Hey man…well, you know the rest.
That hook I wrote to suck you in here was a lie. My hotel WiFi had been out for three days and they can’t seem to get it fixed for me., so these links will suffer for it Oh, but don’t worry…they’re trying and have escalated it. Bastards. They’re just bastards. I don’t want it escalated. I want you to order a new router and make it work. Or give me a bunch of money back for y’all having failed so catastrophically. Anyway, I’m having to do these links the hard way, so bear with me. Ottawa and the NYR were the winners on the ice yesterday. Thankfully they only had two games on the schedule. And as for birthdays, the heavyweights were: French philosophizer Voltaire, baseball player Stan Musial, politician and handgun expert Budd Dwyer, actor and director Harold Ramis, Icelandic person Bjork, baseball great Ken Griffey, Jr, and moronic football pundit Danny Kanell.
OK, on to…the links!
There won’t be any impeachment circus links today. I am sure that got beat to death yesterday afternoon anyway and to be honest, it’s really come down to a circus of he said/she said nonsense. But I’ve got plenty of good stuff for you.
Rep Nuclear Farts
Eric Swalwell (you remember him as the assclown who said he would nuke people who didn’t voluntarily give up their guns) denies ripping a fart on live tv. I’d have done the same if I were him. Although some others disagree with his claim.
Sue everybody! I mean, did this lady think he was under an obligation to just parrot her words?
“Anyway, Boris, that’s when I put a finger in her butthole.”
If you’re never in public, they can never see you sweat. Or hug somebody. Or have sex with a child. I assume that was his reasoning.
This is getting interesting. That’s what usually happens when people are facing jail time.
San Francisco police continue to earn their reputation for ineptitude. I’m not talking about the initial stabbing. I’m talking about not guarding a violent murder suspect who is in the hospital. Fucking idiots.
Here’s what somebody said happened at the debate last night. I could post a million different analyses from a million different outlets. I chose this one out of apathy and because it’s always my source for the last link. I assume I’ll get better analysis in the comments anyway.
This has a lot of STEVE SMITH action in it. Feel free to skip to 1:28 if you want to miss the intro.
That’s all I got. Sorry if they suck. I’m really working with a handicap here. But I’ll be home tomorrow where the interwebs flow like wine.
The guy who wants to talk about Epstein better be on guard.
It’s cool. They’re having the SFPD guard him to be sure nothing could possibly go wrong. And they’ll probably make the address and shift change times public for transparency.
“he always goes to the bathroom at 725”
“The gas line into the building can be accessed through the basement next door”
My first thought as well.
Congrats on the kid, BTW.
She didn’t show yet. Still kickin mom’s ribs.
Good god, that picture from the debate link made me have the same face as yang.
Nice job, shitlord. You shamed two American heroes at the same time.
Wait, what debate link?
The one to the chron. With Kamala being an annoying party guest delivering a bad joke or something.
Oh I see it now. For some reason I was thinking of the Blasey Ford-Vindman hero mashup. I need a cup of tea to get my brain working this morning.
The juxtaposition of Special K next to Tulsi in the second picture reminds me so much why I like vacationing in Hawaii.
Good morning, Sloop!
Sorry to read of your struggles. You must endeavor to persevere, I guess.
As for the rest of you, DO NOT skip the intro to the song. For if you do, you will miss some excellent nostalgia.
Make it a great day, y’all! Sloop, safe travels back to the land of milk and honey.
Thanks, Tundra. It’s been an arduous journey. But on a positive note, I forgot to take a handgun out of haste so I bought another while here out of necessity (handling a large sum of cash) and got a hell of a deal on it.*
*M&P 380 Shield EZ with range kit for $299 and a $50 rebate on top of that! So $249 out the door and the wife will soon have a very nice woman’s carry gun. Or I’ll have a nice second carry gun.
Nice!
Reviews on that one are excellent.
I would have preferred a compact 9mm, but opted for this because of the easy slide and because it has a safety and most of the 9mm’s designed for carry don’t.
I bought an early Shield 9 and mine has a safety. I think it’s still available.
I bought one with the safety earlier this year. Nice little gun, easy to shoot.
Looks like it’s available both ways, although the one the guy showed me didn’t have one. Either way, I wanted another .380 so in all reality, I was looking more at this anyway. Especially since the P238 and Kimber Micro are just more than I wanted to spend.
Sweet! I should forget my gun more…
Robert Blake approves.
I’ll have to check prices here because that’s one on my list. Have heard very good things about the EZ.
Do you have Academy Sports in your neck of the woods? Not sure if the S&W rebate is just through them or if it’s available at other stores, but that’s where I got mine.
I believe it’s a manufacturer rebate. Palmetto was offering it as well.
No Academy Sports. I usually buy from these guys. Looks like I get the rebate but the gun is $100 more. I’ll check Cabela’s.
https://www.vanceoutdoors.com/products2.cfm/ID/203833/11663/smith-and-wesson-mp380-shield-ez-380-acp-pistol-with-thumb-safety
Cabela’s is $340 with a $50 prepaid card so 290.
https://www.cabelas.com/product/SMITH-WESSON-M-P-SHIELD-M-CF-PISTOLS/2650428.uts
And that’s without the range bag, ear protection and glasses I got as well.
My deal is looking better every day!
Just curious, not much of a gun guy, but I want to get a carry license and weapon. Why did you go with .380 but not one of the really tiny ones, eg Ruger LCP? I see you considered a Kimber micro and Sig P238.
Most of the really small ones don’t have a safety.
My SA 911 does. Also, I can recommend it. I have 2 and they are very nice and enjoyable to shoot.
$250 might get you a valu-pak of Kimber magazines
Smaller .380s can be surprisingly snappy. My PPK is snappy and it’s not as small as the Ruger. I haven’t shot the Ruger but I do know manipulating some of the really small pistols can be a pita as well. The recoil on my PPK is certainly not a big deal to me (I certainly don’t want to shoot it all day!), but you may want to rent a Ruger before buying.
I like my
SR9, so I bought an EC9s for a cheap CC weapon. It had some kick, but I am getting used to it.
Mrs. A has an LCP for her primary carry piece, and she likes it and can shoot it reasonably well at the ranges for which it is intended (i.e. less than ten yards.) But she has tiny little hands.
I’ve tried it, and it just doesn’t work in my huge gorilloid mitts. I have a PPK in .380 but it’s not that much easier to carry than my Glock 36, and if it’s a choice between .380 and .45ACP, well, that’s just no choice at all.
I have both a Shield 9mm and a SIG P365. The Sig is better in every way, but costs twice as much.
Atanarjuat – You *do not* want to learn to shoot with a pocket pistol. They are very difficult to learn with. Everyone’s intuition is that they are small, and small = weak. This is not true for guns. Your hypothetical LCP and Sloopy’s both shoot the same cartridge. Therefore, they produce the same force. The LCP has much less mass.
Force = Mass * Acceleration.
For a constant Force, more mass = less acceleration (aka kick or “felt recoil”).
Plus, you can get more of your hand on a better grip on a larger gun (to an extent, my wife can’t handle my Walther PPX, which is a huge gun).
I would highly recommend learning to shoot a little bit before you purchase your first gun. Most full-service ranges have ‘beginners night’ or something like that. Or find a friend who knows what they are doing. Or find a class. Once you’ve had a chance to shoot a few different things, then start making a decision.
Respectfully, you don’t know what you don’t know yet (maybe).
This. I’m very accurate with my Ruger Single Six 22 Mag, but I’m only good with my Ruger LCR 38 Special within twenty feet. It’s simply the extra power with much lower weight that’s kicking my ass at the range.
Last time at range I shot my buddies lightweight snubnose .357 Magnum. I didn’t even shoot that many rounds and my wrist and forearm were still sore. No thanks!
Thanks. I’m more of a “hey it’s my second day here” newbie, having shot .22 a bit and a few pistols so I’d agree there are many unknown unknowns. I think there’s a tacticool training place here so maybe I’ll go do a few lessons with them.
I’ve been told nostalgia is no good.
It used to be good, back in the day. Now, it sucks.
Amy agrees
https://youtu.be/Pr3g9TPPuH4
** thinks long, declares war on Tundra**
Thank you. It took three hours, but there’s the response I was hoping for.
It took three hours
Well, to do it right, there had to be some long thinking first.
“The Prince also said he would be willing to cooperate with any police investigation into Epstein, who was on remand in New York accused of sex trafficking offences when he died”
Oh, oh.
My face.
https://en.meming.world/wiki/Monkey_Puppet
“MCC prison guard willing to dish on Epstein death, cooperate with IG probe”
Oh, oh.
See face above.
Clinton Inc. can’t whack everyone….can they?
Oh yes they can!
I hear Hillary upon reading this question of yours muppet, told Huma “Hold my glass of Chardonnay” and set out to show you what she could do….
He’ll probably come out and say Trump made him do it since that seems to be the quickest way to get people to ignore the crime you committed.
I was wondering if – like they did with Roberts – they got dirt on him or threatened to prosecute his family unless he played ball with their fake inquisition.
It’s a she, shitlord.
Oh, and inspired captions this morning!
Yeah, I was going to do it if no one else did. Good song really.
So the quid pro quo is now an invite to the White House or something? They seem to have dropped the funds and have switched to a fucking invite?
This is a constitutional crisis, we don’t have time to waste ascertaining precisely what crime took place!
Well he did something! We know he had to do something!
He ran as a Republican and won. The one unforgivable sin.
I think the unforgivable sin was being publicly skeptical of the war in Syria. Remember, he was praised when he bombed that Syrian airfield after the faked chemical attacks. And GWB was a republican but had wide support among media and punditry because he was on board with the Deep State regime change schemes.
He was also onboard with expanding entitlements and entrenching the administrative state.
SHOW US THE BAD ORANGE MAN, AND WE WILL CREATE A CRIME TO GET RID OF HIM!
Ok, I’ll expand that to “on board with the general DC expansionist government agenda” vs skeptical of it (Trump certainly hasn’t cut spending overall but has probably cut into a few fiefdoms by deregulating, appointing DeVos,etc).
Yeah, spending is out of control, but Trump’s disdain for the bureaucracy and the cabal making money from useless and destructive policy, sure as hell has earned him the ire of that lot in D.C. As has been proposed, he should basically move all these bureaucracies out of D.C. and relocate them in real hard core red areas in the more anti-urban parts of the country. It would do wonders in breaking down the bureaucratic overlord machine’s grip on things if they were forced to live amongst those unwashed serfs they look down upon.
Thank you for reminding me of my 100% favorite Bee headline:
Constitutional Crisis: Trump Is Visiting The National Archives While Eating A Meatball Sub
Can you imagine if they went up against anyone other than Donnie Two-Scoops? I mean, they have brought everything to bear against the guy for more than 3 years and they can’t beat him.
Interesting that birthday boy Bud was railroaded, too. We all know how that turned out.
That’s because unlike a lot of other Republicans who are attacked, he fights back instead of apologizing. It’s really the key to his popularity IMO.
I agree with you. But that’s my point. It took a billionaire who gives zero fucks to fight them. The rest of the population has no chance.
He gives a fuck about many things. I think his ego won’t let him give a fuck about things that the bureaucrats give a fuck about and that is causing the friction. And it never hurts the popularity index by making pencil pushing fuckheads the enemy.
^^^THIS^^^
It’s almost as if Republicans prefer a candidate that doesn’t want to schmooze with leftist reporters and beg forgiveness from leftist grievance-mongers.
They just need to put a few more people in prison, so they can take the reins and show us what Venezuela did wrong. It’ll never happen to their guy, because dems are pure like snow, just look at Obama.
QPQ =RSVP.
QED.
SPQR
You’d think the constant pivots and moving of the goal post would be difficult. But actually it’s super easy, barely an inconvenience.
Changing goalposts is tight.
Yeah Yeah Yeah.
Diplomacy is a crime. War is the only legal foreign policy.
*BANGS GAVEL BANGS GAVEL BANGS GAVEL*
The Glibs will SUSPEND…the Glibs will SUSPEND
AHEM…as per the RULES all discussion from the Glibs about this inquiry…is…NOT ALLOWED
THE GLIBS WILL SUSPEND
THE GLIBS WILL SUSPEND
THE GLIBS WILL SUSPEND
THE GLIBS WILL SUSPEND
THE GLIBS WILL SUSPEND
THE GLIBS WILL SUSPEND
THE GLIBS WILL SUSPEND
THE GLIBS WILL SUSPEND
*BANS GAVEL*
I would pay to see Nunes backhand Schiff like the weasley cunte he is.
The Dems certainly are going scorched earth. That’s been fairly common practice for a while (at least in the senate) but I’m still surprised how much the dems are willing to do that they know that within the next 8 years will come back to bite them
The dems have decided that their strategy is to make sure that everyone knows that they will NOT tolerate anyone that is not one of them in power. That means they own the presidency or have a useless cunte of a president from the other party that lets them still run the show through the bureaucracy. Any attempt to prevent that from being how things work will be met with all levels of resistance, and like the kid that will take their ball home and fuck up the game unless he is allowed to win, these asshats have decided that if they are not running the country they would rather burn it down.
The democrats are no better than the fuck that shoots his kids and ex wife out of spite after she dumps him for being a raging asshat, but they pretend to be the good guys.
Today’s WSJ A-Hed (Paywalled)
Please Like My Vacation Photo. I Hired a Professional.
The whole point of a going on a trip is to have the experience yourself. The pictures from the trip are only to encapsulate the memory and act as a reminder. The paid for professional photographs will not have the same value years down the line and will depreciate precipitiously.
I’ll add to that: nobody really wants to see someone else’s vacation photos anyway. Maybe one or two but after that, their eyes glaze over and the person you’re showing them to just wants the conversation to end as quickly as possible.
So much this!
That reminds me, I have some pictures of Lake Superior to share…
I mean it is the best lake in the whole world.
…says so right in the title
I kinda like this picture: https://www.reddit.com/r/duluth/comments/dvi7qd/view_from_work_this_morning/
Cold air over a relatively warm lake produces some weird fog
I’ll add an exception. I went to a travel slide show of a guy who flew around the world in a single engine plane just after the fall of the Soviet Union. The snapshots of local Russia from Moscow to Siberia were extremely educational.
That’s just because you haven’t seen my vacation pics. *pulls out massive binder*
I’ve put mine into a handy PowerPoint presentation with super sweet transitions sweeps and flashing clip art.
*not really
Massive binder?
I’d love to see your vacation pics.. nudge nudge
/Mitt
It isn’t even that no one wants to see your vacation pics, the big problem is that unless you are insanely talented it is hard to capture the awe you feel at the natural beauty of so many places. You can’t capture that sunset in Hawaii, or the beauty of the sun coming up in the NoDak badlands. You take the pic because you are absolutely moved by the moment and then when you look at the pic, you say “huh, that sure didn’t come out right”.
That’s why I try to take good pics of what I think are weird/cool people and oddities or interesting things, rather than impressive natural landscapes.
I have a policy against taking pictures of people. Places or things only.
Mostly because I hate having my picture taken, and won’t subject others to the indignity.
You’ll never make it as a 17 year old Teenage Girl with that attitude.
The only exception to this is the photos my parents take cruising. They did a repositioning cruise from Sydney to Honolulu, and visited New Zealand and Australia beforehand (my dad promised my mom they would go to Tahiti for their 30th Anniversary, but they were building their retirement home that year). Those were some good photos.
MUST GET MORE LIKES
NEED APPROVAL OF STRANGERS
We’ve turned into a nation of social media zombies.
*Downvotes*
*ratio’ed*
Guessing that means something bad.
Guessing that means something bad.
It’s an imperfect proxy for disapproval on sites that are too cowardly to allow downvoting.
Well, if people are commenting and not upvoting, they’re likely not approving.
So here is my dilemma. I was the family photo/videographer and finally rebelled because I felt like I was missing the actual purpose of the trip because I was focused on looking at the view finder instead of the family. So I scaled way back on the pics/videos.
This fall when my mom was sick, I spent a lot of time with her going through old pics and videos. I sure wish I had more with her and my kids. Or really more pics of when my kids were small and cute (not the louts they are now).
I’ve been wondering where the line is when it comes to this. How much vacation time do you sacrifice so that you do have a lot of pics later in life?
It’s a great question.
I was just going through some the other day. And yes, while you can’t capture the majesty, you sure can bring back great memories. I say take the damn pics. My kids love going through old photos.
My biggest concern is preserving them. 99% of what I have now is digital.
It is a tough question. It’s like going to sporting events and taking a bunch of photos and video of the event. I used to do that and have some cool memories of the 2015 National Championship and semifinal win over Bama to look at (including Zeke’s “85 yards through the heart of the south” run). But the last couple of big games I went to, the only photos I took were during timeouts or before and after the game where I had someone take a picture of me and my wife and/or kids. I’ve enjoyed the games more not watching through a viewfinder or phone screen.
One of the things I noticed that has aged over time is that I don’t think people take pictures of famous places as much anymore because they can see better ones online.
For example we went on a big van trip from Minnesoda out to CA and back in the late ’70s. In the family albums we have pics of Old Faithful, Mt. Rushmore, Grand Canyon and other things like that. No family in them. Just the famous landmark.
We don’t have anything like that in my family’s albums. We might have pics of those places, but there is always a kid or wife involved.
My theory is that in the ’70s you couldn’t go online and show people a pic of Mt. Rushmore, so you had to create your own. Same reason that postcards used to be a thing. I don’t even know if they sell those anymore. I never see them in my hometown which is a notorious tourist trap.
I have pictures of Niagara Falls around here somewhere.
It’s the only Landmark grade site I’ve been to.
My kids’ favorite books are our photo books (vacations & regular life) we have had printed. Not because of natural beauty but they are of people they love having a great time.
Bingo. We do a book for every vacation and they are a blast to look at.
I made videos of our annual Canadian fishing trips, gave copies to the survivors. No one watched them more than once, even as they were the stars. We’re in an info glut and to much to process in too little a time
Any time I get out the videos of the kids, my wife will come watch and end up crying because they were cute little kids and the videos make her so happy. It almost always leads to some fun times in the sack.
I doubt that last point comes into play with you and your fishing buddies though.
info glut
Scarcity is half the fun for some of us (depends on how you were raised). A picture was worth more when the events were rare, film was expensive, development took time, and half the shots cut off someone’s head or had a finger on the lens.
Preservation is a big issue. It’s one of the reasons I moved entirely back to shooting film.
Until last week, I was working at a camera store. A big part of my job was scanning old negatives, slides and pictures. It really hit home how magical photography can be. In the film class I taught, I used an example of a glass negative taken in Batavia, NY back in 1917. It was a downtown parade. I show the picture, then I zoom in as much as the enlargement process would have allowed at the time. You can see some windows of an apartment building. With modern technology, I zoom in further. You can see a small boy staring at the parade out his window. Zoom in closer, you see his face. He didn’t know his picture was being taken. The photographer didn’t know his picture was taken. Neither of them could have imagined that in a century, people would see the level of emotion on his face.
As a digital photographer, I took hundreds of thousands of pictures that will not survive my harddrive, or will be lost when a cloud server is retired. I’ll never look at them again. The film pictures I take? That’s different. Somebody, who I will never meet, perhaps a great grandchild, a distant cousin, or somebody who finds my negatives at a yard sale, will see them…and they’ll get to see how I viewed the world.
Looking at the reactions of people who see prints developed from old negatives, I can tell you what doesn’t move people. Landmarks. Nature photos. Anything that doesn’t change. The picture of the Eiffel Tower you took back in 1964 is boring, compared to what can be searched. The picture of Niagara Falls will be boring. The ones that excite are the times when transitory moments are captured on film. People long dead. A car that no longer exists. A picture of strangers on the street, living in a way that will never exist again.
A photo is beautiful when it captures a moment that no human eye can ever see again. That realization changed my approach to photography.
Thanks. You have articulated perfectly my concerns about how easy it is to shoot junk photos.
Our Christmas cards every year are the four of us on our summer trip. Friends and family tell me all the time they look forward to seeing where we went that year.
I didn’t even realize film was still readily available. I haven’t used any 35mm in probably 15 years or more.
I really appreciate this insight! Something I hadn’t thought about before.
Ask yourself if on your death bed you will be worrying more about not having taking enough pics of these trips to share with others or wishing if you had more good memories to savor of the trips you took your holiness, and I think the question will answer itself….
“The pictures would have still been around tomorrow…”
The problem is that my mom and I had different answers to that question. I know I wish I had more pics of her now. Especially when she was being a bad ass feminist in the ’70s and ’80s (hunting, fishing and starting her own business).
Hope my kids wish they had more of my ugly mug when I shuffle off.
My wife got into photography right around the time our first kid was born (primarily of the kids, but not just). I am 100% grateful for this and wish that she was still taking that many photos.
How much vacation time do you sacrifice so that you do have a lot of pics later in life?
Split the difference by taking more pictures of everyday life. Then you have more pics and still get to enjoy your vacation. I think this works especially well if the goal of pictures is to stimulate memories, as 95% of your life is lived not on vacation.
We have so many more of our daughter’s everyday activities and funny quirks documented and shared with family than our generation had. Grandparents, great grandparents, and other extended family thousands of miles away get to watch that silly video of my daughter sliding down the stairs on her stomach, giggling the whole way down.
Add on WhatsApp, and they get video chat, and the ability to get personalized prerecorded videos. Christmas thank you cards? Not anymore. Last year, we sent videos of her playing with the toy and got her to say a personalized thank you on the video. Half the fun was sending some of the blooper vids where she was too distracted by the toy to say her line. Maybe that will change when she gets a bit older and can write, but for now it’s better than getting some canned thank you card with a few crayon scribbles.
I have Bing as one of my search engines. I check their landing page every day, because it invariably has a really good full-screen photograph. Vastly superior to Google’s twee little drawing.
There are people on YouTube who make really amazing 4K videos of places in Europe that I’ll never go to, like walking tours of the Vatican. One interesting thing I note when watching these is there are these gigantic groups of Chinese tourists who are walking through incredible hallways filled with some of the greatest art ever produced by Western civilization, yet every person is looking at their surroundings through a phone camera.
All this incredible architecture and art produced in a time before power tools and electricity and modern chemicals for paint and stuff, and the whole time people are looking at it through modern high technology, it’s just a weird dichotomy.
That kind of art and architecture you should snap a quick photo, then put the phone away soak it in with your eyes and let it hit you and think about what you’re looking at. Your eyes and brain are the greatest cameras of all
That kind of art and architecture you should snap a quick photo, then put the phone away soak it in with your eyes and let it hit you and think about what you’re looking at.
I would say do the reverse, soak it all in first and then, if you have been particularly moved by it, take a picture.
Narcissists gonna narcissist.
No. Next question?
BBC fake-news: One of the girls who stepped forward is 15 and claims she was with you.
Prince Andrew: That’s not true.
BBCFN: It’s not?
PA: She was 12.
BBCFN: 12?
PA: Come on lad. It’s not like you didn’t know. Your colleague anchor colleague there seemed to enjoy himself as well!
/anchor colleague runs off in the back ground.
This thing runs deep!
He won’t sweat it.
Boo…
They say you shouldn’t sweat the small stuff.
The Duke of York needs to get back to his primary function, marching up the hill and then marching down again.
What happens when he’s only half way up?
He takes a blue pill?
That’s what fluffers are for &^)
It is the winter of his discontent.
Wait, you mean it wasn’t a discount tent?
“California Sen. Kamala Harris said repeatedly that Democrats must reassemble “the Obama coalition” to defeat Trump. Harris, one of three black candidates running for the nomination, highlighted black women especially, arguing that her experiences make her an ideal nominee.
Another black candidate, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, added: “I’ve had a lot of experience with black voters. … I’ve been one since I was 18.”
MLK’s dictum about content of character should prevail over skin is officially dead then?
“I’m not just the president, I’m also a client”
It was dead as soon as LBJ’s Great Society plantation was established. I guess his racist “200 years” comment was accurate after all. At least for the first quarter of it.
MLK’s dictum
Democrats hated it then and they hate it now.
It’s not dead to me.
Me either. And I still hate them
I’m just upset they didn’t let the candidates debate with other candidates of their choosing. I’m sure Booker and Harris would have been more comfortable debating if they weren’t surrounded by all those crackers.
Daughter of wealth slumming it in Westmount?
Here’s what somebody said happened at the debate last night.
I couldn’t bring myself to watch it. It seems I have had enough of their disingenuous grandstanding and hearing about how they intend to steal more of my property/freedom.
My synopsis is that we heard a ton of brayers declaring orange man = bad and trying to out-promise each other on the free shit paid for by
millionairesbillionaires.To the surprise of absolutely no one:
IndyGo electric buses having battery problems, can’t handle the cold
And by ‘cold’, they mean 50 fucking degrees.
Un fucking believable.
They knew?
JFC
“We’re not going to pay a discounted price, but each of these buses out there in the marketplace, this is new technology,” Luellen said.”
Is it really new?
And I’ve been told by prog the technology is sound and doesn’t need to wait any longer.
Also. Can’t they just refine the technology until, you know, it’s actually market ready?
What thoroughly bothers me is cold weather places jumping on this green thing full throttle. In Montreal, some towns have banned fire places (unless they meet some emissions standards). In a province where temps routinely and reliably fall into deep sub-zero levels. Which begs the question: When electricity is lost and a source of heat can help people stay warm, if people die because they can’t do so will city officials accept blame for their deaths?
“f people die because they can’t do so will city officials accept blame for their deaths?”
Lol.
Naive muppet optimism.
Ain’t it cute?
Battery chemistry and physics don’t want to participate in the green revolution.
I was aware of this when I bought my Tesla, but was surprised just how much little the temperature has to drop to seriously cut into range. It’s not an issue for me given the US case. But I’ll reiterate what I’ve said. I would not own one as my primary transportation in any state that regularly drops below freezing in the winter.
“Battery chemistry and physics don’t want to participate in the green revolution.”
But scientific consensus!
/progtards
Chinese supplier, FWIW: that’s a good place to get cheap copies, not partner for innovation.
These guys know what they’re doing (which might explain why I never did any business with them), so their shit works, so it costs a lot. That’s the things with pie-in-the-sky motives that don’t have anything to do with basic economic principles: cost gets out of control.
I was working on electric and hybrid automotive systems starting around 2005. None of it made sense on the books unless you did the big-boy thing: cover all the expense out of advertising where results and accountability don’t exist. “This costs 5X and doesn’t work well.” yes: dumb ideas can go that way.
The thing I do not get is why the Greens are so in love with EVs anyway. Battery materials come from some of the dirtiest mines on Earth, battery production produces extremely toxic waste, batteries have a relatively short use life, and are next to impossible to recycle, battery disposal contaminates ground water for a very long time. Then you have the fact that batteries require frequent charging from generated power, which largely comes from dirtier fossil fuels than combustion engines, and any ‘efficiencies’ you gain in the power generation are offset by transmission loss, and the additional conversion steps of moving the actual fuel burn back to the generating plant, which means that the combustion energy must first be converted to AC, then transmitted along power lines which means a significant waste of energy to resistance along the lines, then it is used to charge the batteries which involves more wastage, then finally it is used by the batteries in the ‘efficient’ process Greens claim to love,
How is that in any way environmentally sound?
Because the smoke is over there.
Boom. There it is.
Outsourced emissions may be safely ignored.
+1 Germany
I would love it if petroleum companies refused to distribute to states/municipalities that banned extraction. Though admittedly, I’d be really cold until Cuomo was lynched and the fracking ban lifted.
I’d be really cold until Cuomo was lynched and the fracking ban lifted.
You can’t wait 20-30mins?
Downstream firms don’t care about upstream problems.
Downstream firms have enough troubles without cutting off revenue streams: it’s all about wringing returns on assets at this point.
But you’re on to something: the industry is down to an economic profit with several competitors for a true commodity. Invest elsewhere, friend.
+1 China
It’s the same way they can rail at hunters for being so cruel while grilling a hamburger. If the dirty, icky side of the situation is not obvious they don’t feel anything is wrong with it.
Because it’s not really about the environment – it’s about power… And right now the Progs have jumped on the “Green” bandwagon as a way of having moral superiority over those other, icky people. None of these asshats knows fuck-all about any of the science or engineering of any of it – but they know FUCKING LOVE IT!
They are using Ni-Mby batteries.
Tech guys used to rip car guys for all the auto issues. (See the old Bill Gates vs GM internet meme). But tech companies are used to throwing a shit product into the marketplace to gain presence and then finishing their product via “patches” and “updates”. This is what I’d expect when you try to run an auto company like a tech company. Unfortunately, the consequences are a bit more severe IRL than in virtual land.
A startup I worked for was bought by a company that made IoT hardware. We did web based dashboards and alerting of the IoT data sent to the cloud.
Huge disconnect between our software teams and the firmware teams. They were hyper focused on getting the firmware 100% right before the product shipped. After all, updating that firmware was a total pain in the ass and there was a good chance it would never get done once the hardware was out in the field.
We on the other hand were all about getting crap out the door. Our stuff was on servers we controlled so updates were no problem.
Review/Change Control meetings were interesting to say the least. The firmware guys would freak out because we hadn’t run multiple regression tests. We’d finally tell them to fuck off because we are deploying our release no matter what they said.
QA is important but with software customers are going to find every bug that exists by doing the most batshit crazy things you could thing of.
In otherwords: No one expects your stickshift to run well going 100 in first gear. With software the line between “Well duh you shouldn’t do that” and “Well the customer is always right” is way more blurred.
“Why would you do that?”
“It made sense at the time.”
I am the most interesting man in the world, and I don’t often test my code, but when I do, I test in production…
[Edit Faerie please load that gif here]
We took away your production access after the last outage you caused.
You have to submit your test plan and results to a migrator to get approval for it to move to prod now.
Minimum nonviable product FTW.
From a chip supplier’s perspective, the automobile-quality product was of a vastly higher reliability than the consumer-quality product. This necessarily means you can’t ever put leading-edge chips into anything particularly important, driving-wise.
I enjoyed this.
Space-grade CPUs: How do you send more computing power into space?
Just use NatGas, dipshits.
STEVE SMITH NOT HAVE BAD HYGEINE. STEVE SMITH SWIM IN ICY LAKE JUST LAST WEEK. WASH OFF HIKER BLOOD.
Sometimes it’s fun to believe things are true whether they are or not.
https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2019/11/20/really-dumb-check-hollywood-exec-wanted-julia-roberts-cast-harriet-tubman/
Meh. I dream of a world where Julia could play Harriet and nobody would care.
Monster. No way a national hero like Harriet should be portrayed by a no-talent horse face.
Peter Dinklage played Richard III
He got the lines wrong though. He thought it was “A whore, A whore, my kingdom for a whore!”
Wait, wut? That was not the line?
Has anyone seen the Harriet movie that’s out? The InRangeTV guys said it was worth watching, and the promo posters look promising (ie most of them have her grabbing smoke iron).
Being crazy is fun!
https://www.foxnews.com/us/oklahoma-woman-smiling-mugshot-murder-husband
I think an Iron Law should be never get involved with a woman named Shanda.
Human patient put in suspended animation for the first time
Only two hours? How long can that be extended?
Idiocracy is almost here.
You don’t need suspended animation to experience Idiocracy. If you woke up this morning you were already there.
Yep, checks out. I was there today.
TIME MAASHEEN!
That’s how you get Salty Man, nemesis of slugs and snails.
Amy Klobuchar Appears to Shiver During Democrat Debate
I guess it was cold, or she was dehydrated.
“I have made it very clear that this is impeachable conduct, and I’ve called for an impeachable proceeding. I just believe our job as jurors is to look at each count and make a decision. But let me make very clear that what this impeachment proceeding is about is really our democracy at stake,” Klobuchar said.
But as Klobuchar spoke about President Donald Trump, she appeared to shiver and shake as she delivered her words.
“This is a president that, not only in regard to his conduct with Ukraine but every step of the way, puts his private interests, his own partisan interests, his own political interests in front of our country’s interests,” she said.
“This is wrong. This is a pattern with this man, and it goes to everything to how he betrayed our farmers and our workers to what he has done with foreign affairs, leaving the Kurds to slaughter, sucking up to Vladimir Putin every second of the day,” she continued.
Seems like a lot of progjection to me.
They aren’t “jurors” and this isn’t a court.
“this impeachment proceeding is about is really our democracy at stake”
Meaning, we can’t allow people to choose a Republican President.
Her statement is correct, just not in the way she wants it to be.
Cunte.
Is the extra e there because she is also Olde?
“This is a president that, not only in regard to his conduct with Ukraine but every step of the way, puts his private interests, his own partisan interests, his own political interests in front of our country’s interests,” she said.
“This is wrong. This is a pattern with this man, and it goes to everything to how he betrayed our farmers and our workers to what he has done with foreign affairs, leaving the Kurds to slaughter, sucking up to Vladimir Putin every second of the day,” she continued.
You know, maybe he’s just not as happy to send American soldiers to die for political gain as you are, asshole.
Fuck the idiots that are stupid enough to join the evil military! We shmart (spelled S-M-R-T!) and better educated enlightened ones will use them to make money, and they will go die and like it!
I think she momentarily daydreamed of her being in a threeway with Maddow and Trump. Trump would treat her like a piss whore and eat green bean hotdish off her ass (because for once in a threeway she was the pretty girl). Got her shivery and wet.
* Also “bombshell testimony” by Sondland? You mean where he testified that he just assumed that trump wanted a quid pro quo and that no one on the planet told him that?
One of the few times I’ve been proud of my representative, Mike Turner.
“Amy Klobuchar Appears to Shiver During Democrat Debate”
pee shivers
Minnesodans get cold? I thought they were able to take it.
She probably locked her knees while standing for that long.
“Claims about prevalent anti-Semitic attitudes have nothing to do with reality.”
So fake news then?
https://www.foxnews.com/world/1-in-4-europeans-hold-anti-semitic-beliefs-new-survey-finds
Do the “Europeans” surveyed include all the Pakis, Syrians, and Libyans who recently arrived?
And is Jeremy Corbin and half the Labour Party on speed dial for the pollsters?
That number seems way too low from my experience with the indoctrinated masses there…
Really, a survey is only going to measure what people are willing to admit. Given that, it’s unsurprising that they found higher levels of antisemitism in eastern Europe than western, since easteuros seem to be more blunt. Heck, it was pointed out in the article that Ukraine held some of the highest levels of antisemitism according to the poll yet is also the only country outside of Israel to have elected a Jewish president.
Steve Bannon tried to boot alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella from White House
Firing Bannon was a dumb move.
What gets me is that the guy is now 33 years old and has been on the NSC for years. Our national security policy is being run by juveniles.
Juvenile ideologues. The worst of both.
They also run social media companies.
Juvenile ideologues who know they have power.
Horrible mix.
This is how you get a Reign of Terror.
*whistles innocently*
The kids are purists. They purify themselves in the waters of Lake Minnetonka and begin the Purple Reign of Terror.
That’s how you knew he’d throw his supporters under the bus.
What did Bannon do wrong anyway?
I think he and Ivanka clashed – mainly because he is smart and she is not.
I still think she’d be for fun to have a beer with.
My old boss was a classmate of hers at Wharton. He thought she was cool and of course, very cute.
https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2019/11/20/live-updates-democrats-debate-in-georgia/
“Donald Trump doesn’t want me to be the nominee,” Biden says, adding that he also found out Putin doesn’t want him to be president from the hearings. Biden keeps stressing that he is the best person to beat Trump but never answers Mitchell’s question. Mitchell doesn’t follow up and lets Biden slide. Expect someone like Sanders to whack Biden on this later if given an opportunity.
Uh huh. He would have a terrible time going up against a cringey, bumbling, demented old man.
At least he knows that Biden would be easy to buy off.
I’d love to see where “middle-class-Joe” gets his money. Has he had a job as an adult other than politician? He sure seems to have made a whole lot of money off a gig that supposedly pays a couple hundred grand a year.
Biden looks like he chose poorly when choosing a chalice and chugged the whole thing. #Looksmatter
He needs to retire and spend more time with his new grandchild.
How old are you when your hair plugs are starting to gray?
YOWZA!
Did anyone during the debate have the balls to wish him well for the new addition to his family?
Now that would have been funny and worth watching.
Biden says Trump has “indicted himself.” Biden says there are two questions–whether he should be impeached and removed and whether he should be prosecuted after he leaves office. He says the latter is a question for an attorney general.
Something something glass house, something something stones.
10:03 PM: Maddow tees up a climate change question for Steyer. He says he is the only person on stage who will say climate is the number one priority. He says Biden won’t say it. Warren won’t say it. He says he will declare a “state of emergency” and use the emergency powers of the presidency to combat climate change. He says it should be the top priority in his foreign policy.
He says the fossil fuel industry is “criminally liable” for lying about climate change and “maybe we should prosecute them as well.”
These people are tyrants and cannot be allowed to have power.
Sure, but Trump said mean thigns about the Press so he’s the real tyrant.
Other than committing the horrible crime of winning an election the machine had rigged for “Yog-So Crooked Hillary Toth”, he decided to fight with the dnc operatives with bylines and to call them out as such? What a monster!
I get that the rhetoric cools off after the primaries, but these people are just asking for a shooting war.
Askin’?
Shit, I thought they are actually agitating for it…
How the heck did Steyer qualify for this debate?
Also, it is a bold strategy to tell the voters that if they elect you, you will seize the levers of power and make the tyrant Abe Lincoln look like a sweetie.
Did anyone on stage push back and ask him exactly what he meant by emergency powers and who would be locked up by him using those powers?
Too bed Klimate Krisis polls in last place among topics voters actually care about.
He says he will declare a “state of emergency” and use the emergency powers of the presidency to combat climate change.
Obligatory “You know who else seized emergency powers?”
Montgomery Scott?
Abraham Lincoln?
Donald Trump, to build the wall?
Or did he pounce on the emergency powers?
Sometimes the internet is asshole!
This is one of those times.
Fuck you, Ace.
Not much more 80’s than Kristy McNichol
I thought she was cute.
You bastard. I don’t need that in my life again.
The disease of legally dubious horseshit is spreading as predicted.
As of Tuesday night, there have been 306 homicides in Baltimore City so far this year. City Solicitor Andre Davis said that escalating violence is why he will legally go after gun manufacturers to hold them responsible if Sandy Hook families succeed in their cases, he said.
Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled it would allow the lawsuit against Remington. Families of the victims killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre said the company should be held liable for its role in marketing one of the assault-style rifles used in the shooting.
The court says it rejected an appeal from Remington which argued it should be shielded under a federal law designed to protect them. Tuesday, Davis said it’s not just Baltimore but every city in America is watching what happens with the Sandy Hook lawsuits.
“That decision by the court of appeals a couple of weeks ago was a breakthrough because congress has created immunity for these gun manufacturers that, up until now, has been impenetrable and this recent decision is the first small crack in the wall and we will continue to monitor it,” Davis said.
In other words, they smell money and media attention.
Give this man a cigar!
I’ve got some bad news for these politicians hoping to hold gun manufacturers accountable for the actions of criminals; it’s not going to work. The Supreme Court allowed the case against Remington to go forward based on one solitary claim that’s going to be difficult for plaintiffs to prove in court; that Remington’s advertising and marketing somehow inspired the mass murderer in Newtown, Connecticut to commit his atrocities.
For Baltimore to pursue similar litigation against gun manufacturers, they’d have to show that gang members and drug dealers wreaking havoc in the city have all been inspired by the advertising of gun companies. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been tempted to engage in a drive-by or kill someone in a drug deal because of an advertisement I saw in Guns & Ammo.
If the city is really going to claim that criminals have been compelled to these acts of violence because of outside influences, they’d be better off suing record labels for promoting gang violence, not gun makers. I don’t think the Remington case really opens the door for Baltimore to sue gun makers, but it does certainly reveal the desire of local officials to avoid responsibility for the surge in homicides and shootings over the past few years.
We live in a time where the clear language of law is routinely ignored in favor of feelings of supposed impartial judges. I am not optimistic.
I’ve got some bad news for these politicians hoping to hold gun manufacturers accountable for the actions of criminals; it’s not going to work.
And
For Baltimore to pursue similar litigation against gun manufacturers, they’d have to show that gang members and drug dealers wreaking havoc in the city have all been inspired by the advertising of gun companies.
This take is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Let me be cynical for a moment here. They don’t need to show that gang members were genuinely inspired by anything. They just need some of these gang members to take sweet plea deals in their criminal trials in exchange for testifying that the advertising influenced them. It doesn’t really have to be the case. And I can assure you that they won’t have much trouble convincing a few gang-bangers that a couple years in jail if you testify it was the advertising that made you do it is a lot more appealing than life in prison.
This was a terrible decision. Prosecutors will work with the civil teams in these municipalities to get defendants to say what they want them to say because they’re more concerned with bankrupting the people making guns than they are putting people behind bars that use the product to commit crimes.
I don’t know about you, but I knew smoking was bad for you about 2 minutes after I smelled my first cigarette smoke at my uncle’s house when I was 2. There’s no way they hold the tobacco companies liable for….oh, shit….
Yeah, the problem there was that they managed to get judges and juries that completely ignored the fact people knew but made bad choices. All in the name of grabbing money… Accountability and foreseen consequences be damned….
This is all beating around the bush What we really need to do is start holding the guns themselves responsible. Since they act independently of the owner we ought to allow them to be sued as persons.
That’s only cop guns.
If corporations can be people, why can’t firearms?
Indeed. My recoilless rifle identifies as a simple, side-by-side fowling piece. Don’t question zhit’s lived experience. How very dare you?
Budd Dwyer was vastly more competent than that last school shooter. Kids these days.
“Short of having an officer on that train car, this would’ve been hard to prevent,” BART interim Police Chief Ed Alvarez said.
Maybe with some kind of weapon other than a knife? Something that fired a projectile of some sort?
New record Low? Two people – who were pulled in on the spot.
A legend in his own mind. Lol.
Who?
The devil, Patrick
Rufus, I know you hate the Leafs, but I know you hate this guy more:
Toronto Maple Leafs fire Mike Babcock after slow start to season.
The rotating of coaches in the NHL is getting kind of absurd.
When the Stars fired Hitch, I learned: “well, you can’t fire the whole team.” It’s an interesting situation when your coach makes less than most of the guys on the team.
Team sports is so much more random than people want to believe, but the notions of credit, ability, accountability flourish as if a team should win 80% of its games or the championship three times a decade. College is worse: half of the 130 D1 schools think they should be in contention every year.
Hitchcock is another one.
Sadly, I just know the Wild will nuke Boudreau. He’s become my favorite coach. The guy just gets it.
Too bad the last two GMs (at the behest of the owner) left him with nothing.
Fricken Dumba.
No kidding. His 2005 hockey mentality got old.
Clearly he was zapping all the talented energy from that group. Hockey is all about skating and skill now but that news didn’t seem to get to Babcock he was still preaching ‘a l’antica’.
I’ll never forgive him and his staff for what they did to Martin St. Louis during the 2014 Olympics. Couldn’t care less they won gold. That classless move and fiasco led to a wedge between Yzerman, St. Louis and Hockey Canada. And it was completely unnecessary.
Caption contest.
One has a red background, the other blew
Scruffy pulling out to an early lead
Your Face Before and After Sucking dick for power.
Tulsi made some weird choices decorating her family room.
Tulsi: I’m so high right now.
Kamala: Lock her up!
TW:NYT
Tulsi Gabbard’s White Pantsuit Isn’t Winning
I’m remain amazed at just how catty women can be.
NYT Strikes another one for Feminism!
Well, it is after labor day.
I would like to see her take it off.
^
Pantsuits and the Presidency, NYT, 06/22/2008
such terms would never be used to describe a man’s clothing.
The men all wear the same thing.
Sometimes they ditch the tie and roll up their sleeves to seem more “relatable” to the working man.
Rather, they are the white of avenging angels and flaming swords, of somewhat combative righteousness (also cult leaders).
JFC. Those avenging angels that don’t want to continue dropping bombs for no fucking reason other than making contractors rich. That’s unbelievable.
Yeah. I wonder why the NYT is going after Tulsi? :eyroll: the NYT is probably the most predictable publication in existence, and still run this unpatched program:
if War:
publisher.publish_presidential()
Else:
publisher.publish_traitor_to_american_people()
We’ve got exactly ONE democrat candidate that is talking about the need to end these regime change wars and she’s polling at the bottom of the heap. Yet, they still feel the need to pile on her. Anybody on the left who thinks team blue is anti war deserves to eat an ICBM.
Ice Cream Bowel Movement
I’m pretty sure they were dazzled by Hillary’s white pantsuit
China Ramps Up Coal Power Again, Despite Pressure to Cut Emissions
Maybe Greta should sail over there and give them a stern lecture?
“Despite” pressure? Like the leaders of the Chinese Communist party give two fucks about what allegedly capitalist politicians think of their plans to produce electricity as cheaply as possible.
The Chicomm leadership, not inclined to put up with this idiocy and always willing to put the screws to people that piss them off, would classify her as an Uygur, send her to a camp, and force her to sleep with some mean ass dudes to fix her stoopid…
LOL
So the question is would this have happened under the Obama administration?
Gary Jones resigns as UAW president, as union moved to expel him
The desire for a career Justice Department official to take down a “big one” if the opportunity presented itself is likely too strong regardless of who controls the executive branch. But I wonder if Obama administration would have run interference.
You wonder? Really? After 8 years of proof they would and did?
Phrasing it better – I should have said if the Obama administration would have been strong enough to make it disappear. Aggressive DoJ folks trying to make a name will cheerfully eat their own team.
If the Dems lose Wisconsin…
https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2019/11/20/whoa-wisconsin-poll-shows-trump-now-leads-democrats-support-impeachment-shrinks/
It won’t matter because the Dem will get like 19 million more votes in California and 10 million more votes in New York.
I was registered to vote in CA in the 90’s. I’m sure I’ll be voting there for whoever the Dems nominate.
BAN THE RACIST ELECTORAL COLLEGE!
CA & NYC should decide every election, cause prog harder!
Eh, early polls. I’ll wait until Labor Day next year before I take polls very seriously.
If the Dems lose Wisconsin…
Then it’s a repeat of 2016.
I think I found a British Glib.
Lotto lout Michael Carroll reveals he is ‘happier now’ working seven days a week as a £10-an-hour coalman after blowing £10m jackpot on drink, drugs and brothels (and claims he slept with 4,000 women)
“And the rest of it I wasted”
While you were watching Gordon Sondland, Trump flipped the 11th Circuit
I saw that:)
Who is on Trump’s judicial team? They seem to have their act together.
He outsourced it to the Federalist Society. That was part of the deal he cut to get the Fox Team to start carrying water for him.
I don’t know anything about the Fox thing, but yeah, this is the culmination of everything the Federalist Society has been working toward for decades.
Muahahahaha
/card carrying FedSoc member
Fox is kinda divided on Trump, I gather (don’t watch it). They seem to have some Repub Establishment TDSers.
Stuff like this is why I just shake my head when people call Trump stupid. They’re being played, the oldest trick in the book, falling for an urban version of the country bumpkin routine and underestimating him. While they are all chasing Twitter laser pointers, he’s doing some seriously structural stuff.
What I think everyone underestimated in advance was the lockstep willingness of millions of federal employees to openly defy and subvert an elected President. Between that and the way so many “top-tier” Repubs who are the natural political appointees are really still members of the UniParty.
This is basically my take as well. This “But Goresuch” stuff + regulatory reform have largely been out of the spotlight, and they are more positive than anything any president in recent memory has done.
Vox explains the vast right wing reality distortion field generator
Back in 2017, I wrote a piece speculating that the Mueller hearings might bring America’s epistemic crisis to a head. That crisis involves Americans’ growing inability, not just to cooperate, but even to learn and know the same things, to have a shared understanding of reality. We have sorted ourselves into polarized factions living in different worlds, not just of values, but of facts. Communication between them is increasingly difficult.
I wondered what might happen if Mueller offered clear, incontrovertible evidence of Trump’s guilt. Would Republicans be able to prevent supporters from ever finding out? What if the truth was revealed but it had no power, no effect at all, because half the country had been walled off from it? What if there is no longer any evidentiary standard that can overcome our polarization?
As it happened, the hearings didn’t play out that way. Mueller’s report and testimony were oddly oblique and muted, with notable omissions. It proved relatively easy for the president and his supplicant media to dismiss the whole thing as a dud.
——-
A decades-long effort on the right has resulted in a parallel set of institutions meant to encourage tribal epistemology. They mimic the form of mainstream media, think tanks, and the academy, but without the restraint of transpartisan principles. They are designed to advance the interests of the right, to tell stories and produce facts that support the tribe. That is the ultimate goal; the rhetoric and formalisms of critical thinking are retrofit around it.
Talk radio and the birth of Fox News in the 1990s were turning points. They eventually expanded to create an entire, complete-unto-itself conservative information universe. It was capable of cranking out stories and facts (or “facts”) in support of the conservative cause 24 hours a day, steadily shaping the worldview of their white suburban audience around a forever war with The Libs, who are always just on the verge of destroying America.
As I covered in more detail in this post (and this one), over time this led to a steady deterioration in fealty to norms, epistemological and otherwise, to the point that something like 30 percent of the country is now awash in a fantasia of conspiracy theories and just-so stories.
As journalist Alex Pareene wrote in a scathing 2017 piece, the propaganda machine that the right built to keep its base outraged grew out of control and swallowed the GOP. “They’re screwed,” Pareene wrote of conservatives, “because they and their predecessors engineered a perpetual misinformation machine, and then a bunch of people addicted to their product took over the government.”
Tribal epistemology is the root of the problem. It sounds pretty darn important, doesn’t it? What it boils down to is those dumb deplorables have been browbeaten into total rejection of truth, and it’s sad. Sad that they cannot simply listen to us and accept our truth at face value. Our truth is true, and their truth is false.
Those truth-loving Democrats are obsessed with finding a way to get Trump out of the White House, but it’s hard, when the right wing propaganda machine thwarts them at every turn.
That’s pretty difficult in our postmodern world.
Yeah, people’s “reality” is purely semantic anymore.
This mind you from people who insist that we must be legally compelled to call people by gender pronouns that don’t match their sex and conduct legal proceedings on the basis of “lived experiences”. Fuck. You.
Pat why are you so evil as to demand consistency from crazy & stupid fuckers, huh? Don’t you even prog-hard, brah?
Perceptive, Scruffy. Postmodernism pretty much precludes a shared understanding of reality.
I wondered what might happen if Mueller offered clear, incontrovertible evidence of Trump’s guilt. Would Republicans be able to prevent supporters from ever finding out? What if the truth was revealed but it had no power, no effect at all, because half the country had been walled off from it? What if there is no longer any evidentiary standard that can overcome our polarization?
As it happened, the hearings didn’t play out that way. Mueller’s report and testimony were oddly oblique and muted, with notable omissions. It proved relatively easy for the president and his supplicant media to dismiss the whole thing as a dud.
This is a bit of what i was asking about yesterday. This guy is so sure he is right that even when writing about people having different views of the facts it never occurs to him that he is wrong. Even when he admits that things didn’t play out how he wanted it he can’t admit that maybe He is the one that is refusing to see reality.
We all could be wrong. I could be wrong. But don’t fucking try to lead me along with that bulshit, when you clearly have no capacity for seeing anything from a different point of view.
“supplicant media”?
Really, dude?
I wondered what might happen if Mueller offered clear, incontrovertible evidence of Trump’s guilt.
You mean, like Comey did of Hillary’s guilt?
The author is projecting so hard that he should have ‘JVC’ tatooed to his forehead.
They really really hate the fact that they lost monopoly control of the narrative starting with Fox News and exploding with the intertubes. They were free to completely ignore stories that didn’t fit the narrative until Fox. I don’t watch or even like Fox but I’m glad they exist. They of course have their own narratives but at least the left no longer has that monopoly.
Alex Pareene may have the most punchable face in North America.
Old man is now threatening to raise your Netflix subscription.
Maybe they can pay out of Obama’s contract.
Does someone who has worked in our government for like 5 decades really not get how our tax system works?
Yes. He’s also looking at Form 10-K which is booking an estimate of income taxes for financial statement purposes before even filing a tax return, both current and deferred. There are a lot of moving pieces in that number which renders it meaningless to the average rube who just wants to know what their actual corporate tax liability was for last year. You are only going to find that on the actual tax return, which only a few people have actually seen.
Your $8.99 Netflix subscription is more than the company paid in federal income taxes last year (nothing).
Good. I hope we can make this universal going forward.
Netflix is a basic human right.
I do not want it.
FWIW: major outages as we write
company paid in federal income taxes last year (nothing).
The best argument for making the Tax code way simpler is so that Douchebags like Warren and Sanders won’t be able to say things like this that are only narrowly and trivially true. Netflix Owners certainly paid taxes. I want to see the numbers but my guess is that he’s upset that the company didn’t have to have the money double taxed because they took in enough losses to offset what they made.
Which means bernie wants you to pay taxes on money you didn’t make.
What happened is the U.S. gives a tax credit for international taxes the company already paid.
I just Googled it.
They paid over 100 million in taxes, really.
Corporations aren’t people, after all, so why should they be taxed?
Corporations really shouldn’t be taxed at all, for the simple facts that having a corporate tax breeds favoritism and that having a corporate tax is yet another way to hide the real tax bill from the people (who pay the corporate tax through their purchases, even though they don’t see it).
Welp, the Ruger Single Six just got used to put down a sick stray cat. Damn crazy cat lady is willing to feed them, but isn’t willing to put them down when they need to go.
How toxically masculine of you, Scruff. Good on ya.
Thanks. Letting animals suffer because you’re too cowardly to do what’s necessary is a pet peeve of mine.
yep. give mercy to the weak is what should be done.
Now do Feeding The Homeless.
The author of the Swalwell article made a rather odd appeal to authority to claim expertise in identifying farts:
Can any of our (((Glibs))) weigh in on if this is a thing? Or is the author just…eccentric?
I don’t know why he just wouldn’t take credit for it. One of the best things he’s ever produced.
My (((5-year-old son)))
is obsessedhas recently discovered the hilarity of breaking wind. He will run up to us, aim his tuchus, and let one rip. Then he runs away giggling “I farted you!“A future Glib!
It’s never not funny. At 5, 55 or105. Farts are always funny.
Proof.
If farting was funny I’d have my own reality show. I eat a lot of fresh stuff and make a lotta noise. I’ve given up trying to be discreet and most folks just ignore me and walk away.
Walk, run, whatever.
crawling, gasping for breath, whatever.
Yeah, at 105, you are more likely to shart than fart, sooooo…
super funny cause someone else is going to have to clean it up.
Touche!
That seems like more of a 5-y.o. boy thing than a (((father))) thing, though. Unless you are implying that he learned it from someone…
Get him a full-size reproduction of He-gassen for his birthday. He’ll be the most cultured kid in his school.
You haven’t ever heard about the (((gas chambers)))?
Really? (((they))) never shut the fuck up about them.
Thanks, PJ, now I have to do penance for laughing at a Holocaust joke.
A Romanian-born professor who fled communism in his homeland said he recently abandoned his tenured post at Columbia University because various incidents convinced him the prestigious school is “on its way toward full-blown communism.”
Andrei Serban, an award-winning film director with an extensive list of credits on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), complained about the growing pressure to conform to social-justice ideals he experienced in the theater department of the Ivy League school, in an interview that aired Oct. 26 on Romania’s TVR1.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/professor-resigns-over-columbia-universitys-trend-to-communism_3143715.html
What’s up with East Coasters pronouncing “epoch” as “epic?”
You should know there are about a dozen or more “east coast” accents. You’ll have to be more specific.
Meh, distinguishing between tribes of prog is wasted effort.
No idea. I’ve never heard it pronounced that way.
Fascinating. My Jersey Girl former roommate and Long Island native friend both claimed they’d never heard the “ee-pock” pronunciation until they came to TX.
Joisey and Lawn Guy Land are not representative samples of the east coast vernacular.
Yeah, but they are near Rhy’s neck o’ the woods.
To me, epic is eh-pick, epoch is eh-pock
Trying to remember, but I don’t recall hearing ee-pock. More eh-puck (slightly different than eh-pick). One of those regional things, I guess, like gree-see and gree-zee.
Grease rhymes with crease but not ease.
To be fair, I doubt I’ve heard anyone in my vicinity say it in decades.
How would he know? He’s never experienced real communism.
Sue everybody! I mean, did this lady think he was under an obligation to just parrot her words?
I’m conflicted on this story. On one hand, the suit is a bit much, on the other, the priest sounds like he was insensitive, on the other other, being consistent with church teachings as well as discouraging suicide are important for a priest, on the other other other, this was probably not the time and place.
Priest was wrong. Should have used it as a sermon topic on Sunday.
Lawsuit is wrong. Mom is feeling massive guilt and wants to focus the blame outward.
Shitty all the way around.
On the side in the Chron article about the debate: A story about TX. Anyway Mr Traces of Texas is my son. If you want to see what a senior Fourscore looked like 25 years ago.
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Traces-of-Texas-a-historical-database-14849665.php
Super cool Fourscore! You are still my favorite from your clan (at least until Mr Traces of Texas invites me to a big Honey Harvest party)
Wow. What a cool site!
Your kid is a helluva photographer, too!
I love this.
That’s my favorite picture of him. Looks like something from a movie set. Now if he’d only learn to ride a horse
his is an interesting little nugget which I expect to see widely distributed:
The right has hacked the cognitive biases of voters and reporters
They are working with a few key tools and advantages. The first is a strong tendency, especially among low-information, relatively disengaged voters (and political reporters), to view consensus as a signal of legitimacy. It’s an easy and appealing heuristic: If something is a good idea, it would have at least a few people from both sides supporting it. That’s why “bipartisan” has been such a magic word in US politics this century, even as the reality of bipartisanship has faded.
“Low information, disengaged voters” are traitors to the nation. How dare they ignore The Most Important Issues of Our Time and focus on their own puny insignificant lives? It is a crime and a tragedy that so many people decline to participate in the vast cripple-vs-retard melee which is modern American political discourse. The idea that some random self-obsessed upstart like Trump can wind up in the White House (by beating a carefully groomed and selected self-obsessed servant of the public weal) is too horrible to tolerate. And that can only happen if The People stand by and allow it. Get out there and tweet your outrage, America.
Forget Trump, he’s saying only stupid people want consensus in government. That’s… a very odd take.
“Area of the circle” becomes most searched phrase on Google Romania after presidential “debate”
https://www.romania-insider.com/area-circle-dancila
It’s important to elect politicians who know how to square circles.
“elect politicians who know how to square circles”
…and circle squares, in flyover country, for an Electoral victory..
You are square.
I haz sad, my geometry joke failed
Holy sheeeeit! It’s the mornin lynx! And I’m here!
The infrared Swalwell is my favorite.
Mornin’ KK, what brings you around so early?
Light workload this morning
That is precisely the kind of machine the US conservative movement has built: one designed to produce confusion and fear. Trump is its natural leader, the first Republican president to reflect the party’s contemporary core and character, and his impeachment is its ultimate test.
Meanwhile, Democrats are attempting to do something that arguably nothing since the 9/11 attacks has done: unite Americans in a clear understanding of a threat and a clear will to action, in a way that reaches across conventional partisan lines, at least to some extent.
On their side, they have the products of America’s tattered remaining institutional processes and norms: clear evidence, painstakingly laid out in a Constitutionally prescribed process, communicated through mainstream news outlets. The facts are clearer than ever, but those institutions are weaker and social trust, which the right has been concertedly attacking for decades, is at a low ebb.
What a drama queen. Get a grip on yourself.
It’s how they stir up outrage.
That is precisely the kind of machine the US conservative movement has built: one designed to produce confusion and fear.
Makes sense. When people say there are Nazis and White Supremacists running the White House, it clearly isn’t an attempt to get me to have a viceral reaction of hate and fear.
I’ve read (or skimmed) many a thinkpiece that makes a solid argument in the middle before completely undermining the entire point in some self-serving conclusion. As though people they like were cut from finer cloth than the rest of mankind, and by virtue of having shared cultural background, they’re immune from the “cognitive bias” and other foibles of human existence.
This is a familiar playbook. Those institutions would be pure as the driven snow if not for a nefarious disinformation campaign. It’s the lament of the skinsuiters; they gutted that institution and now demand respect, how dare you pay attention and decide it’s not worth the respect anymore!
Democrats are attempting to do something that arguably nothing since the 9/11 attacks has done: unite Americans in a clear understanding of a threat and a clear will to action
Ummmmmmm…….
Hasn’t just about everyone agreed that the things we did while we were panicked and united right after 9/11 were pretty bad? Iraq invasion, TSA, Afghanistan occupation?
Seems to me like when we unite and put our minds to something we can fuck things up real good. Maybe it would be better if we just go down in the basement and putter around with trivial things.
It reminds me of WW2 nostalgia. We were all “united”, the government ran all industry, and everybody paid 99% taxes! It was a socialist utopia that was in no way completely unsustainable beyond the war effort.
Taxes didn’t matter ’cause there was nothing left to buy anyway, circa ’41-45
Hasn’t just about everyone agreed
some of us were screaming our heads off at the time
That was playing within the rules. It expanded the bureaucracy, it reduced the little people’s rights, it created new perpetual union jobs, it added to the entitlement roster, and it made everybody bow at the altar of government.
designed to produce confusion and fear
totally fair, but plenty of that on both sides: garbage and identity politics all the way around
communicated through mainstream news outlets
This is what it’s about. They are upset that people have caught on that there is nothing special about news corporations. They are trying to use the “Institution” as a proxy for legitimacy.
They fundamentally do not understand freedom of the press. Despite being “Internet savvy” they actually hate the distributed nature of it. They think they are “the press” and everybody else, including elected officials, must accept what they say as truth. This is pretty close to an inversion of the meaning and purpose of that right, save for outright state control of information. How did they get ennobled with this wisdom and power? Nobody is really sure, to be honest, but apparently it involves the arcane divination processes known only to select schools of journalism.
Meanwhile, Democrats are attempting to do something that arguably nothing since the 9/11 attacks has done: unite Americans in a clear understanding of a threat and a clear will to action, in a way that reaches across conventional partisan lines, at least to some extent.
Haaaaaaahahahahahhahahahahahahahahaahaha
*gasps for air*
Aaaaaaahahhaahahahahahahahahahaha
Nothing says “unite Americans” like overturning an election and disenfranchising half the country.
Or promising to deny people their Constitutionally protected rights, or pitting one class of people against another, or painting dissenters as subhuman. They are truly committed to unity, except for all their actions.
Unity is everyone else agreeing with them. The people are always failing to live up to their leaders’ expectations. We must redouble our efforts to deliver them the unity they want.
clear understanding of a threat
There is a huge threat, but not how you mean.
Ukraine scandal timeline – pretty no nonsense and informative.
Don’t you people know a joke when you hear one?
A suburban Chicago 14-year-old faces hate crime and other charges for allegedly posting on Craigslist a picture of an African American classmate with the caption, “Slave for sale.”
Prosecutors allege the white Naperville Central High School freshman also included “an offensive racial slur” in the ad that they called “beyond disturbing.” The teen’s defense attorney counters the students were friends and school authorities are handling the matter with an apology and suspension.
Authorities didn’t disclose the teen’s name because he’s a juvenile.
Maybe Syracuse will offer him a scholarship.
Remember when “hate crimes” weren’t primary offenses?
wE hAvE fReE sPeEcH
None dare call this blasphemy. They’ll just treat it as such
I give it 5 years, tops, before blasphemy against select religions is also illegal. “Islamophobia” already skirts that line but doesn’t quite cross it (yet).
That will only happen because the same people who denounced and publicized those Urbana, IL cops for threatening to arrest a guy for burning an American flag on video have shrugged every time someone has been charged with a hate crime for burning the Pride flag or using racial slurs online or somewhere else.
That’s the new “woke clause” to fReE sPeEcH
The National NPR ran a story about all the racisiming at Syracuse, including the screed being sent by airdrop.
Then the local NPR ran a story saying that nobody had been ale to contact anyone who had actually received said screed and it was most likely a hoax.
“Hate crime”….well, what was the crime?
Hating.
Duh.
What was the crime?
after saying that answering committee questions is more important to her than making an opening statement, Fiona Hill immediately reviews her grandfather’s WW1 resume’
I have no idea what that has to do with anything whatsoever
Save the children
A woman in Utah is facing criminal charges that could force her to register as a sex offender after allegedly being seen topless by her stepchildren inside her own home.
Tilli Buchanan, 28, was working with her husband in their garage in late 2017 or early 2018 when they both removed their shirts to prevent dust from getting on them, The Associated Press reported.
The children, ages 9 and 13, saw the couple both topless — and when their birth mother later heard about the incident, she mentioned it to child welfare officials because she was “alarmed,” the report said.
The stepmother was charged in February with three counts of misdemeanor lewdness involving a child. The husband faces no charges.
———
After a court hearing in Salt Lake City, Buchanan spoke out against what she views as a double standard regarding topless men and women.
“It was in the privacy of my own home. My husband was right next to me in the same exact manner that I was, and he’s not being prosecuted,” she said.
But prosecutors in West Valley City argued Buchanan was “under the influence of alcohol” when she removed her shirt and made a comment that she would put it back on only if her husband exposed himself, the Tribune reported.
She should just tell the court she was identifying as male at the time. And she should also go slash the “birth mother’s” tires.
Awaiting explanation of why its perfectly OK for a birth mother to be topless in her own home, but not a stepmother.
This is easy. Mom is a bitter, nasty shrew. Stepmom is hot.
Not that one
I was thinking more, what’s the legal distinction, and how is it that this doesn’t criminalize just about every mother in the state.
This sounds like porn hub gone too far with the story line.
I’m guessing this won’t be the last story we read about her.
Man this is so utterly stupid. I can’t even count how many times I saw my dad sitting around in his briefs when I was a kid and I imagine that was more crippling to my psyche then the possibility of seeing my step mother topless.
That the judge didn’t dismiss the case with prejudice at the first appearance and didn’t reprimand the police, child “welfare”, and the prosecutors for wasting his time is the real shame here.
From that illinois kid thing:
Prosecutors allege the white Naperville Central High School freshman also included “an offensive racial slur” in the ad that they called “beyond disturbing.”
Hung like a prize bull?
“Sue everybody! I mean, did this lady think he was under an obligation to just parrot her words?”
Did…did….she want him to *praise* suicide?
Yeah, methinks the grieving family didn’t spend much time at church. Although the diocese has publicly said this was handled poorly, the priest was not out of line with the church’s teachings. And Catholic funerals are, generally, not like the ones you see on TV. The family and friends get to read the liturgy, if they want, but otherwise it is still mass.
That having been said, it seems like the priest didn’t do much besides be a dick about it.
I think it was this hymn that did it.
Not too long ago they would not afford you a Catholic funeral if you committed suicide. Some dioceses still won’t.
But, more importantly, I imagine that the parents aren’t too jazzed about their kid committing suicide, so why would denouncing suicide be seen as bad?
I imagine that the parents aren’t too jazzed about their kid committing suicide, so why would denouncing suicide be seen as bad?
1. Feels. The kid was in pain, suicide is a terrible thing, he must have had reasons to do it. You’re not respecting those reasons.
2. Grief. Instead of pushing people to overcome it, you’re supposed to allow them to wallow in it. Confronting reality is right out.
3. Tact. If you believe the deceased is damned for all eternity, maybe don’t hold a funeral for him in your church.
“3. Tact. If you believe the deceased is damned for all eternity, maybe don’t hold a funeral for him in your church.”
Agreed.
At the same time, people have so secularized their own supposed faith that they believe a funeral should be a kind of celebration of a person’s life rather than a solemn religious event to command a person’s spirit to the afterlife.
If you want a memorial service then hold a memorial service. If you want a funeral then prepare for a funeral.
Not too long ago they would not afford you a Catholic funeral if you committed suicide.
Or gotten a divorce without an annulment.
They always held funerals for people who were divorced without an annulment. Even if you are divorced and remarried without an annulment they never prevented those people from receiving a Catholic funeral, as far as I know. If you are divorced and not remarried then there are no consequences, even without an annulment. The issue for people who have secularized their faith is that if you are divorced and are remarried and have not received an annulment you are suppose to forgo communion (because you are in sin) and the Church will not officiate your remarriage. But, I don’t think there were ever consequences for people in said situation to receive a Catholic burial, but I may be wrong.
After I divorced my wife, she got a church annulment, I had to sign off on it, which I happily did since I felt it freed me from any future encumbrances. (I had full custody)
WTH is up with that? With 2 kids? Now the kids became the b word?
Hell, I’m surprised the Catholic Church will even hold a funeral mass for a suicide. Can a suicide be buried in hallowed (Catholic) ground?
I don’t know the particulars, but I imagine that it’s up to the diocese in which the burial grounds are located.
Like not eating meat on Fridays. Technically, that is still the rule throughout the year, but after Vatican II each bishop gets to decide whether or not to require that in his diocese or to simply ask that parishioners perform some other penance on Fridays if they are going to eat meat. It’s a nice way of saying “do whatever your conscience commands you to do”, otherwise known as “the Jesuit cop-out”.
Something something kiddie diddlers
I think Pope John Paul II changed that.
There is no canonical law preventing it, though an individual diocese may deny the funeral mass and burial of anyone they feel may cause scandal for the church.
I saw some new videos talking about the National Popular Vote Compact. The more and more i’ve thought about it, the more i see better arguments against it. Mind you IANAL and i’m definitely not as dumb as a Judge. But in the US we don’t have any “National Elections”. Each election is by State. So having a state cast it’s vote based off of what voters in another state voted seems to violate the “One Man-One Vote” principle that the SCOTUS enforced when it said states could not apportion their senate houses by county. States can aportion electors however they want, within the parameters that it seems that it needs to be democratic. I don’t see how it could be democratic to say “Fuck you” to the people who voted in your state because you don’t even need to count their votes to know how to cast the States votes…
I think the strongest arguments I’ve seen against it are that:
1. States are forbidden from entering into “compacts” with one another without Congressional approval by Article I, Section 10
2. The minimum number of states necessary to enact it is 11, and as it stands now, it’s would come into force after adoption in less than 25 states.
2a. It takes ratification in 38 states to pass a Constitutional amendment. This is well below that threshold but is, in terms of effect, on par with an amendment. The counterpoint is that the state legislatures have pretty broad authority to choose their electors.
2b. If enacted, it automatically disenfranchises the remaining states. Their electoral votes are now irrelevant (barring faithless electors). They can choose to adopt the compact, but it is a purely symbolic gesture at that point (like states over the 38 minimum ratifying an amendment). The counterpoint is that their citizens’ votes still count, just not their electors.
Ordinarly, I would say these hurdles would have to be overcome, but the courts are just writing the law on a whim now so who knows.
There are logistical concerns as well. While each state currently is given some leeway in how it holds elections under the current system, with the notion that the discrepancies aren’t too severe and get abstracted away with the electoral college, with an NPV compact the states have a much stronger interest in policing each other. Could be good, probably won’t be.
“I don’t see how it could be democratic to say “Fuck you” to the people who voted in your state because you don’t even need to count their votes to know how to cast the States votes…”
Because none of this has to do with democracy. That has been obvious since 2016 across the West.
This
Someone in Colorado should introduce a bill that cuts all funding to election related activities, outlaws absentee voting, etc for presidential elections because their vote won’t matter. Watch heads explode.
Well this almost never happens.
As I predicted, my parking spot was taken the moment I left the lot. But when I got back, I found a new spot closer to the building than the one I’d lost.
Yay?
Play the lotto
What’s for lunch?
Dibella’s. Corned Beef on everything.
“Your parking spot”? Is it assigned to you? Or a public parking spot that you lost when you left and returned to find another closer to your entry door?
I park far away in a public lot. My trucks are old and worn but I still don’t want them scratched unnecessarily. In addition I can use the exercise.
“Mine” in that I was occupying it. No one here is special enough to have a designated spot. Else I’d be upset if someone stole it.
Speaking of vapid , dishonest arguments
Though they prefer not to say it outright, what moderate politicians like Klobuchar and Buttigieg actually oppose is making college free for the upper middle class. Buttigieg’s plan, for instance, would eliminate college tuition for those earning less than $100,000. It would provide “substantial tuition subsidies” to those making less than $150,000. Then it cuts off.
There is, of course, a perfectly logical rationale to this sort of means testing. If you really believe you’re working with limited financial resources, then it makes sense to target help to those need it most, and families in the top economic quintile probably need less help than others. But claiming that you’re simply against giving away money to “rich kids” is a dishonest way of getting around the actual philosophical debate here, which is about whether we’re better off with a slightly smaller federal government and slightly lower taxes, or if we should pay slightly higher taxes so that the government can offer simple, universal programs that everybody benefits from. In other words, should we stick with the penny-pinching paradigm the government operates in now, or move in the direction of social democracy?
Yeah, that’s what it’s all about. It’s so simple, really. Do we want a better, fairer world, or don’t we?
We’ll work out the details later. Trust us.
Say what now?
UCS has a point. The incentives are really fucked up. At a high level, the government spends like a drunken sailor with a limitless charge card in a bottomless market. At the individual bureaucrat level, people get awarded for reducing line items. At no point does anybody ask whether that line item should be reduced, whether it just means the money ends up spent somewhere else since it’s fungible and already been budgeted, or whether the end result is actually a holistic reduction in costs. You’re still getting patted on the back for saving the government money.
(also, the fedgov at least does not practice GAAP, they have their own accounting system that makes Enron look like a model of honesty and transparency)
an upper level bureaucrat’s BIL consulting firm.
Our current government is pinching pennies? What? When did this start?
Always.
The government operates under a “Penny-wise, Pound foolish” spending model. They’ll piss away millions on known failures, but refuse to perform basic maintenance with a known RoI.
It’s just so weird that every “social democracy” on the planet has drastically higher taxes, not slightly higher ones. But I’m sure the hypercompetents in our civil service, who can’t even avoid smirking when called out on their lies in public, will pull off the superhuman feat of doing it on the cheap.
the penny-pinching paradigm the government operates in now,
That would be the paradigm where it has increased spending since the previous administration?
Alternate. Realities.
Notwithstanding the pennywise half of the above, the most I can suss out is that they think anything less than their dream spending levels is austerity. The idea that we’re already spending at or near the limit of our means and that we’re constantly increasing spending to stay near that limit is unfathomable. People like to say Greece was put on a severe austerity program, but that’s because they’re arbitrarily ignoring the years before 2008. Greece’s spending is just now getting back to its spending levels before the unsustainable spree of 2008-2016.
Still waiting for a federal government small enough to fit into Grover Norquist’s bathtub.
I’ll settle for Taft’s bathtub. It might be a more attainable goal.
And long as I dont have to get on the raft.
I’m still waiting for it to circle the drain.
Question for shooters:
I wear contacts and use reading glasses.
I am approximately an Evan and a half old, and my eyesight is getting worse.
Are there good shooting glasses with readers built in or should I just keep ignoring the fact that the front sight is getting more bkurry?
I’ve given up on being able to use iron sights effectively. I look for optics that work with my eyes.
Love me some red dot sights. Its easy to get the trick of using them with both eyes open (assuming no or fairly minimal magnification) and seeing the sight gizmo disappear and the red dot floating in space where the bullet will hit. Its awesome.
I’ve been meaning to get one of the small ones for the .45 bedside gun. I’m sure you could use them with a carry gun, but it might get more awkward than you want to put up with.
Trijicon, so crazy expensive. But there are a number of similar that are (much) more affordable. I think I might like a bigger dot on a handgun sight anyway.
Holosun is good
I was about your age when I started wearing glasses. All was well for a couple years, with bifocals. Then realized I was having trouble between 18 inches and 6 feet, couldn’t see the speedometer, etc. Went to trifocals and all was well for 30 years. Now the distance (the top part) is beginning to be a problem. Hoping the next glasses will compensate for that but they keep getting thicker and thicker. I use a scope and that satisfies all the requirements. I can’t use open sights at all anymore.
Get prescription safety glasses. Most optical shops can fill them from either Honeywell or what used to be 3M/AO Safety. Not much more than regular prescription glasses.
I have some from Smiths Optical. Kind of pricey, but well worth it if you are going to use them.
I have heard that such things exist. Some of the IDPA guys have htem.
Colluding to thwart democracy
President Donald Trump hosted a previously undisclosed dinner with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook board member Peter Thiel at the White House in October, the company told NBC News on Wednesday.
The meeting took place during Zuckerberg’s most recent visit to Washington, where he testified before Congress about Facebook’s new cryptocurrency Libra. Zuckerberg also gave a speech at Georgetown University the week before, detailing his company’s commitment to free speech, and its resistance to calls for the company to crack down on misinformation in political advertisements.
“As is normal for a CEO of a major U.S. company, Mark accepted an invitation to have dinner with the President and First Lady at the White House,” a Facebook spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
A source familiar with the dinner told NBC News that Thiel was also present. It is unclear why the meeting was not made public or what Trump, Zuckerberg and Thiel discussed.
OMG they’re gonna turn America into a fascist dictatorship, via social media mind control. What other explanation could there be?
Cue Facebook employee riot…
How many meetings did Obama have with execs in the White House
Jeffery Imelt was in there for weeks. Have you looked at the price of water heaters and refrigerators lately?
Are there good shooting glasses with readers built in or should I just keep ignoring the fact that the front sight is getting more bkurry?
Try a big fiber optic front sight.
Or red dot
I put a red dot on my bullseye pistol three weeks ago. My slow fire targets have gotten much better but my timed and rapid fire targets have not.
Can you do the both eyes open thing?
Yep. I always could without glasses, but with glasses on (necessary at that range) I’d have to close one eye with open sights.
I meant with red dots. Easy with a longarm because your cheek weld gets you lined up. Haven’t tried it with a handgun mounted red dot. Because I don’t have one. Yet.
Yes, with a red dot and glasses, I can keep both eyes open.
Quasi-related:
When I was out last weekend, my safety glasses were fogging up asymmetrically, causing my brain to prioritize my non-dominant eye. It was like I had somehow put the gun on the wrong shoulder. Closing the non-dominant resolved the problem (but still shot like crap because of glare and fogging).
*yawn*
*stretch*
Mornin’, Glibbies. No idea what’s on my plate today except rescuing items from the rift-store pile before I regret giving them away.
No backsliding!
Lemme tell you—my problem is giving away or selling items I should not have just to have cleared-out shelves. I love empty shelves and cabinets. It’s so minimalist, such a testament to my ability to un-tolerate superfluousness. I am about as opposite a hoarder as you can get.
*glances at the almost full 2Tb hard drive*
Hey! I do data cleanups periodically.
… I also do regular backups. Yeah, that’s it. I’m not actually using most of the 4Tb for ‘new’ data… or the 8Tb on that ther drive… or the 3Tb there…
I need a new NAS.
I have a home cloud, too (WD MyCloud). Important stuff (music, ebooks) go on it too, and also so the tax deductions can access music I’ve bought/ripped. I should probably put the reat of my stuff on it.
The “deck” (as I call the 2Tb external hard drive because it’s about the size of a deck of cards) takes my regular backup.
I also have Carbonite. I got a good deal of $129 for 3 years.
Also, I regularly cull duplicate files on the same drive and I use SyncToy as my backup utility.
I don’t use so many fancy third party tools.
I got a ton of ’em. They each do one thing and I like the way they do them. I’ve ported half of them from Win 3.x (liiiiiike … my green rivets desktop).
The green rivets?
That one hurt my eyes.
To me, it’s clean and simple but not bland, doesn’t mess with my icons (which are few), and has a nostalgia factor.
I have so many windows open that I don’t see the desktop most of the time – so I set it to black.
At work, I get surprised when I see that I actually have something set as a desktop picture.
so I set it to black
So UnCiv.
“I love empty shelves and cabinets.”
Mrs. pistoffnick loves an empty freezer.
It drives me nuts. I grew up poor. I was hungry most of my growing years. A freezer with ample amount of stuff in it is like a security blanket to me.
Yeah, food is different. Upon your saying that, I realize I like empty shelves because it’s more places I can store food.
I had bought some expensive fabric and hardware for a project and I just tossed it because I thought, “If I haven’t done this by now … ” But it was expensive, I still like it, I still want to do the project, so I need to go rescue it from the thrift-store bag.
I’m pretty comfortable now that saying there is a Deep State trying to pull off a slow-motion coup against Trump is not a conspiracy theory. On account of the Deep Staters bragging about it in exactly those terms.
Drive time radio was telling me this morning about the impeachment hearings, and how aghast folks at the State Department were that the approach to Ukraine had changed. It’s as if the president sets foreign policy or something.
Thiel, one of seven Facebook board members, is one of the few outspoken conservative figures in Silicon Valley. A major donor to Trump’s campaign, Thiel is also the chairman of Palantir, a private data technology company that has become one of the largest recipients of government defense contracts with the United States government since Trump took office.
Thiel famously bankrolled an invasion of privacy lawsuit that effectively bankrupted the gossip website Gawker. Zuckerberg’s speech at Georgetown, which he delivered on the same trip in which he met with Trump, was titled “Standing for Voice and Free Expression.”
“Hey, Rocky. Watch me pull a rabbit outta muh hat.”
Yes, because that Gawker suit was totally about free speech, and The People’s Right to Know.
The government operates under a “Penny-wise, Pound foolish” spending model. They’ll piss away millions on known failures, but refuse to perform basic maintenance with a known RoI.
Which reminds me of Parkinson, and the parable of the bicycle shed
I park far away in a public lot. My trucks are old and worn but I still don’t want them scratched unnecessarily. In addition I can use the exercise.
#METOO
I feel like it also takes less time. Just swing into all the open space in the back of the lot and walk past everyone who is circling around trying to find a closer spot.
“This is getting interesting. That’s what usually happens when people are facing jail time.”
Look at them Fritos on the end of them fingers!
Saying that Ukraine was opposed to Trump’s presidency and actively worked to help the Clinton campaign is a conspiracy theory.
https://www.ft.com/content/c98078d0-6ae7-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f
“Ukraine’s leaders campaign against ‘pro-Putin’ Trump”
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446
“Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire”
It must have been the Russians who planted these stories. Politico and the Financial Times are complicit.
Didn’t we literally just send them Javelin missiles and other shit?
I had bought some expensive fabric and hardware for a project and I just tossed it because I thought, “If I haven’t done this by now … ” But it was expensive, I still like it, I still want to do the project, so I need to go rescue it from the thrift-store bag.
Maybe, when you are freed from slavery to the money pit, your motivation to make nice things will be refreshed.
That was what I thought, also.
Finish your project, it feels good…
How are you this a.m., Yusef?
Cold but good so far, hopefully the rain is moving on,