Congress as the cause of Obama’s milquetoast incrementalism.
Hey, aren’t we supposed to love democracy uber alles now? Loads of people voted and sent Republican representatives to Congress to oppose Obama’s agenda. Obama responded with his pen-and-phone routine, which just screams democracy uber alles.
which just screams democracy uber alles.
Don’t kid yourself that the agenda of guys like Klein would ever be anything other than one man, one vote, one time.
I was recently listening to some of Tim Pool’s videos about campaign finance complaints filed against AOC, and it seems to me there’s more to her than is being let on. Is she really a bartender from the Bronx (or wherever the fuck)? If so, how did she come to know her billionaire (millionaire?) campaign manager? How did she end up the CEO of these various PACs & LLCs that were giving her money?
Something just isn’t right here.
…perhaps she’s a Russian agent? Almost good enough to be a honey pot…
The Soros machine has been grooming her for this position longer than we thought.
They did what’s been compared to a “casting call” to find unknown candidates. There were a bunch and most were flops, she’s just the one that succeeded.
Someone posted a video about how AOC was chosen for the role of candidate for Congress (by some PAC type group) versus her choosing to run from Congress. The host had an enormous mole.
choosing to run for Congress.
…She should have run from Congress, would have done us all a favor.
Mister Reagan I think.
Hmmm…I vaguely remember that now. She’s clearly a stooge, propped up by the powers that be, but the whole thing is just weird.
And how did they fuck it up so bad that now there are legitimate campaign finance concerns against them?
Also, the whole boyfriend living in Arizona thing seemed a little weird. I don’t know. I just think she’s not who she says she is. She’s obviously a puppet though.
According to definitely not an antisemite Linda Sarsour, definitely not an antisemite Ilhan Omar didn’t even know antisemitism was a thing until she became a legislator and that a bunch of Islamophobic white Jews called her that just because she’s Muslim. https://twitter.com/TheMossadIL/status/1113815221133619201
In Omar’s defense, they killed off or drove out all the Jews in Somalia, so she had probably never seen one.
“The Jews all self-deported! They couldn’t stand even sharing a nation with us!”
There’s a few. Most of them were driven out long ago (mostly through forced conversions generations ago, like the Yibir tribe)
The old “my granny didn’t know ‘colored’ was racist because of how she grew up” defense.
And does this mean we are now going to forgive people who made gay jokes in the ’90s that are not OK today?
If and only if the person who made said joke believes the right things and evolved in their views, but doesn’t stand in the way of the more rightthinkful intersectional candidate.
Off topic, but my grandmother (in her 90s, grew up in Brooklyn) still isn’t a fan of blacks or (especially) Puerto Ricans, though at least she’s stopped saying it out loud in mixed company.
“Colored” was the term of respect in the 40’s and 50’s. As was “crippled”.
Thrity years latr the respectful terms were “Black” and “handicapped”. Thrity years after that the respectful terms were “African-American” and “disabled.”
The haters are the ones who want to change the terms so they can have their “gotcha” moments. And they can fuck right off.
Disabled people are easy to fix, just uncheck the disabled box and they’re inabled again. Handicapped people just have some negative modifiers applied. The crippled people, well their bodies just don’t work right.
*enabled
They absolutely are racists.
Please. Spade a spade.
I thought “Call a spade a spade” was racist now.
Is it?
I don’t give a fuck.
You don’t need a name for it if it applies to everyone you know.
This is just mind-boggling insanity.
“How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?” — Speaker to Animals
Repeating my post from above in order to say: I really want a Nextflix/Prime/something Ringworld series. A movie would be okay, but probably wouldn’t do it justice.
And, yes, I know, they would screw it up.
HBO is the only one that would have a chance of making a proper Ringworld series.
That would work too.
I never read the books, is there really enough nudity to entice HBO?
HBO has gone full SJW. All of there new stuff is garbage. Once game of thrones is done I’m out.
Yeah, but they still do some good stuff. That Chernobyl miniseries looks really interesting.
Yes. \
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rishathra
I think he bangs a mustachioed chick-like alien at one point.
and Teela Brown.
I think it was a beard, not a mustache.
I remember he describes it as light and downy, and I was a teenager and starting to grow light and downy hair on my chinny-chin chin, which made me think “That doesn’t make it any better.”
*grinds gears* OK, if it eventually makes it to BluRay.
Is she really a bartender from the Bronx (or wherever the fuck)? If so, how did she come to know her billionaire (millionaire?) campaign manager? How did she end up the CEO of these various PACs & LLCs that were giving her money?
I don’t even know if it’s true, but isn’t she supposed to have worked for
Ted Kennedythe Sta-Puf Marshmallow Man?I’m sure he had plenty to teach a willing student about the briar patch of campaign funding regulations.
We warned you! You let the gays marry, soon they’ll be having children using their mothers as surrogates.
Long story short – the Guy is having a kid with his sister in-law, but the sister-in-law doesn’t want to carry her own child.
What’s funny to me isn’t the kid’s parentage or the means of carrying it to conception. It seems pretty neat, actually, and a testament to our society’s almost magical technologies and treatment.
What’s funny is the moral preening about Nebraska’s conservatism, which, whatever the merits of their concern
a) didn’t prevent their going through with this procedure, and
b) is the excuse they gave not even trying to find a home for a child in adoption limbo, because dealing with conservative-minded adoption agencies is icky.
This guy has theories.
He appears to be recording that in an actual bunker.
Just LOL’d – something about that accent saying “… and, therefore, you have to suck him off…”
Probably NSFW.
There seems to be no way for me to tell the NYT to go fuck themselves without registering so I have no idea what the article is about.
Intelligence community’s malfeasance? I want to know why those cocksuckers are not in jail.
AOC and tax returns: Ask or dont ask, go fuck yourself.
I am getting more and more skeptical about self driving cars. I think I will do the driving, thank you very much.
“Was Revolutionary War hero Casimir Pulaski actually a WOMAN?” – New meaning to the word ‘Horseshit’
Pig theft: Some 20 years ago a fellow in Shreveport was caught rustling cattle. That hadn’t happened for a very long time. When the DA looked at the case he found that rustling cattle in LA by outdated laws was a capital crime. They had to hold an emergency session of the legislature to change the law to keep from hanging the guy. I am not sure how that does not violate the no ex post facto law ban.
I am extra grouchy this morning and that is saying a lot.
Couldn’t they have charged the cattle rustler with grand larceny and done away with the capital rustling offense separately?
As for ex post facto, the letter might say hang him, but if you want to peer into intent, the intent of that prohibition was to make it so someone could not retroactively be charged with an offense that was not an offense at the time of the act. Both before and after, stealing those cows was a crime, so there was no pretense of lawful activity, and the change in punishment was in favor of the defendant, which reduces the chance it will be challenged in court.
Reducing the punishment for a crime wouldn’t seem to run afoul of the ex post facto ban. Increasing it and applying to to crimes already committed would.
The Supreme Court already ruled in the 70s that only murder and treason are capital crimes.
My father the probation officer always had a few guys on his caseload who were charged with theft for stealing cattle. According to him it could be pretty lucrative.
Couldn’t they have charged the cattle rustler with grand larceny and done away with the capital rustling offense separately?
Plead guilty to a lesser offense, in order to avoid an onerous punishment? That’s unheard of.
1) Your website, your rules. Caveat: “
John MarshallSwiss Servitor has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”2) I’d say Swiss has made his feelings known about the links he posts. I personally would not deign to speak for anyone else posting links. If I had time to post links (just bought a new house in the Hill Country near-ish Austin, and every day is a marathon of urgent tasks to prioritize now), I wouldn’t give a fuck about what anyone said in reply – “let the gloriously anarchic free speech commence” would be my motto.
3) If an individual doing the links wanted to make their wishes known, might I suggest starting or ending the links with a disclaimer like this: “Please don’t post any chick pics or other OT stuff for (insert time limit here). If you do, you’re being aspy, sociopathic or plain rude, kay?”
OK, back to unpacking boxes and hauling heavy shite around.
Or, TPTB could just delete the post.
I do think its kinda rude, myself. The links are there because the poster found them of interest, though we might also, and given what this site is about, was likely interested in seeing our reactions to them. Holding off on OT posts for just a bit doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
If we had multiple live threads at a time, I think this might be more enforceable. But…we dont. As soon as a new thread goes up, old ones go dead.
Speaking of, there’s a new thread up.
*rushes to new thread*
I guess I don’t see the rush to get tits comments up. Wait 5 minutes, post it 3rd instead of first, and the issue goes away.
Same with everything else, go grab a coffee at time of posting, hit submit when you return to your glibsurfing device. Swiss doesn’t have an aneurysm and you still get to blow your load all over the article.
Or do what I do, accidentally reply to a week-old thread because you never clean up your tabs.
+ 1 necro-thread.
Oh, you do that too?
We measure income on an unbounded scale but happiness on a bounded 1-5 or 1-10 scale. The very measures of happiness assume and encourage thinking in relative terms (e.g. something like from 1-10, how happy am I right now compared to the happiest or most miserable I could possibly be given current conditions). People don’t compare to 1990 or 1970. Many people aren’t old enough, and of those who are, most don’t remember daily conditions all that well. Researchers might have asked people in the 19th century to rate their happiness, gotten similar results to now, which would lead us to the absurd conclusion that not having multiple children die of infectious diseases before reaching adulthood has no effect on happiness.
— MarkW, posting on econlib.org
I thought that was brilliant and am just passing it along.
The income (or wealth)-to-happiness comparisons are invalid due to the different scales being used.
Interesting. My beef is that happiness is not a single-dimension thing – there’s immediate pleasure, there’s long-term satisfaction, there accomplishment, etc. I haven’t thought about bounded vs unbounded scales… I’ll need to noodle on that a bit.
That really activates the almonds!
Seriously though, it’s a great insight. And brief!
Very interesting.
I was talking with Mrs. Dean about how different grocery stores are now compared to when we were kids. Leaving aside the non-food items that they now carry, the variety (and I think quality) of the food that is now available is vastly improved. At the time, nobody thought twice and likely thought it was better than it used to be (because it was). Now, if you were limited to what was available then, you would pitch a fit.
The limited selection in grocery stores in the ’60s made people happy. That same selection now would start a riot.
*looks at picture*
I see a magazine stand, but where’s the food?
There’s others, but it gives an idea of the small scale, and even (what I recall) the short shelves and limited shelf space.
Imagine just one type of Oreo cookie. We were living in a dystopian nightmare, and didn’t even know it.
The Hydrox?
Those of you who come roaring in to paste in your own prepared…. stuff, right off the bat. Ask yourself “does the person who got up, made the links, scheduled them and now looks into the comments feel good about seeing this first off?”
My completely self-referential thought:
I’m not sure “off topic” applies to links posts. More links (about good things or bad happening in our world) is not necessarily a detriment.
Something like Animal’s firearms history lessons, or any other post on a specific topic, with a specific thesis, on the other hand, deserves a little more circumspection and thoughtful regard.
I think the topic of links posts is the, err, links.
I still think its common courtesy – we know Swiss doesn’t like it when you pounce on his links posts with immediate OT comments with links. Just keep it zipped up for a little while. Geez.
I surf other sites (I know, I’m a shitlord). If I’m surfing sites and I read or see something that I think might interest other Glibs, I’ll copy the link and come here to share. If there is a new thread up, I’m not going to post it to the dead thread. A lot of times I’ll go ahead and share it if I think it’s worth sharing then I’ll try to comment on the actual post if I have something to say. I’m not trying to step on anyone’s privates when I do that. I truly and sincerely appreciate the effort put forth to entertain us assholes on a regular basis.
Like P Brooks, if the subject matter is really specific and educational, I won’t usually post OT if it had just came up. I do often try to wait unless I’m just on quick break at work or something ie on the john.
Just keep it zipped up for a little while. Geez.
Delay my gratification? That’s crazy.
Maybe just long enough to find the reply button? Just once? To confuse all of us and make us think you were hacked?
We measure income on an unbounded scale but happiness on a bounded 1-5 or 1-10 scale.
We do?
That pic of AOC I’ve seen many times, yet it startles me anew each time because she’s so freaking nutty.
The.fact that she has swooning fans who think she’s brilliant is scary AF.
That pic of AOC I’ve seen many times, yet it startles me anew each time because she’s so freaking nutty.
If you look at some of the “more favorable” features about her, from news organizations more favorably disposed toward her agenda, you’ll see photos which look as if they could have been staged by Leni Riefensthal. There’s a reason for that.
Soros has her brain in a jar?
What brain?
Its a pretty small jar.
Talking about Leni, not Occasional.
+1 ‘Would you fuck me?…I’d fuck me.’