Paraskevidekatriaphobia Morning Links

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Fear not on this Friday the 13th, my dear Glibs. Nothing but comfort and peace will you find here in the Morning Links.

I like to live my life with a cheerful attitude. An attitude of gratitude, if you will. I thought I’d give you a day-in-the-life glimpse into my lovely, idyllic world.

I commence my day by letting my beautiful dog outside to gambol with the baby bunnies and those new cute black-and-white kitties that have recently moved in.

Next, I make myself a cup of Fair Trade, organic, non-GMO coffee (with a splash of organic, non-GMO, unsweetened, unflavored almond milk and a dash of stevia), and sit down on the back porch to breathe in beauty and contemplate how wondrous is nature.

When my soul is refreshed, I come back into the kitchen and have a big glass of cool, delicious water, free from nasty chemicals.

Then I pull aside the drapes, throw open the bay window, and settle in at my beautiful handmade, free form, antique, mesquite table from Mexico, and open my browser to get down to work on a new website design for a group of women who are even more of just everything I’ve ever wanted in my clients. Along the way, I may even do some troubleshooting for some random humans who ask me for “computer help.”

Don’t you wish your life were as simple and beautiful as mine? But, it’s not. Try to enjoy your day anyway.

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On this day in history

1866: Construction begins on Fort Phil Kearny. This fortification was meant to protect travelers along the Bozeman Trail (Hi, Montana Glibs!). But, ultimately, the Indians had the last laugh when they burned the fort to the ground in 1868.

Speaking of native peoples, Sloopy is hard at work on his latest auction: collectible arrowheads. Check out the cool items on offer and bid if you are into these sorts of artifacts, no matter how unwoke it may be to collect them.

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On this day in history

1930: Of interest to some Glibs, although I confess I do not know why, on July 13, 1930, France defeats Mexico 4-1 and the United States defeats Belgium 3-0 in the first-ever World Cup football matches, played simultaneously in host city Montevideo, Uruguay. The World Cup has since become the world’s most watched sporting event.

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Celebrating birthdays

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Week From Hell Breakfast Coffee Hot White Russian

2 1/2 cups coffee
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup Kahlúa
1/4 cup vodka
whipped heavy cream for garnish if desired

In a saucepan stir together the coffee, the 1/2 cup cream, the Kahlúa, and the vodka and heat the mixture over moderate heat until it is hot, but not boiling. Divide the mixture among heated mugs and garnish each drink with some of the whipped cream.

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On this day in history

1985: Live Aid opened at Wembley Stadium in London, the event that would eventually garner Bob Geldof a British knighthood, as well as bring us the term “extreme poverty” from the UN.

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Oh, yes. And, music.

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Comments

778 responses to “Paraskevidekatriaphobia Morning Links”

  1. PieInTheSKy

    They thought a squirrel was eating their tomatoes. But it was the mailman – could be a good porn plot

    1. PieInTheSKy

      Also

      Next, I make myself a cup of Fair Trade, organic, non-GMO coffee

      Is not available in my region

    2. The squirrel was eating the mailman?

      1. Pope Jimbo

        Ahem, if the squirrel was eating them, it was a mailwoman</em.

        Now if the squirrel had been acting normally and nibbling nuts, then mailman would have been correct.

        *tomato raids on my garden are the signal for me that my own personal squirrel season has started for the year. This is normally a few weeks before The Man says it is OK, but I figure that they started it.

        1. Pope Jimbo

          uffda. I have to work on a stupid UI component today. Not closing an em tag is not a good way to start the day.

    3. Hyperion

      Some hot cayenne pepper spray on said tomatoes might be a good cure

      1. But Enough About Me

        The spousal unit buys cayenne powder in bulk 1kg bags from the local Superstore (dirt cheap!) and spreads it around the garden — apparently the squirrels don’t like it. The bonus is that the bees do like it! Little buggers seem to go mad for the stuff.

        1. Hyperion

          I was thinking as a mailman deterrent.

        2. Bees?

          Hmm… Cayenne Honey.

          1. Hyperion

            Cayenne mead?

          2. Nephilium

            It’s called Capsicumel and it’s classy.

          3. Hyperion

            I’ll be honest, I love spicy food and cayenne pepper sauce is one of my favorites. Last night I made Kung Pao shrimp, but I put cayenne pepper sauce in it. My god, that was good, I think I’ll make more today. But, I don’t want any of that in anything I’m going to drink, unless it’s tomato juice. One brewery here got the brilliant idea to put Old Bay in beer, horrible.

  2. ChipsnSalsa

    to most of those cutsey quotes….

    BARF!!

  3. Brett L

    Oh great, way to raise the bar on us, SP! Are those actual tables in your HTML? Don’t get used to this in the afternoons, Glibs.

    1. ChipsnSalsa

      bullet points will no longer satisfy the Gliberati, we demand extensive formatting.

      1. MikeS

        SP is a trend setter. Get with it Brett!

        1. SP has abilities far above our crude understanding. You are lucky the rest of us can manage a photo or a link…

          1. MikeS

            As long as you keep up with the Alt-Text, I’m happy.

        2. Brett L

          You want me to tie five disparate databases together and share data quickly and effectively between them? No problem. Writing HTML/CSS that looks good? Might as well be magic for the complexity of it.

          1. robc

            THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

          2. trshmnstr

            Thirded

          3. I was about to argue, then I spotted the requirement that it look good.

            I use markup as a blunt instrument.

          4. Pope Jimbo

            C’mon. Writing decent UI stuff with frameworks like Bootstrap or Materials isn’t too hard.

            The painful part of UI programming is getting final sign off from the business side of the company. I’d rather sit on a park bench and paddle my nuts with a wooden spoon than go to a meeting with people who will bitch and moan about colors and pixel by pixel placement of a button.

          5. AlexinCT

            Can you move that box three pixels to the right? No, no.. 5 pixels to the left. Hmm… Maybe change the font to “Ballsackmic Vinagrette”? I hate that tint of fuschia, can we make it even more obnoxious? OK, now go back to what you had originally.

            Some people need to justify the big money they get paid to add no value.

          6. Ballsack mic vinaigrette?

            Enough with the euphemisms!

          7. AlexinCT

            Someone paid attention to detail 🙂

          8. AlexinCT

            Not sure why people have so much trouble with HTML/CSS, unless you are talking about the contortions needed to make stuff compatible with older versions of IE and some other browsers. HTML5 and CSS3 are not that hard to figure out.

          9. It’s not the syntax or the concept, it’s making it pretty that’s hard.

          10. AlexinCT

            Since “pretty” is basically a function of people’s preference’s this is nigh impossible.

          11. Hyperion

            That’s why you use a web designer/graphics artist to do that stuff. I work with one, if it needs to be pretty, he’ll be involved. He mostly just comes up with color schemes, layout, fonts, and any banners, tiles, icons, logos, etc. I still do all the HTML and CSS, but other than looking decent and being functional, I don’t care, if they want pretty, they’re paying for a design guy.

          12. Hyperion

            If by older versions of IE, you mean v6 or before, I’m not doing it. Fuck that shit, people can upgrade their damn browsers. HTML is so simple that a 10 year old could master it in a short amount of time. CSS is a little more difficult to do well.

          13. I don’t mind sites that won’t cater to my decisions, but I do get pissed by sites that snottily go “your browser is outdated, scum”

          14. Hyperion

            I don’t, because updating your browser takes 5 minutes to set to auto update and it’s free.

          15. Not an option – Mozilla decided to change the entire API and break almost every extension I use while driving the developers to just quit in frustration.

          16. And the problem really is the judgementalism in that message. Your site isn’t important enough to dicate my software choices. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work and I move on. If you nag me, I find someone else to do business with.

          17. AlexinCT

            I see your problem… Mozilla.

          18. It’s the worst brower, except all the others, which are even more horrible.

          19. Hyperion

            All I can say is, all of my apps work fine in Firefox, IE, Chrome, Safari, all of them. If they don’t, I fix it. But I’m not old versions of browsers, they’re free to update.

          20. Hyperion

            It’s sort of like saying I want your software to run on DOS 5.0 and if it don’t, I won’t use it. Well, ok then, bye.

          21. Mojeaux

            My day job is formatting fancy-dancy ebooks to do that there wut SP dun.

          22. What sort of fancy books require that level of formatting?

            And what software do you use? (I’m not likely to buy it, since I already got a decent workflow using inDesign to make the eBooks and PoD pdfs.)

          23. Mojeaux

            Nonfiction. I specialize in complex nonfiction InDesign can’t handle. The worst one I ever had had multiple fonts, multiple colors, multiple shaded text boxes, multiple images, and a whole lot of other whacked-out shit.

            I use a text editor and Sigil to make EPUBs. Sigil is open source.

            I also end up “fixing” ebooks publishing folks’ experts can’t make work right.

          24. I’m still trying to figure out what part of that inDesign can’t handle. Though I suppose it could be regarded as clunky (I’ll be the first to admit the interface sucks. I use it because I already paid for it and ironed out the problems).

          25. Mojeaux

            InDesign came really late to the EPUB party, mostly because Adobe hates devoting any resources to ebooks.

            The “export to EPUB” function really screws things up, especially if they want fixed format. None of that will validate.

          26. Oh, that explains it – I don’t work in epub. At all. (I can’t even find software that displays it in a comfortable fashion on my computer. Everything that displays it has some annoying quirk or six that renders it unusable.

            The one that baffles me the most is thus – I have epubs from a particular source that display too small to read. When I try to zoom them, every display software makes the letters bigger – but leaves the spacing the same as when the text was tiny, so the lines overlap and are illegible that way. Why would you have fixed line spacing rather than spacing relative to text size? And should I blame the source of the file rather than the readers for that?

          27. Mojeaux

            If I understand the problem correctly, it’s that the person or software making the epub either specified a line height that won’t change with the size of the font or it’s a bad attempt at fixed layout. They certainly didn’t test it across all readers.

            The trick is to know what to allow to default to the app and what to specify to hew as closely to the print version as possible.

            I tell my client it CAN’T look exactly like the print version because an ebook is essentially a website and must flow. But I will get it as closely as possible. My one perennial frustration is getting image captions that don’t break from the image across pages. I get around it by making the caption part of the test (involves Photoshop).

          28. Mojeaux

            I also do things like reciprocal links (footnotes/endnotes). A lot of the work is just tedious and must be done by hand and most people don’t know that you have to and get stumped by the lack of automation software that’ll do stuff automagically.

          29. Mojeaux

            One hopes if you’re gonna charge for something written by someone else a hundred years ago that you’re charging for quality formatting and editing.

            If you get it from Amazon, what you’re really paying for is not having to side-load your own books, that Amazon sends it to your device automatically.

            Most people who were with ebooks at the start are very savvy about being self-sufficient and getting their ebooks on which devices they want. Those people are relatively few.

            Kindle made the ebook broadly accessible and the value is not having to worry about how to get it on your lovely device. Me? I can’t stand reading books on anything other than my Paperwhite, but I have the luxury of knowing how to get books from other sources onto it.

          30. but I have the luxury of knowing how to get books from other sources onto it.

            I routinely load ebooks from other sources onto my Voyage.

            The hard part is getting the eBooks for Amazon on the darn thing. They don’t want to just give me a file I can push over the USB cable and want to force me to turn on the darn wireless antenna. Last time I did that, it pulled down an update the fucked up the UI.

          31. Mojeaux

            They don’t want to just give me a file I can push over the USB cable and want to force me to turn on the darn wireless antenna.

            Oh, right. I forgot about that.

            I have a 2nd gen keyboard Kindle that is not wifi capable. To get the books I buy from Amazon I am FORCED to download the file to put it on there myself.

            This is invaluable, and I keep it registered as my primary device even though it’s dead because I want to own my books. Whatever I get from Amazon, I crack the DRM and squirrel it away.

          32. jesse.in.mb

            Have you, by any chance, seen the Standard Ebooks project?

          33. Other free ebooks don’t put much effort into professional-quality typography: they use “straight” quotes instead of “curly” quotes, they ignore details like em- and en-dashes, and they look more like early-90’s web pages instead of actual books

            Already a dealbreaker – I prefer the vertical quotes, rather than those obnoxious curled quotes.

          34. Mojeaux

            I have not, thanks. I’ll look into it further, but as for their services, I charge individually for all that. Proofreading is an extra charge even though I don’t charge what professional editors do because people can’t afford it.

            However, their markup is unnecessarily complicated. I do most of the things they do, although I’m stumped on the popup footnotes because as far as I know only one device does it and that’s the Kindle Paperwhite. So I will see how that works and if I can do it.

            I take care with curly quotes, en- and em- dashes, etc. They don’t do embedded fonts (or I missed it), dropcaps, sidebars/pullquotes, or so far as I could tell, textbooks (I do that too). I have a monthly client who puts out medical monographs with pics.

            UCS, I despise the straight quotes because it looks like somebody didn’t give a shit.

          35. UCS, I despise the straight quotes because it looks like somebody didn’t give a shit.

            I don’t get that vibe, because curly quotes look worse.

          36. Mojeaux

            Okay, at my desk now instead of on my iPad.

            It’s not a service. They pretty up Project Gutenberg stuff and give it away. If I were going to do that (some people base their whole businesses on doing it), I’d throw it up on Amazon for 99c a crack–and I’ve thought about it with some of the forgotten little novels of the early 20th Century.

            Oh, another thing I do is extract text from PDFs to then format into an epub. A lot of my clients don’t have an editable source file and that’s all they want. I have an OCR engine that was well worth the (what I thought at the time) arm and leg I paid for it. I clean those up as far as machine errors go, because that’s my responsibility.

          37. jesse.in.mb

            Already a dealbreaker – I prefer the vertical quotes, rather than those obnoxious curled quotes.

            Too much flavor?

            However, their markup is unnecessarily complicated.

            Yeah, I can vaguely read markup and get the gist of what someone is doing in the same way I can vaguely “read” Italian and take a stab at it (I took three years of Spanish, and enough Italian to say please, thank you, and may I have the check). I mostly appreciate that someone’s taking the time run a little QA attention on Project Gutenberg books.

          38. Mojeaux

            I mostly appreciate that someone’s taking the time run a little QA attention on Project Gutenberg books.

            I agree completely. They have good covers, too. I was very impressed.

          39. jesse.in.mb

            A lot of my clients don’t have an editable source file and that’s all they want.

            A different department than mine is working on a project of creating an interactive patient interface with a third party vendor. They are specifically cutting me out of the project because of personality conflicts (I’ve openly said that the project is a fool’s errand), and the person in charge sent off all of our intake documents as scans of PDFs of packets that I either have the original PDF from the source or that I designed the document and have it in multiple editable formats. I saw the email about it while I was helping my boss with something (I was literally the only person not CC’d about it). Such is life.

            If I were going to do that (some people base their whole businesses on doing it), I’d throw it up on Amazon for 99c a crack–and I’ve thought about it with some of the forgotten little novels of the early 20th Century.

            Agreed. A little profit motive is a great incentive for something like that. I’ve purchased up ebooks that were just straight pastes from PG and have been pissed when I realized my folly for not just going to PG for them. One hopes if you’re gonna charge for something written by someone else a hundred years ago that you’re charging for quality formatting and editing. I’m certainly not gonna stop someone from doing it as a labor of love though.

          40. Mojeaux

            Oops. My reply to you is above this one. I put it in the wrong spot.

            Because I am an idiot today FYTW.

          41. Mojeaux

            sent off all of our intake documents as scans of PDFs of packets that I either have the original PDF from the source or that I designed the document and have it in multiple editable formats

            Ugh.

            I never know whether people like that don’t know how to do the job, where their resources could be found (or that there might be some), or if they’re protecting their job security.

          42. I’m reminded of the print-scan-shred workflow that existed until someone in IT found out about it and went “You know, you can directly import that information into the second application…”

          43. jesse.in.mb

            I’m absolutely paying for convenience with Amazon. I just expect something I’m paying for to not be complete garbage, and there have been some things I’ve picked up that have been. I usually check one-star reviews before picking up classic books formatted for kindle to see if anyone rants about the formatting now.

            I used to have a little Calibre server on my home file server to make pulling books onto various devices more convenient but found maintaining was more of a hassle than just dropping the books directly on the devices. I’m usually reading on my work computer (shhhhh) or my Android tablet. Amazon is weird about syncing sideloaded reading onto their web or desktop reader, GP Books is very good about it.

          44. Mojeaux

            I find Calibre clunky and I only use it as a last resort.

            Yes, I agree about just plopping the book into your device.

          45. I never used Calibre as a library. My primary experience with it was trying to find a replacement for the software I’d been using to build .mobi files (the old one required libraries that necessitated pulling out my laptop running vista to build the ToC). It caused so many rage-quits that as recently as Lucid Blue, I was still dragging out the vista machine to build the ebooks. Thankfully I figured out an easier workflow in inDesign before Shadowrealm and the omnibus. (The omnibus would have been a nightmare without it)

          46. Mojeaux

            What were you using to build mobi files? I was using Mobipocket, which runs on my Win7, but I don’t use it. Sigil (my epub editor) has a mobi plugin. I make the epub file, hit the KindleGen button, and voila.

            I use Calibre when I want a quick’n’dirty conversion of mobi to epub for whatever I need it for at that moment.

          47. jesse.in.mb

            Calibre is *very* clunky. I have it on my main computer mostly for cleaning up metadata or renaming garbage filenames using good metadata. Very occasionally I’ll convert filetypes, but I find the results lacking, so as you said, just for quick ‘n dirty uses.

          48. I believe I was using mobipocket, but the .dlls for building the ToC got replaced during one of the W7 patches, and it wouldn’t work anymore for that one function (everything else ran fine) – hence pulling out the unpatched laptop. I can’t not have my table of contents.

          49. Mojeaux

            but the .dlls for building the ToC got replaced during one of the W7 patches

            I have the install file if you want it. I’m not sure it’d fix your problem, but let me know if you want to try.

          50. I have the installer too, but the .dlls in question are actually part of IE, which is why the windows patch was able to unfixably break it.

          51. Besides, the inDesign workflow produces both my .mobi and the .pdf I need for the print on demand copies from a single source without a great deal of fuss. It’s all around easier now that I’ve gotten it working.

            I appreciate the offer anyway.

          52. Mojeaux

            necessitated pulling out my laptop running vista

            I empathize. I have a hand-me-down MacBook I use solely to upload books to Apple’s ebookstore.

      2. Pope Jimbo

        Don’t you mean wizard points?

        /Washington DC hoplophobe

      3. Oh, so that’s what they do with the lead removed from the hollow points.

    2. Pope Jimbo

      I want an old school table! No CSS. All formatting is done with a 1×1 pixel image and column widths!

      /rant about punk kid programmers off

      1. Pat

        MS Frontpage or GTFO.

        1. Pope Jimbo

          Only if you set up the FrontPage extensions to automatically deploy your changes. None of that sissy upgrade – for security reasons – to FTP.

      2. Brett L

        Not sure if I could do better or worse with that. CSS is a strange form of magic, because figuring out which 8 styles are being applied is too much for my tiny logical brain to handle.

  4. something something Treblinka

    1. * not suggesting that SP be sent there, but more of a reminder of how shitty life/people _can_ be. Unlike the “Live, Love, Laugh” simple-minded slogans which make me angry.

  5. PieInTheSKy

    Archaeologists prepare to open huge granite sarcophagus in Egypt

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/12/archaeologists-open-huge-granite-sarcophagus-alexandria-egypt

    Hmmm… sounds risky if you ask me.

    1. Brett L

      You realize we’re about a no confidence vote away from having Boris Johnson, who looks like he might also host a Hair, as the PM of Britain. And you’re worried about The Sleeper. Next thing you know, Hillary will have a Hair. And then shall the living envy the dead.

      1. Drake

        I look forward to the next episode of “The Hair and the Bunt”.

      2. PieInTheSKy

        What happened to Rees-Mogg?

        1. Stinky Wizzleteats

          From what I understand, he’s stated that he doesn’t want it which means he really is just the man for the job.

      3. SugarFree

        Hillary has a Hair. You just can’t normally see it out in public.

        1. Bobarian LMD

          Next thing you know, Hillary will have a Hair

          The Huma-Hat and the Merkin

    2. *roots around for Elder Sign*

      1. jesse.in.mb

        BF was telling me about this story and was all “I mean, I’d be shocked if it WASN’T Nyarlathotep.”

    3. Hyperion

      “Archaeologists prepare to open huge granite sarcophagus in Egypt”

      Yes, very mysterious box. We already know what is in the damn box. It’s a fucking bull, literally, there have already been dozens of these things found and they know what’s in it.

      1. Look, if they can’t gin up public excitement, they can’t leverage it for more grant monies.

        1. Hyperion

          Well, maybe it really is a giant alien this time. I mean I’m not saying it’s and alien… but…

          1. Hyperion

            BUT IT’S ALIEN! ANCIENT ANCESTOR OF STEVE SMITH. PUNY HUMANS NOT KNOW WHEN OPEN… BUT FIND OUT AND BY FIND OUT MEAN…

          2. Hyperion

            SPACE SMITH?

          3. Scruffy Nerfherder

            oh no…..

          4. SugarFree

            WHEN THE STARS ARE RIGHT!

          5. Hyperion

            I think we need SPACE SMITH, SF, what more perfect of an addition to the SMITH family could there be?

          6. Hyperion

            WE WILL RAPE IN THE WOODS, WE WILL RAPE IN THE SEA, WE WILL RAPE IN SPACE…

          7. jesse.in.mb

            WE WILL RAPE IN THE WOODS, WE WILL RAPE IN THE SEA, WE WILL RAPE IN SPACE…

            Maybe Trump is onto something with our need for a Space Force.

          8. Mojeaux

            Ancient astronauts and their theorists make everything better.

      2. Pat

        We already know what is in the damn box.

        Al Capone’s treasure?

          1. MikeS

            That is one of the funniest moments in the history of television.

      3. ChipsnSalsa

        It’s a fucking bull,

        Hawt

  6. MikeS

    The last quote is the best one. I work with a guy who gives a hearty and extremely cheerful “Good Morning!” to me every morning at 6:30-ish. Some (most…ALL) mornings I want to rip his trachea out with my bare hands.

    1. MikeS

      And thanks for for the computer help flow chart. I’m going to email that to my mother.

      1. Nephilium

        I’ve had that as a shirt for a long time, and back in my help desk days had it hanging up in front of my desk for the walk ups (who would never seem to notice that I was on the phone, even as I was holding a handset up to my ear, and talking to someone else).

    2. Semi-Spartan Dad

      Hah, I concur.

      My daughter is the most cheerful, happy, and energetic person I’ve ever met. Still, even this 3-year-old only speaks in whispers for the first half hour or so after waking up each day.

      1. Rufus the Monocled

        My wife. You just described her. She lives her life fulfilled every day.

        It’s very annoying.

        1. Hyperion

          Yeah, I hate it when my wife is all happy happy joy joy and I just want to have everyone.

          1. Hyperion

            hate

          2. Private Chipperbot

            Have still works…

          3. Hyperion

            Only if a woodchipper is involved.

          4. STEVE SMITH HAVE EVERYONE….EVENTUALLY!

        2. ChipsnSalsa

          She lives her life fulfilled every day

          *high fives Rufus*

          1. Hyperion

            I wonder if Rufus ever appeared in an Enzyte commercial?

          2. Private Chipperbot

            He does have matching tubs on a hill.

          3. Rufus the Monocled

            THIS IS THE LAST TIME….Oh….Ohhhhh.

            /high five.

    3. straffinrun

      Hangovers prevent that.

      1. Bobarian LMD

        When Bobarian is hung over, he is at his absolute most cheerful. The inside of my head is hell, so I figure by making the outside of it hell, I can achieve equilibrium and reduce the pressure differential.

        Because science.

    4. So should I abandon the last line on my links every day I do them? It’s usually a variation of “ have a great day, friends”.

      1. Tundra

        Nope. Some of us don’t fear the mornings.

        1. MikeS

          I love mornings. I just hate overly-cheerful people.

      2. Pat

        I always took that more as an ominous command than a cheerful sign off.

      3. MikeS

        No. Because you aren’t standing 12 inches in front of me, with a grin from ear to ear, practically yelling it at me.

    5. I used to be an angry morning person, but now I’m more of a disoriented morning person. It takes at least 30 minutes and two cups of coffee before I shrug off catatonia.

  7. The Aztec temple is dedicated to Tlaloc, an Aztec rain god.

    And, obviously, the God of Earfquakes!

      1. If the Earf is a rockin’ don’t come a knockin’ (on the temple door).

        1. ChipsnSalsa

          I don’t think ZARDOZ would approve.

          1. I’m a little surprised that ZARDOZ hasn’t yet joined STEVE SMITH on Twatter.

  8. straffinrun

    “They can travel through anything and only make their presence felt when they want to,”

    STEVE SMITH is the ghost particle?

    1. STEVE SMITH ALWAYS MAKE SELF FELT.

    2. Count Potato

      “”10 billion neutrinos a second pass through your thumb,” Darren Grant, a neutrino physicist at the University of Alberta, said, but you can’t feel them.

      “Their behavior is very much how people imagine a ghost — it doesn’t leave any trace that it was there,” Grant added.”

      Because science?

    3. whiz

      As an actual neutrino physicist, I get tired of a lot of these descriptions that try to describe neutrinos in “layman’s terms.” In the quest to make it accessible, they often introduce misconceptions.

  9. Which Political Party Is the Most Adulterous? New Study Points to Patterns

    Between the 200,000 leaked Ashley Madison accounts and the 50 million voters registered in the five sample states, Arfer and Jones found 80,000 matches. Using this sample, as well as validated regression models controlling for state, gender, and age, the scientists could deduce that Democrats were the least likely to use the website, while Libertarians were the most likely.

    “Our results are perhaps the strongest evidence yet that people with more sexually conservative values, although they claim to act accordingly, are more sexually deviant in practice than their more sexually liberal peers,” the study says.

    After Libertarians, Republicans are the second most likely registered group to use Ashley Madison. In New York, the disparity between the registered conservative and left-leaning parties is striking. In one validated model that looks at the probability of Ashley Madison usage for a 40-year-old man registered to vote in New York, the likelihood of that man being a Libertarian is every 1 in 98. For a Democrat, it’s 1 in 223.

    Libertarians have more sexually conservative values?

    1. PieInTheSKy

      Some do. And point out very loudly that libertarian does not mean libertine.

    2. Semi-Spartan Dad

      They keep using the phrase validated model as if that conveys the results are beyond approach. This must be the I Fucking Love Science crowd. Other than the FDA requiring your statistical software be validated (only SAS and SPSS), I’ve never read an actual paper using the term validated for standard regression models.

      Garbage in always equals Garbage out, regardless of the model used.

    3. Scruffy Nerfherder

      I think they’re just more hopeful.

      “This one is definitely not a dude posing as a chick. I know it!”

    4. Atanarjuat

      Libertarians are “registered conservatives”, according to Science.

    5. robc

      Wouldn’t the reason for the Ashley Madison numbers being low for Dems is they don’t need to sneak around?

      Although that doesn’t explain the libertarian numbers — I am going with “small sample size”.

    6. Lachowsky

      It’s my understanding that something 90% of the people registered on Ashley Madison were dudes. I doubt you can find a strong correlation between users and actual affairs.

    7. Rufus the Monocled

      I bet you more Democrat politicians languish in prison for sex crimes than Republicans.

      1. Rufus the Monocled

        Wait. It may have been crimes in general.

        I forget where I saw that. It was a few years ago.

        LOOK! /runs away.

    8. Pat

      Between the 200,000 leaked Ashley Madison accounts and the 50 million voters registered in the five sample states, Arfer and Jones found 80,000 matches. Using this sample, as well as validated regression models controlling for state, gender, and age, the scientists could deduce that Democrats were the least likely to use the website, while Libertarians were the most likely.

      Certainly nothing wrong with that methodology.

    9. But Enough About Me

      Nah. It’s just that most liberals have a hard time gettin’ their sexy on. Want a freak in bed? Date a chaste, “conservative,” Catholic girl.

      1. Scruffy Nerfherder

        *raises hand in agreement*

  10. Brett L

    This isn’t real, right? Nobody is smarmy enough to pull this shit in a Senate hearing, right? I’d have had the Sgt at Arms come in and hit him with a truncheon until I got tired of watching the club hit that face.

    1. I think he did get asked if he made that same smirk when he lied to his wife about his affair with Page.

      1. straffinrun

        Gohmert set people’s hair on fire with that one.

        1. AlexinCT

          I was not just disheartened by this whole Kabuki act, but fear for our republic. Basically this douchebag, whom smirked the whole time, was daring these pols to do anything about the fact that the FBI, which had been weaponized by the globalist credentialed elite class running Washington D.C. – like every big three letter agency during the Obama administration – and actually was part of a conspiracy to steal the election for a criminal sycophantic serial lying crazy cankled evil woman, to do anything about it. By some miracle we were spared crooked Hillary’s “Let them eat cake” reign, when these morons that tell us they are the only ones qualified to run the country and the world, showed again how inept and totally stupid they were, when they managed to lose a rigged election.

          Think hard about this: the Obama administration actually did what the left ran Nixon out of office for thinking of doing. Worse yet, once they realized they had lost the election they thought they had rigged, they concocted a bullshit story about collusion to not just undermine the elected president, but to distract the American people from the horrible corruption and totalitarian partisan evil they had been up to and hoped to double down under the Hildebeast.

          Whether you believe there is a higher power looking out for this country or not, we dodged a bullet. The thing that frightens me is how many team blue people seem totally unperturbed about the state of affairs, because it was their team committing the crimes. I now realize that is because they expect that with the help of the dnc operatives with bylines that pretend to be a free and unbiased press, they expect to be able to stop the other side from doing the same to them. At one time I remember someone telling me that the best way to stop team blue or team red from doing stupid things that would grant over the top and dangerous power to unaccountable bureaucrats was to remind them the other side would then also be able to do the same. A play on the whole MAD (mutually assured destruction philosophy).

          But team blue honestly seems to believe they can do this shit and stop the other side from doing the same, meaning they are willing to do anything. they already demand the livelihood of anyone that dares to challenge their orthodoxy be destroyed, and they have used the US government against their enemies, and feel they have gotten away with it scott free. All this will do is encourage them to get even worse. Dark times are a coming…

          1. Hyperion

            He watched for years while Obama appointees flaunted the rule of law and not jackshit happened to any of them. That’s the cause of this, and it’s going to get worse until these people are held accountable.

          2. AlexinCT

            The problem I see is that team red thinks that if they don’t make too many waves, team blue will let them do much of the same too when they are in charge. Nothing could be further from the truth, and team red morons, despite the evidence, keep going along. This shit will get ugly fast.

      2. Brett L

        Niiice. I still would prefer the beating.

        1. Private Chipperbot

          The reply in that twatter feed with his nose growing is priceless.

    2. Drake

      Our federal law enforcement doing everything possible to dissuade us of the outdated concept of equality before the law and trust in institutions.

      1. AlexinCT

        One set of laws for thee plebes, and another one for them elites….

      1. egould310

        Screw Mike Flynn.

        1. Drake

          They did good and hard. Lost his house, his career, his life savings for having the never to work for Trump.

          1. AlexinCT

            And that is the scary thing. The deep state wants to make everyone aware that fucking with them is a a death sentence, even if it is just figuratively. Our credentialed elite have learned that you don’t need to kill the pesky people getting in your way: you just sick the tax-payer funded US justice system on them and destroy them that way. That so many people seem OK with this shit and are not up in arms about it, is frighting.

          2. egould310

            Should have had a lawyer present. You want to splash around in the cesspool, you might get shit in your boots.

          3. Drake

            How can the National Security Adviser have his personal lawyer present every time he talks to the FBI? They ambushed him.

    3. Scruffy Nerfherder

      That’s the smarmy smirk of a guy who thinks he’s untouchable.

      1. Drake

        I’ts a giant “fuck you” to all the little people who have to obey laws.

        1. AlexinCT

          I dreaded how he kept smirking and daring the stupid politicians to do anything to him for actually rigging the Clinton server investigation and his participation in then rigging the election in her favor. This guy deserves a long jail sentence. He is definitely not the only one, but I suspect he will get none, and others like him will just be even more emboldened. This is how freedom dies.

          1. Drake

            It’s also how people get strung up once they believe the system is irreversibly broken.

        2. “Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”

          1. AlexinCT

            One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

            This is where we are heading. with an all intrusive deep state and the ability to collect intrusive information about individuals, it is easy for these people to financially destroy anyone they want to, and then put the cherry on the top by jailing those that really piss them off. You know, “pour encourager les autres”, as Marie Antoinette was known to have said…

          2. Hyperion

            We’re already there. This is why Muleface and his merry band of Hillary donors can prosecute Manafort and the others. It’s not because they did anything wrong, it’s that you can find something illegal that everyone has done, pretty much ever week if not daily. Selective enforcement is 100% intentional. It’s just that it wasn’t used much until Obama came along, but it was all already in place and ready to go.

      2. straffinrun

        If it weren’t for Page, I’d have gone with “unfuckable.”

        1. Hyperion

          Have you seen her? It’s the best she could do, no doubt.

          1. SugarFree

            I can’t find a specific paraphilia for fetishization of gums and Wasserman-Schultz hair.

          2. Hyperion

            You’ll have to contact Imran Awan and Zorkdork or whatever his name is. Only they can know. Or it could be they were
            all involved in a luv orgy with the Wiener and Huma.

      3. Count Potato

        Donny Two-Scoops should have him whacked.

    4. Endless Mike

      At least two women wanted to fuck this guy… THIS is going to really piss off those incels.

      1. invisible finger

        Police groupies.

    5. Rufus the Monocled

      So, so punchable.

  11. PieInTheSKy

    Billionaires don’t create jobs, billionaires control jobs. Everyone wants to work, and have ideas on what should be done. When someone says they “created 100k jobs”, all it means is that they get to decide how and what 100k people do. The jobs weren’t created, they were seized.

    https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/1016857769150853120

    That’s deep man…

    1. Everyone wants to work

      OBJECTION!

      Assumes facts not in evidence, your Honor!

      1. I would prefer a life of luxury and ease, where I could concentrate on hobbies, hiking, and drinking myself slowly into the grave (I’m in no hurry).

      2. PieInTheSKy

        People have ideas man. The billionaires are at fault

      3. Fourscore

        If I wanted to work I wouldn’t have stayed in the Army.

    2. Lachowsky

      Some people will go to great lengths to justify their envy.

      1. AlexinCT

        Collectivism is providing those that are jealous and envious with a veneer of legitimacy to commit their theft, and nothing else.

    3. Scruffy Nerfherder

      I wasn’t sure that guy could go any dumber, but there it is….

    4. MikeS

      Ugh. The comments are a cesspool of communist/socialist/loser talking points

    5. Akira

      It takes a special kind of ignoramus to think that all employees could just produce valuable goods by themselves and keep all the profits if not for those damn employers.

      If the McDonalds corporation disappeared tomorrow, do they think all these burger-flippers would somehow continue producing burgers?

  12. Nephilium

    While it’s a cool 67 right now, it’s supposed to get up to about 90 this afternoon. No hot drinks for me. Thankfully, I’ve got a large supply of beer, wine, and mixers stocked to survive yet another summer day. With the benefit that the company I work for has finally given me remote access, so I don’t have to give up 2 hours of my day driving to and from the office on Fridays. This means work from home Fridays are now a thing, and that 16:30 conference call on Friday afternoons becomes much less obnoxious.

    1. Anyone who sends out a Friday late afternoon meeting invite should be strung up.

      I’m rarely at my desk after 3PM on a Friday – there are drinks to be had and things to do. And I’m not about to put a new piece of code in on Friday afternoon.

      1. Nephilium

        It’s a weekly team meeting. It’s one problem with being in the Eastern time zone, while the company headquarters is in Mountain time, and there’s team members world wide (although the Costa Rica office does sound nice).

        1. Private Chipperbot

          Sounds like my nape of the way. I work remotely and will have an empty house for the day. The wife and kids are heading to Lakeport on Lake Huron to do some rock hunting today.

    2. MikeS

      the company I work for has finally given me remote access, so I don’t have to give up 2 hours of my day driving to and from the office

      I’m jealous as hell. Some day…

      Also; email with tracking number sent!!!!11!!

      1. Nephilium

        It’s really hard to argue that IT people who spend most of their day logging into machines remotely need to be at the office.

        1. MikeS

          And yet people still argue that. Frustrating.

          I’m not IT, but I program CNC machines all day. While it’s good for me to be here occasionally to troubleshoot at the machines, I could easily do the majority of my work from home. When I brought up the idea? “Um yeah, no. Not happening. No way it would work.”

          Whatever.

        2. Yeah, web developer here, and currently the only person from the larger web group in the office today, as per usual. The argument is that we “need a physical presence in the office”. As if we’re retailing webpages to passers-by. No-one has ever come up to me and said, “Hey, X on this one website isn’t working right, would you check it out?” And, best of all, I do all my dev locally, commit everything through git, and use a VPN to access the staging environment IN EFFING AWS. Even in the office I’m on a laptop that connects to a publicly accessible WiFi connection. There really is absolutely no reason for me to come into the office except for meetings. But, there it is.

          1. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

            Just stop showing up. If they bitch, make a case to management that you’re saving the company money by not using the physical office.

      2. Yusef drives a Kia

        Did you take the Slow Bus to the Store?
        Happy Friday!

        1. MikeS

          Right?! I know, I am ashamed it took so long. Maybe even worse? I received my beer quite a while ago and still haven’t opened one of them yet!

          Life; she is a cruel mistress.

        2. Private Chipperbot

          Loved your post last night! It brought back some memories. I had a hobby story I used to ride my bike to when I was a kid and I would spend hours staring at the complete models they had on display.

          1. Yeah, ditto. I was going to post something last night in the thread but I didn’t see it until late. I am awestruck by the level of detail and the dedication, man, that is really something to be proud of. And very cool that it’s something you can do with your son!

    3. Brett L

      16:30 conference call on Friday afternoons

      Ooh. The Micromanger’s call. 8:30am on Monday or 4:30 pm on Friday.

      1. Scruffy Nerfherder

        The Micromanger’s call

        Micro-Baby Jesus is callin’ from his micromanger.

        1. Brett L

          I almost fixed that out of spite, but I will not use my powers to make people look stupid just because I made myself look stupid.

          1. Scruffy Nerfherder

            I grovel before your graciousness.

        2. *opera applause*

      2. Nephilium

        I doubt it. I haven’t had a one on one call with my manager in over three months (and I’ve only been at the company four). This is one of the stranger jobs I’ve had, I’m the only employee of my company in the office I’m working out of. I was hired directly into a senior position, with very little training on the company protocols, and I have yet to meet my manager face to face.

        They keep paying me, so I must be doing something right.

        1. MikeS

          Or you’re just a pawn in a narco-terrorist front company.

          1. Nephilium

            Nah, I doubt they would trust Cisco VOIP systems for their communications.

          2. commodious spittoon

            Designated fall guy.

          3. Who are you, who is so wise in the ways of science?

        2. When you applied for the job, do you recall if the opening specified red-headed men in particular?

          1. MikeS

            +£4 a week

        3. ElspethFlashman

          Total win, then. Back before I first started solo practice, I did research for another attorney all summer. It paid pretty good, and I never met the guy. He even sent me work from another attorney, he trusted me that much. We still keep in touch, and still have never met in person.

          1. Nephilium

            It’s still strange to me, in that this is a global company, call centers and offices everywhere. Yet, I’ve met 2 people on my team, and the account manager for the customer I’m supporting. Other then that, it’s just been a list of names, e-mail addresses, and thumbnail pictures in chat clients.

          2. ChipsnSalsa

            You work for Tulpa Inc.?

      3. ElspethFlashman

        I have been in the courthouse after 3 on a Friday. It’s a lonely place. The courtroom you are in is the only one with any action, all the other staff are waiting patiently for 5pm.

    4. Lachowsky

      https://5newsonline.com/weather/

      The summer is here. And those are just the outside temps. Add 25 or so to that for indoor working temps.

      1. Yusef drives a Kia

        Back at ya! add in white roofs for extra blinding light!
        https://wunderground.com/weather/us/ca/rancho-cucamonga/KCARANCH74

      2. PieInTheSKy

        Ask the union to demand air conditioning inside

        1. Lachowsky

          Most Thursdays, I hook up a 20 ton water cooled A/C unit to one of the melt cranes and fly it up to the furnace deck. I hook it up to power and water and turn it on.

          The refractory guys run a duct from the unit into the slag door of the furnace.

          In less than 2 hours, a furnace that had been holding 60 tons of liquid steel is cooled down enough for men to enter and inspect/repair/replace it’s refractory lining.

          1. Timeloose

            Do they gun in the refractory or is it done with bricks and a trowel?

          2. Lachowsky

            Definantly gunned.

    5. Rufus the Monocled

      4:30pm meetings.

      Reason 596977 why I ventured off on my own.

      MY OWN MEETINGS. Naked. With cocaine. And papaya. Which I hate.

    1. Juvenile Bluster

      Otter Jesus is autistic. What exactly that means isn’t easy to say, as autism is less a thing than a spectrum of behavioral deficits that vary from person to person. But the point here is that people with austism struggle with processing and comprehending the vagaries that others just gloss over.

      Clear rules are easier to understand and follow. If the rule is don’t cross the yellow line, they know that crossing the yellow line will get them in trouble. If the rule is don’t engage in hate speech, they haven’t a clue.

      This is probably the toughest thing I have to deal with as, well, an autist.

      1. PieInTheSKy

        Given hate speech is whatever SJW want it to be, no one has a clue on this one.

    2. Count Potato

      “More importantly, these vague and incomprehensible rules may be sufficiently clear to the woke (until they make an unintentional misstep themselves and find the mob has turned on them), but they do nothing to inform Otter Jesus of the “error” of his ways.”

      They aren’t clear to anyone. They are intentionally opaque to hide Twitter’s bias, and allow Twitter to act arbitrarily.

  13. Juvenile Bluster

    France defeats Mexico 4-1

    The French captain that day was a man by the name of Alexandre Villaplane. He spent time in prison for fixing horse races, racketeered the Jewish population of occupied France after the Nazi invasion, spent more time in jail for theft, got out, became a Untersturmführer in the SS, and was captured and executed after France was liberated.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Villaplane

  14. Will New BBC Film On Predatory Trump Sway Evangelicals?

    Another interviewee, Heather Braden, alleged that when she met Trump at a party in Miami in the 1990s that was attended by 50 female models and only four men, she “felt like a piece of meat in a market.”

    The BBC report is hardly the first time Trump has been described as disrespectful of women. Allegations of sexism and misogyny dogged him throughout his presidential campaign of 2016. But those allegations didn’t scare away far-right Christian fundamentalists two years ago when they came out in droves to vote for him, and the BBC report is most unlikely to bother them either. In the minds of the Christian Right, the prosperity gospel gives Trump a sort of diplomatic immunity regardless of allegations that he sexually harassed women in the past or had sex with adult film star Stormy Daniels.

    Right-wing libertarians and right-wing evangelicals have very different views in some respects. While many libertarians combine extreme fiscal conservatism with socially liberal views on abortion, porn, marijuana and same-sex marriage (for example, 2016 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson), the prosperity gospel combines extreme fiscal conservatism with a disdain for those things—although the ultra-rich are so adored in prosperity theology that Trump’s evangelical supporters are quite happy to overlook his sexual history. To prosperity theologists, Trump wouldn’t be so rich if he didn’t enjoy God’s stamp of approval.

    1. Scruffy Nerfherder

      Another interviewee, Heather Braden, alleged that when she met Trump at a party in Miami in the 1990s that was attended by 50 female models and only four men, she “felt like a piece of meat in a market.”

      That’s because you were, honey. You can’t put yourself up for sale and then bitch about the buyers.

      1. Rufus the Monocled

        I love these people who go to these places as if they were looking to go have stimulating conversations when all they likely planned to do is look for some guy with cash and/or have a go in the broom closet.

        1. AlexinCT

          these gold diggers are pissed when they don’t hit the jackpot, and in the age of #metoo, see a quick way to cash in on their smarmy shit while playing the victim. Fuck them.

    2. Brett L

      Wile E. Coyote thinking right there. We’ll use the same plan, but this time it will be different.

    3. If Citizens United had gone the other way, they wouldn’t be allowed to show that film.

    4. Pat

      What were they thinking when they could have voted for the upstanding paragon of Christian morality who called her husband’s sexual assault victims trailer trash on national TV.

      1. AlexinCT

        Don’t forget the deplorables… They also needed to be called out.

        1. Viking1865

          Deplorables got all the press, but the other thing she said was “irredeemable”.

          The thing is, Hillary Clinton is a genuinely faithful woman. She’s a dyed in the wool Social Gospel Methodist. She truly believes that Jesus was a socialist, that God calls on us to build a progressive utopia on Earth. She’s not like any number of politicians who only go to church for photo ops. She genuinely believes that she is charged by God to build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

          So when she says “irredeemable” she means it. She means “consigned to the pit”. She means “cast out of heaven”. She means “Never to be forgiven by God”.

          That cunt, who wanted to be President and never will be, stood up on stage and said on the record that her political opponents were literally soulless monsters who were unworthy of forgiveness and mercy.

          Civility my ass.

    5. Endless Mike

      So what you are saying is that a foreign government is funding propaganda designed to sway American elections?

      1. Bobarian LMD

        Somebody should look into that!

    6. Gadfly

      In the minds of the Christian Right, the prosperity gospel gives Trump a sort of diplomatic immunity…

      The prosperity gospel set is a relatively small portion of the Christian Right. If these people really wanted to know what gave Trump immunity with evangelicals, they could have looked at Clinton and the wider Democratic party as a whole. It’s not hard to overlook the personal immorality of a politician when the opposition is offering immoral policies. You’re not going to swing the evangelical vote against a lecherous adulterer when your alternative is pro-abortion and vehemently opposed to religious liberty as applied to the Christian right.

      1. trshmnstr

        Clearly somebody who has never met somebody from the Christian Right. Most of them are ambivalent on trump. They’re just happy that Herself didn’t get in there to muck things up.

      2. Viking1865

        Yeah if the Democrats had run a Jimmy Carter type, they probably would have won.

        But you can’t really make personal character a winning issue when you are Hillary Clinton.

      3. tarran

        I have a catholic friend who was a fervent and early trump supporter. His take on Trump’s behavior “it doesn’t matter, he’s hurting the right people”.

        This is the thing. Trump told these guys “you aren’t awful people who are a pox on the planet. You are good guys. I’ll not only stop the government from hurting you, I’ll have it protect you… for a change”. And he’s trying to deliver. Yes, Trump is closer to Mussolini than Calvin Coolidge. Yes, I wouldn’t let Trump be alone in the room with my daughter. But, unlike the ‘decent’ lifer politicians, he is walking the walk instead of contenting himself with merely walking the walk.

        The proggies will never get that, because they are utterly blind to how shittily they behave towards non-proggies.

        1. J. Frank Parnell

          Yeah, they like Trump because he’s nice to them and throws them the occasional policy bone, instead of actively hating them (like the Dems) or being embarrassed by them (like the Republican establishment). Not that tough to figure out.

  15. Drake

    About those kids cruelly separated from their families.

    Justice And DHS Claim Nearly Half Of Children 5 Or Younger Separated At The Border Came With Adults Who Were Criminals Or Not Even Their Parents

    1. Juvenile Bluster

      While that may be true, I’m not exactly going to take a governmental organization, and especially a police organization, at their word here.

      1. Hyperion

        I tend to believe it. Why? Because my wife used to work for an organization that hired illegals. They do not come with their kids most of the time. They sneak in and then hire smugglers to bring them here. Why? Because they’re afraid if they come with kids, they’ll have a harder time sneaking in, and then if they leave once they’ve made it, they might not get lucky again. So the 50% number is entirely believable.

    2. Stinky Wizzleteats

      Say it ain’t so…just think what the ratio would be if having a kid with you meant an automatic get out of jail free card.

      1. Drake

        The Left doesn’t understand incentives.

        1. Gustave Lytton

          The Left pretends not to understand incentives.

  16. Juvenile Bluster

    No matter how bad things are, you can at least be happy that you woke up this morning

    I’m not though.

  17. PieInTheSKy

    Florida man chases neighbor with tractor screaming ‘run, fat a**’

    http://www.waff.com/story/38625912/florida-man-chases-neighbor-with-tractor-screaming-run-fat-a

    1. God bless you, Florida Man.

    2. Stinky Wizzleteats

      He was just trying to make sure the guy gets some exercise.

      1. AlexinCT

        Does that make him a community organizer?

    3. Private Chipperbot

      Was it his personal trainer?

    4. The Sleeper

      Nothing’s topping that one this morning.

    5. Chipwooder

      My drill instructor used to do that to me, only without the tractor.

  18. The Late P Brooks

    Between the 200,000 leaked Ashley Madison accounts and the 50 million voters registered in the five sample states, Arfer and Jones found 80,000 matches. Using this sample, as well as validated regression models controlling for state, gender, and age, the scientists could deduce that Democrats were the least likely to use the website, while Libertarians were the most likely.

    Sounds legit.

  19. Lachowsky

    Geez
    I came in early to work this morning for our big state of the company meeting. We do one of these every six months or so. We were shown a bunch of slides about the different markets we are in. What our market share is, what our competitors market shares are, how we are doing quality and service wise with our customers, etc. Manufacture of heavy trucks, and passenger automobiles is up as well as operation of drilling rigs. This is good for us as those are our main markets. My plant is booked at over capacity and has been for more than a year. That’s all well and good.

    However, a part of the presentation was a out the stell tariffs and how that effects our business. The answer to that is, not much. Thankfully. The total amount of SBQ Steel (which is what we make) imported into the United states is around 750,000 tons annually. More than half of this comes from Canada and Mexico. 10 percent from s. Korea, 2 percent from China, the rest from elsewhere. To put that into perspective, my little plant here in arkansas produces 550,000 tons annually all by its lonesome. Basically imports weren’t affecting us anyway.

    This hasn’t stopped all my fellow employees from singing the praises to high heaven of trump and his tariffs. I dont have time today to teach an economics class to hundreds of people.

    1. PieInTheSKy

      We have these as well. I mostly space out through the bullshit and look at some of the more interesting graphs.

      Protectionism will sadly never go away…

    2. egould310

      Hell yeah! U.S. Steel https://youtu.be/L0ZekSDfC_g

    3. I think the tariffs will prove to be temporary, subject to the wills of Trump’s mercurial-ness.

      1. Lachowsky

        Which makes them even worse. Temporary tariffs give companies reason to expand infrastructure to facilitate expanded production. Once the infrastructure is in place if the tariffs are then dropped there will then be over production that will cause many places to lose their share and have to shut down.

        Its government creating incentives and then taking them away.

  20. Atanarjuat

    https://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-first-full-color-3d-x-rays-are-freaking-me-1827545304/amp

    Possible huge leap forward in medical imaging technology? Not so fast, says the FDA.

    ***It will be years before the new Spectral CT scanner receives all the clearances and approvals it needs so that it can be used in hospitals and clinics. But it’s well past the research stages at this point, and clinical trials are expected to get underway in New Zealand in the coming months.***

    1. Atanarjuat

      … Although I think the color thing is a bit of a gimmick.

    2. Hyperion

      I love medicine, we’ve made terrific strides in diagnostics. The result is something like this:

      Doctor: You see this here white clump right there in this wonderful new color x-ray? That there is cancer, we now find it more often and earlier than we ever could have before!

      Patient: Oh, thank god, doctor, I’m going to be OK now!

      Doctor: No, you’re still going do die, that’ll be 20 grand for these beautiful pictures, I love these new pictures!

      Patient: But… is there nothing we can do?

      Doctor. Well, there is this new drug that’s been 100% successful in treating this same cancer you have.

      Patient: Oh, thank go, so I am going to be OK after all.

      Doctor: Fraid not, the trial still has 10 more years and then the FDA will need 5 more to approve it. So, very sorry, you’re going to die.

  21. The Late P Brooks

    When someone says they “created 100k jobs”, all it means is that they get to decide how and what 100k people do. The jobs weren’t created, they were seized.

    Oh.

    1. Brett L

      Look at HP and Apple. Before them, all the personal computer assemblers and programmers were doing their own boutique work. Then, suddenly, they had to go work for the Man!

    2. Scruffy Nerfherder

      Jobs are a natural phenomenon, just like iPhones and duct tape.

    3. Lachowsky

      DEY TOOK R JERBS!

      1. Yusef drives a Kia

        Nimble Fingers!

      2. PieInTheSKy

        You are a slave to big steel … (that could also be a porn title)

        1. MikeS

          AND YOU WILL BE SLAVE TO BIG STEVE

    4. Yusef drives a Kia

      They seized our JERBS!

  22. Hyperion

    That’s better than my day. It’s like this:

    4 am – wake up – make non-GMO non-Fair Trade Brazilian coffee, but all I have is crummy Sao Braz, no superior Pilao or Santa Clara

    5 am – dropped wife at train station

    5:30 am – home again, drink another cup of coffee – browses web

    7 am – looks for links, no links, does anyone work? – Starts work at home

    rest of day:

    call repair shop to see if can get appointment to look at this shit car with the check engine light on

    call realtor to see what she wants

    rent car

    call bank to get financing for new car

    pick wifey up at train station

    hopefully relax and maybe have a couple beers – say fuck work and every other fucking shit and especially cars and traffic and the media and people in general, I hate everyone

    1. Rufus the Monocled

      Your wife’s a baker?

      1. Hyperion

        She works at the airport, those people all go in crazy early.

        1. Rufus the Monocled

          ….as a baker…? They have bread at the airport, right? RIGHT?

          1. AlexinCT

            Where are you going with this baker thing brah?

          2. Rufus the Monocled

            …..not……sure…..

          3. He wants a gay cake.

          4. AlexinCT

            Your shit is retard brah, and you talk like a fag..

            Rehabilitation for you!

          5. Hyperion

            In Canada, airline workers also bake the donuts.

          6. Bobarian LMD

            We have Hooter’s Air, they have Horton’s Air?

  23. The Late P Brooks

    The total amount of SBQ Steel (which is what we make) imported into the United states is around 750,000 tons annually. More than half of this comes from Canada and Mexico. 10 percent from s. Korea, 2 percent from China, the rest from elsewhere.

    I was told, the other day, that some significant portion of the steel imported from Canada is re-labeled steel from Asia, which is why Canadian steel is included in the tariffs. No details were provided, so I don’t know how true it is. Interesting, though.

    1. Lachowsky

      I have no idea. From what I saw this morning, the tariffs mostly affect coil steel which is not my market, so I haven’t looked too deeply. Something I noticed this morning though-

      There’s an awful lot of rhetoric about cheap Chinese steel flooding the market. It’s mostly bullshit. China makes up about 5% of the total steel imports I to the country and only 36% of steel sold in this country is imported at all.

      1. What about imports of stell-containing objects manufactured elsewhere?

        Is there any truth to the assertion of an overall drop in output over the past 40 years?

        If so, what was the cause?

        1. Yusef drives a Kia

          UCS ,Did you see my Diorama Post from Yesterday? It turned out nice, and You were the inspiration, well you and MikeS

          1. I saw the post. It just had the unfortunate timing of arriving while I was sick, so my coherency wasn’t that great.

          2. MikeS

            Aw shucks. Thanks. Glad you did it. I don’t know if you saw my necro-post. I watched gallery 1 slideshow this morning. Gonna get to gallery 2 at break time. It is fucking amazing. Kudos to you and your son.

          3. Yusef drives a Kia

            Thank You Guys, I’m glad you are checking the Galleries, that’s where the Good/Bad stuff is

      2. MikeS

        Do you know, when they say “steel imports” are they talking about ALL steel or just carbon steel? We use a fair amount of stainless steel pipe and I know a lot of it is imported.

        1. Lachowsky

          From what I was shown this morning, they are talking about all types of steel. Rolled products, piping, structural, engineered steel (what we make) cast steel, and the like.

          To UCS, I dont think those numbers reflect finished products containing steel.

          1. Gadfly

            Anecdotally, it seems that a very large portion of finished steel products must be imports, since in the construction industry people are always complaining about Buy America(n) compliance (if federal dollars are involved, you must use US steel), which I wouldn’t think would be the case if there was an abundance of finished steel products made domestically.

  24. Old Man With Candy

    That’s it, I’m never doing Links again.

    1. egould310

      Yeah. Your wife pretty much owns the links. By the way, thanks SP for making such an awesome website.

    2. Tundra

      I was going to volunteer to take a shift once in awhile, but no way in hell now. Shit, I just finished reading the primary links!

      Well done, SP!

    3. straffinrun

      C’mon, man. You inspire us in a different way.

  25. Rufus the Monocled

    “Try to enjoy your day anyway.”

    I have to go pick up my mother in law in a bit.

    1. Old Man With Candy

      How much does she weigh?

      1. Rufus the Monocled

        On my nerves?

        Weightful.

        1. AlexinCT

          Do you know the difference between inlaws and outlaws?

          1. Rufus the Monocled

            No. Tell me.

          2. AlexinCT

            Outlaws are wanted…

          3. Rufus the Monocled

            /face palm.

            I walked right into that one.

          4. You can’t shoot inlaws, even though you want to?

    2. Hyperion

      Ye gads, I take back anything I said about having a non-ideal day.

    3. Juvenile Bluster

      I’m one of the luckiest men in the world, in that my in-laws are awesome (and, quite frankly, nicer to me than my own parents are)

      1. Lachowsky

        I have great in laws. Especially my father in law. He lives about a half mile from us and is great. He stops by almost everyday ro shoot the shit and to play with the grandkid. It’s nice.

      2. MikeS

        My in-laws are great. And my step-daughter and her husband are more like drinking buddies than anything else.

      3. Nephilium

        Not married, but the girlfriend’s only living relatives are a grandmother (in her 90’s), and an aunt (in her 60’s). Both of them like me, and since they both live too far away to randomly stop over, I’m fine with them.

      4. I lucked out with in-laws myself. The Texas family is awesome, some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet and the easiest to get along with. The Maryland family is a little clannish, but once you’re in, you’re in for life, and they’re big believers in helping each other out whenever with whatever even as they’re busting each others balls mercilessly. Stereotypical Irish Catholic.

      5. Chipwooder

        I get along ok with my father in law. We have very little in common, but we are on cordial terms. My mother in law, on the other hand, is a horrible human being and did so much damage to my wife’s mental health when she was growing up. She’s a mean, devious, petty woman who constantly looks for slights that aren’t there and constantly blows minor issues up into GIANT FUCKING PROBLEMS.

      6. Mojeaux

        My MIL is actually my husband’s stepmother and she married the dad when huband was 20something. She and I get along like gangbusters mostly because we married such similar men.

        I’m convinced my mother likes my husband more than she likes me (not really), but they talk to each other more then I talk to her for various reasons.

        1. My parents definitely like my wife better than me. She’s a saint in their eyes for having to put up with me.

          1. Mojeaux

            My husband takes care of all her (and her 2 sisters’, who live with her) IT issues. He also knows how to reduce costs on things like cable, internet, phone, and DirecTV [insert the long, involved fight he had with AT&T that ended up saving our household and hers about $300/month total and ended up with his getting a $900 phone free].

            The only thing I can do for her is bring truckloads of mulch and have my kids unload it. LOL

  26. The Late P Brooks

    I have to go pick up my mother in law in a bit.

    This is why I tell myself, “It could always be worse.”

  27. Brett L

    Florida Man is not intimidated by your little knife, armed robber. Has had girlfriends come at him more seriously with bigger knives.

  28. PieInTheSKy

    ‘Vaping’ pilot caused Air China plane to plunge 6,500m

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-44818617

    1. The autopilot released the magic blue smoke?

    2. Count Potato

      “An initial probe by China’s Civil Aviation Administration in China has shown that the co-pilot tried to turn off a fan to stop smoke reaching the passenger cabin without telling the captain, but turned off the air-conditioning unit instead.”

      What smoke?

      1. That damn fug that blasts out of the device.

        My opinion of vapers plunged when two of them independantly decided it would be perfectly acceptable to dose themselves with a highly aromatic mix in a crowded convention hall.

        1. Count Potato

          It’s still not smoke, and dissipates almost immediately.

          1. No, that smell lingered. If they’d gone outside where there was a breeze, it might have cleared out quickly, but that fruitily perfumed mist didn’t fade for a while.

          2. Count Potato

            I have no idea what they were doing then.

  29. PieInTheSKy

    The twenty most charismatic species

    http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199149

    tigers win

    1. Hyperion

      So, humans are less charismatic than giraffes and koalas? How about sloths and tortoises, do we come in a close second to either of those?

      1. Depends on the human.

    2. Count Potato

      Crocodile?

    3. Hang on, sharks beat dolphins? I call bullshit.

  30. Pope Jimbo

    Uffda. Thief River Falls has quite the deal of a city council meeting.

    I blame their proximity to Mike S. Everyone knows that the negative anti-social influence of libertarians looms large.

    The argument broke out during discussions regarding a proposed splash park and how to pay for it. Howe threatened to take Hagen outside, Hagen said.

    The argument cooled down until later in the meeting, when Brown said he was “sick of (Hagen’s) mouth,” Hagen said.

    At one point in the meeting, Brown, who is the committee chairman, got up from his seat, walked toward Hagen and shoved him, Hagen said. Hagen pushed Brown to the ground, who then stood up, grabbed a chair and swung it at Hagen, according to Hagen’s account. Hagen hit Brown and pushed him to the ground, but Brown grabbed Hagen’s legs while City Administrator Rodney Otterness tried to pull Hagen away from behind, Hagen said.

    ^This is how you get ratings, community cable!

    1. PieInTheSKy

      Thief River Falls is a silly name for a town

      1. Tundra

        Home of Arctic Cat snowmobiles!

      2. Pat

        You take it back. We must never slander the home of our beloved Digikey.

        1. I’m a Mouser man.

          1. Old Man With Candy

            Amateurs. Newark is what real men use.

          2. Scruffy Nerfherder

            *fist bump*

          3. Yusef drives a Kia

            Double Fist bump

          4. Scruffy Nerfherder

            Yusef, you might find these guys interesting. I’ve been using them on some designs lately with good success, and it’s all US based components. I hate trying to source odd stuff from Siemens and other European manufacturers, the prices are obscene and the delivery times are ridiculous.

          5. Yusef drives a Kia

            Bookmarked! TY Scruffy

          6. Pat

            They don’t carry some of the optical components i use and for the quantities I order in I save quite a bit on shipping getting everything under one roof in batches.

          7. But Enough About Me

            Newark is what real men use.

            Not if they’re using their own money, they don’t. Real men don’t throw cash away.

          8. Pat

            I use both, but I prefer to use Digikey unless there’s a big price discrepancy. Partly just because I don’t like Buffett and Digikey has a nice origin story.

          9. Bitten by a radioactive Blockchain?

          10. I’ve used all three, but have a few projects already saved on Mouser so it’s easier to re-up.

          11. Allied Electronics too.

            I do miss the days of going to American Science and Surplus in Chicago. But that was more of a fun “ya never know what you can find here” visit.

          12. Pat

            Back when I was a kid there was this little hole in the wall local RC/hobby shop. Tiny little place, or at least the retail floor was. But a few times the owner let me take a look in the back when I was searching for particular components and holy shit… there was stuff in there probably 30 years old at the time. At least half of it unlabeled. Floor to ceiling bins of components. Whoever inventoried the place when he died probably offed themselves. It was a lot of fun just to look at everything though.

          13. Spartacus

            LH–
            I’ve never been to the actual American Science & Surplus store, but I have killed many an afternoon on the web site. And I order stuff from there pretty regularly too. Some of it I even have plans for.

          14. The store – at least in the early 90s – was a hoot. WW2 gas masks, giant rubber bands (okay industrial gear), electronic doo-dads, toys, and just lots of plain weirdness. Even my GF-wife-to-be liked it. I’ll have to re-visit the site again, and get a print catalog.

        2. Pope Jimbo

          Digikey is awesome.

          Scott Simpson’s – aka Nikita Kolaff – mother allegedly lived in TRF back in the ’80s. When we would play tennis there in the spring we would always call the lady and ask for Nikita, giggle and hang up. We thought we were so cool.

          Looking at his wiki page years later, I realized he wasn’t actually from TRF (down in the Twin Cities). I can’t remember who came up with the idea that the Simpson lady in TRF was his mother, but now I feel bad about prank calling her. (Nikita did play football at Moorhead State)

          1. Timeloose

            I like digikey’s website. One of the best industrial suppliers’ websites however is still Granger. I haven’t used it in a very long time, but it is very user friendly.

          2. Pat

            McMaster-Carr’s website is good as well. I’ve tracked down many an impossible-to-find spring, screw and o-ring on there.

          3. Hey now – this is a family approved site.

          4. Cut him some slack, he did say they were otherwise impossible to find.

          5. Mad Scientist

            Grainger’s site is steaming pile of crap compared to McMaster-Carr’s site.

      3. Pope Jimbo

        If you want to sound like a native, you have to change the ‘Th’ to a ‘T’. So ‘teef river falls’.

        1. Pope Jimbo

          By the way, Pie, welcome to the evil paleface club. By denigrating the name Thief River Falls, you are making fun of our native americans. That makes you evil.

          Thief River Falls takes its name from a geographic feature, the falls of the Red Lake River at its confluence with the Thief River. The name of the river is a loose translation of the Ojibwe phrase, Gimood-akiwi ziibi, literally, the “Stolen-land river” or “Thieving Land river,” which originated when a band of Dakota Indians occupied a secret encampment along the river, hence “stealing” the land, before being discovered and routed by the neighboring Ojibwe.

          How dare you mock a name based on intra-Indian blood feuds!?

          1. Tundra

            Unpossible! The gentle Natives lived together in blissful harmony. Caring for the land and all its precious inhabitants!

          2. Fourscore

            “The gentle Natives lived together in blissful harmony. Caring for the land and all its precious inhabitants!” that show up at the casinos and drop a bundle

    2. Fourscore

      Wish we had local politicians like that, ours just nod their heads and say “Aye” to all proposals.

  31. The Late P Brooks

    There’s an awful lot of rhetoric about cheap Chinese steel flooding the market. It’s mostly bullshit. China makes up about 5% of the total steel imports I to the country and only 36% of steel sold in this country is imported at all.

    I have seen that ( China makes up about 5%) , too. Not exactly flooding the market.

    1. Yusef drives a Kia

      Harbor Freight hit hardest?

  32. Noncitizen immigrants find it easy to register to vote, cast ballots

    Abdel showed up at his local Pennsylvania motor vehicle office to take his driver’s license test — and walked out having registered to vote, even though he is not a citizen.

    He said his command of English isn’t good and the computer system was unclear, but he somehow managed to sign up even though he knew he shouldn’t.

    Then there was Angelo, who figured he could vote because he joined the U.S. military, even though he wasn’t a citizen. He, too, signed up at the Pennsylvania motor vehicle bureau and registered as a Democrat. He then voted nearly every year from 2001 through 2014.

    He finally wrote to Allegheny County asking to be stricken from the rolls, saying he had been ineligible all along.

    Angelo and Abdel are some of the more than 130 people the county has nixed from its voter lists in recent years after discovering they weren’t U.S. citizens and should never have been allowed to register, much less vote, according to a report being released Thursday from the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

    1. Private Chipperbot

      THERE IS NO VOTE FRAUD DAMN YOU. THIS IS AN ISOLATED INCIDENT THAT WAS QUICKLY FIXED AFTER 14 YEARS. IT HAPPENS NO WHERE ELSE.

    2. Pat

      I have it on good authority that false registrations never happen, and that even if they did, the false registrant would still not be allowed to vote because it is against the rules. No possible way it could happen.

      1. The Sleeper

        When I worked for my county’s election commission, I can say that there’s virtually no check or follow-up to registering to vote. Any internal audits we did weren’t for checking citizenship status, it was just assumed. I’m hesitant to say this is for malintent, and moreso that conducting a proper audit is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive, and bureaucrats are lazy. Bad actors realize this and take advantage of it.

    3. Juvenile Bluster

      In 2000, when I moved to New York, I registered to vote there, and wrote two separate times down to Florida to cancel my voting registration.

      It never got cancelled.

      In 2003, when I moved to Pennsylvania and registered there, New York cancelled my voting registration, but Florida still counted me.

      In 2005, when I moved back to Florida, I registered in Broward County. Pennsylvania cancelled my registration but Dade county still didn’t, so I was then registered twice in Florida.

      In 2011, my mom moved to Broward County, and because of the address change, my old registration followed, and I was then registered twice in the same county.

      It wasn’t until 2014 that I FINALLY got through to them to cancel my second registration.

      1. robc

        When I moved to Wisconsin, KY never cancelled my registration.

        When I moved back, I voted on my never cancelled registration until I moved to a new precinct.

        When I was in school in GA, I voted absentee. Nearly every time, they marked down my Father instead of me as having voted absentee, so he had to vote under my name instead. We have the same name, but the forms included SS#, which are obviously different.

    4. Well, for my money, if you join the military and serve honorably (or at least not dishonorably) you should be granted citizenship. I don’t know how many people that applies to, though.

      1. Foederati worked out sooo well for the Romans.

        1. Well, is “Hey, thanks for your service. In honor of your veteran status, we’ve arranged for a Business Plus seat for you on a flight back to Paraguay,” a better option? I think if an American serving in the military gets access to veteran’s benefits then a non-American who becomes a veteran should at least have citizenship status sufficient to take advantage of those same benefits.

          1. What I’m thinking is that Citizenship should be a pre-requisite for enlistment.

          2. Honestly, I was stunned to learn some years ago that you could join the military without being a citizen, so I’m actually with you on that requirement. I’ll take either one, honestly. If we want foreign mercenaries we can do that as a separate thing.

          3. Bobarian LMD

            We have used military service as a way to expedite the path to citizenship for many years. If they don’t get their citizenship within a certain amount of time, they will eventually be discharged.

            Not exactly mercenaries.

          4. Mad Scientist

            You can be drafted without being a citizen. My father-in-law emigrated here from Germany soon after WWII and was later drafted for Vietnam. He only became a US citizen a few years ago.

          5. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

            Service guarantees citizenship. It should be a prerequisite for voting. You want collectivize the use of force? Be prepared to defend that collective use of force with your life.

    5. Hyperion

      “Angelo and Abdel are some of the more than 130 people the county has nixed from its voter lists in recent years after discovering they weren’t U.S. citizens and should never have been allowed to register, much less vote, according to a report being released Thursday from the Public Interest Legal Foundation.”

      *phone ringing*

      ‘Hello, this is Angelo’

      ‘Hello, Angelo, this is Tom Perez with the DNC, how are you? We miss you and would like to make you a special offer to get you to come back’.

  33. PieInTheSKy

    This study investigates the key factors influencing acceptance of the relevance of evolutionary theory to human behaviour, and the attitudes underlying them. Using data gathered from a wide-ranging questionnaire survey of students and staff in UK universities on attitudes to science, evolution and its application to human behaviour, multivariate analysis reveals that studying social sciences and sociocultural anthropology correlate with rejection of evolutionary approaches.

    http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2010-10301-001

  34. The Late P Brooks

    Oh, and- just because

    1. robc

      I am cool with your style of posting, the threading on the old site pissed me off, I preffered the days of no threading and just quote what you are responding to. But, come on, what is this about? At least include context.

      1. Juvenile Bluster

        Brooks should be banned from making his own reply for 24 hours and be forced to reply to whatever comment he’s replying to. Just because he confused me here.

      2. Old Man With Candy

        Give the man credit, he even Brookses responses to his own posts.

    2. Scruffy Nerfherder

      *nods in agreement*

    3. Tundra

      That’s deep, man.

      Deep.

          1. egould310

            Good one. That might set the tone for my listening today. Been listening to Joy Division and anything motorik. Jesus and Mary Chain can bump up against that sound.

          2. Tundra

            Good idea. As an aside, I’ve been reading Peter Hook’s autobiography. Have you read it?

          3. Timeloose

            Great stuff. Here is one.
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-mYX0qKkB8
            A great cover.

          4. egould310

            I have not read it. Will peruse it on Kindle at the coffee shop.

  35. The Late P Brooks

    What the…?

    Just because

    WE DON’T MAKE ANYTHING HERE ANYMORE!!1

    Fucking dopes.

    1. Well, you have to exclude anyhting made geographically here for a company owned outside the country.

      Then you have to exclude anyplace whose output does not appear in retail outlets.

      Then you have to exclude food.

      Then you have to exclude any company people don’t recognize the name of.

    2. Yusef drives a Kia

      I thought we didn’t Work……..

  36. Rufus the Monocled
    1. PieInTheSKy

      Well women like the earth are a form of property

    2. Count Potato

      I posted that eleven days ago. I could see if I posted it ten days ago. But eleven? That’s one more than ten.

    3. Hyperion

      “Socialist Ecofeminism”

      Is that when you run out of other people’s trees?

  37. Pope Jimbo

    The Root doesn’t disappoint.

    Huffing with outrage because the cops hassled 4 black kids. Claims that they have a new super secret video – that doesn’t seem to be posted anywhere – that proves the cops were pointing guns at the kids. A mixed up story that is hard to understand.

    In short cops got a 911 call that said some kids in the park were running around threatening people with a gun and a knife. The Minneapolis Park Police (yup, we got those, our parks are completely separate from the city) roll up and find the kids. After grabbing them, they discover no weapons and drop the kids off at their houses (except one kid who was a run away kid). The point of controversy is that while they were grabbing the kids, the cops allegedly drew their guns and pointed them at the kids because of racism. The cops said that a few of the officers might have drawn their guns, but they definitely did not point them at the kids.

    Sigh. I hope the cops didn’t point the guns at the kids. On a cop scale of brutality, though, I don’t see this as all that horrible. You guys are fucking up my outrage meter.

  38. Rufus the Monocled

    Professor has a problem with cowboys.

    https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11102

    But remember. Conservatives are just as *bad* as progressives on campuses. To be sure.

    1. AlexinCT

      I remember when they used to tell me it was the religious nuts that would ban sex between consenting adults, and here we are today with the marxist telling us that all sex is rape unless it is between lesbians. As a lesbian trapped in a man’s body I am not really affected, but I feel the pain for you dudes.

    2. Juvenile Bluster

      And, for the record, there were a few Jewish cowboys, ladies and gentlemen. Big guys who were great shots and spent money freely.

      1. Old Man With Candy

        (((We))) claim Wyatt Earp.

        1. Rufus the Monocled

          Tom Selleck is Jewish?

          1. Only the good half.

            / Henry Hill

      2. Well, Kinky Friedman certainly would agree.

  39. Rufus the Monocled

    The latest stat the left are throwing around: 78% of Americans don’t own a gun.

    That strikes me as a bit high and probably inaccurate because, well, progs are illiterate, retarded fuckheads.

    1. robc

      They are probably assuming that all guns in any household are owned by exactly 1 member of the household.

      1. robc

        Percent of households with a gun would be the more accurate way to measure.

    2. Pat

      And yet there’s supposed to be around 400 million guns in circulation. There’s about 250 million adults in the USA. That means 55 million of them own all 400 million of those guns. 7.25 guns a piece. I wonder if they think that makes them easier or harder to confiscate…

      1. Analysis of the sales numbers puts the privately owned firearms at much higher than a mere 400 mil.

      2. robc

        The denominator was people, not adults. Which gives a quick 20% non-owners (although I know some kids own guns).

      3. Pope Jimbo

        7.25?

        w00t! Finally, I’m above average in something.

    3. Lachowsky

      I dont believe that for a second.

    4. There are more than 600 million non-military guns in this country. They can’t be in the hands of 22% of the population.

    5. AlmightyJB

      22% ADMIT to owning a gun. The great don’t want theirs confiscated so they lie.

    6. Akira

      I’ve heard that before, and it’s bullshit for reasons that have been laid out by previous commenters.

      But I know that the “progressives” are trying to make the argument that since gun owners are (allegedly) such a small group, their rights can be overridden with impunity.

      I wonder if they would apply that same standard to transgender people or Muslims, both of whom are extremely small slivers of the US population.

      1. Well, as said above, if they mean that a minority shouldn’t have equal rights that pretty much flies in the face of everything they’ve said regarding PoCs and othersexuals. If they mean that gun owners are a minority and so won’t be able to resist, I’d point out that trained martial artists, people who can deadlift twice their own body weight, and people who can obtain your passwords, cc info, etc., are also minorities, and emphatically not people you ought to fuck with.

      2. Gadfly

        Even if 22% is the right number, that’s nearly twice as large as the black population in America, so for progressives to consider that a “small” group is quite the folly.

    7. Up until this week I’d never purchased a gun that required registration, and nobody has ever asked me if I own a gun. The one that’s showing up Saturday will make a grand total of two shotguns, six rifles, and two pistols.

    8. leonadasiv

      What’s the implication? That we can ban guns cause so few own them? Less than 3% of the population arehomosexual, so should we get rid if their rights?

  40. Lachowsky

    https://imgur.com/UIQd9xp

    In case anyone was wondering what a 20 conductor cable looks like after the conduit it was run in was set on fire.

    This little incident caused me a lot of trouble yesterday.

    1. Tundra

      Yikes!

      Isn’t it all steel conduit?

      1. Lachowsky

        Yeah. The conduit itself didnt burn, it was the hydraulic fluid leaking all over that was set on fire.

        1. egould310

          So can you patch that section? Or do you have to rewire the whole conduit?

          1. Lachowsky

            That particular section is a 150 foot straight run in between junction boxes. You can splice in a box, but not in a conduit. I fought all 150 foot of that cable out of there and fought another one back in. I made my terminations in the junction boxes at each end of the run.

          2. Imma drink a beer tonight, in your honor.

            Sometimes being a cube dweller isn’t so bad.

    2. robc

      Your work is different than mine.

    3. Pat

      Next time don’t set the conduit on fire. Duh.

    4. Yusef drives a Kia

      I had a compressor short yesterday that took out a 200 amp panel, I didn’t even know until the Owner came up on the roof to see if I was alive.
      And his servers are on the same panel, which promptly smoked, I told him how stupid That was and he just shrugged.
      /Rich people

      1. *headdesk*

        Even the state has separate electrical circuits for the AC (plus two for the servers in case one goes down). And we don’t do many sensible things here.

        1. Yusef drives a Kia

          I still have to find the Short today, and if i fuck up…….

          1. Lachowsky

            If it’s not the motor itself, it’s most likely the wiring in the pocket head. That’s my experience at least. Those connections are vibrated constantly and if they weren’t insulated properly, will eventually ground out. The ground usually occurs when the motor starts and is at its highest load.

    5. Scruffy Nerfherder

      I had a customer call me this week because when he grabbed his 480V extension cable connector he got a full shot of 277V. Turns out he had pinched the cable during transport and one of the hot legs was shorting out to the ground conductor.

      1. Lachowsky

        Yikes. I got a shot of 277 about 5 years ago. I opened up a panel to shut off a 480v 3ph breaker that fed the control cabinet for the bridge drive motor on an overhead crane.

        I was working in a plant that manufactured graphite electrodes at the time and carbon dust was a big problem there. Apparently carbon dust had built up on the face of the breaker and had energized the plastic breaker handle by creating a dust patch between it and B phase on the load side.

        When I grabbed that handle it shocked the shit out of me. I had to go sit down for awhile after that one.

        1. Scruffy Nerfherder

          277 ain’t no joke. It will ruin your day.

        2. Chipwooder

          I think the worst I ever had was 170V. That was bad enough.

          1. ~450VDC from a Lambda tube regulator. Woke me right up.

          2. Yusef drives a Kia

            Ouch!

          3. Yusef drives a Kia

            Amps Kill ya, 120 is plenty, I’m working 460/ 3 phase today, low amps High Voltage, Yikes!
            /I’m a Cautious Guy, that’s why I’m still alive, for now.

  41. The Late P Brooks

    I’d say my hands feel like blocks of wood, this morning, but Howdy Doody probably had better manual dexterity and sensation than I do right now. I don’t know if it’s because I did cleans yesterday, but I am having some serious signal interference issues in my radial nerves.

    1. Tundra

      I would think that could absolutely do it. A good excuse to go get a massage.

      1. AlexinCT

        The happy ending kind?

    2. gbob

      Probably some new kind of STD.

      1. Pope Jimbo

        Fuck. I’m not gonna sugar coat it, but a std that affects the hands of chronic masturbators is gonna wreak havoc here. I mean, I’ll still be here and fine, but the rest of you savages are gonna be in trouble. (hides mitten covered hands behind back)

        1. Just don’t shake hands with other people and you’ll be fine.

          1. Bobarian LMD

            Is that a euphemism?

    3. Raston Bot

      are cleans part of your normal workout regimen? did you follow it up with heavy deadlifts and really tax your nervous system?

  42. gbob

    Damn. SP brought the heat with the layout.

    In other news, man whipped for drinking as a teenager.

    An Iranian man was flogged after being convicted of drinking alcohol a decade ago aged 14 or 15, a rights group has claimed.

    The young man, identified as MR, was publicly whipped 80 times while tied to a tree in the city Kashmar, in northeast Iran, Amnesty International said.

    He was accused of drinking alcohol at a wedding more than 10 years ago, the human rights group cited public prosecutors as saying, but it was not clear why the sentence was carried out so long after the alleged crime.

    I hope when those religious fucks are overthrown, the change the name of Iran back to Persia and bring back orgies, boy loving, and lots of drinking.

    1. AlexinCT

      What makes you believe they got rid of that? They just make sure the plebes don’t get to do it, but I bet you the leadership is into all sorts of real fucked up kinky shit. Remember Bin Laden’s porn stash?

    2. Jokes aside, the Islamic Revolution fucked Iran up six ways from Sunday. If you’ve ever met some of the Iranian ex-pats that came to the states, you’re talking to essentially the brain trust of that country who got chased out by a bunch of stupid rubes and bitter students. When a country loses the cream of the crop, it takes generations to recover.

  43. The Late P Brooks

    In case anyone was wondering what a 20 conductor cable looks like after the conduit it was run in was set on fire.

    Did somebody drop something on it? That looks like a short in the cable.

    1. Lachowsky

      Hydraulic fluid leak provides the fuel, sparks, slag, spatter, or something provided the ignition.

  44. The Other Kevin

    A most beautiful and clever set of links. Very impressive, SP.

  45. gbob

    What is it with lefties and passive aggressive urination?

    Lopez recently pretended to take a leak on the Donald’s star, and TMZ obtained video of the righteous micturition.

    1. AlexinCT

      Childish potty humor is cool with the resistance..

      1. The Last American Hero

        It’s been that way since Martin Luther.

    2. Rufus the Monocled

      “Kaiah Lyric
      ha ha suck it up conservatives, you did worse to Obama and now you whine like babies”

      They honestly believe this.

      1. AlexinCT

        Reality is whatever they want to pretend it is. I think the word is solipsism.

  46. Pat

    Republicans Thought Peter Strzok Would Be a Punching Bag. He Just Knocked Them Out.

    This latest spectacle was designed for one purpose only: the destruction of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump’s Russia ties. Republicans like Fredo Nunes who have tried to present a series of dramatic, table-flipping reality TV moments to reach that goal have failed time and again to derail the Mueller investigation. This morning was yet another swing-and-a-miss for the Trump GOP.

    Because Trump supporters live in a hermetic media echo chamber, these hearings are part of a predictable, hokey Kabuki dance. They’re a device for generating a new round of hyperbolic base-only stories that will follow the same dumb arc as all the rest. In the coming days, you’ll see Sean Hannity flirt with apoplexy, coating the camera lens with flecks of spittle as he rants over Strzok’s perfidy. You’ll see pro-Trump columnists herniate themselves stretching to turn flippant text messages into a vast conspiracy. Twitter will be a flood of moronic memes, white-hot takes, and promises that Strzok will soon be in Gitmo alongside Hillary, Obama, Podesta, and Soros.

    It’s almost scary the level of cognitive dissonance you need in order to write these two paragraphs back to back.

    1. Scruffy Nerfherder

      Everybody is playing to their base.

  47. commodious spittoon

    No matter how bad things are, you can at least be happy that you woke up this morning.

    Drenched in sweat at two in the morning?

    Also, D.L. Hugely is my stripper name.

    1. SugarFree

      Hugely, Down Low?

      1. commodious spittoon

        This guy gets it.

  48. gbob

    Florida man explained.

    A new study says that your brain may hate the heat more than you do.

    Researchers at Harvard University have discovered that a person’s brain works 13 percent slower when it has to operate in extreme heat. According to their report in PLOS Medicine, scientists studied 44 college students living in Boston during a 2016 heat wave.

    1. Lachowsky

      I don’t know why it took Harvard research to figure that out. I know the longer I’m working in the heat, the stupider I get.

    2. Mr Lizard

      There is usually nothing slow about Florida Man. He is quite spry.

    3. AlmightyJB

      That’s why you have to drink beer to cool your brain down.

  49. Pat

    David Clark jailed for killing wife over penis taunts

    A man who murdered his wife because she taunted him over the size of his penis has been jailed.

    David Clark, 49, was convicted of killing his wife Melanie, 44, at their home in Stoke Prior, near Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, on New Year’s Eve.

    Clark claimed he suffered a “loss of control” as his wife “nearly always” belittled the size of his penis, making him feel “inadequate”.

    He was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 15 years.

    1. Cheaper than divorce in the UK.

      Also, it took fifteen years before you realized it wasn’t working out?

    2. Juvenile Bluster

      I was hoping it was the former Sheriff David Clark that was arrested. Dammit.

      1. ChipsnSalsa

        He is Clarke, with an e. I checked.

      2. Count Potato

        RACIST!!!

      3. Pat

        There’s a dick size joke in there somewhere, but I am far too classy to play on harmful racial stereotypes…

        1. egould310

          Dave Clark 5 (centimetres)

    3. So, how small is it?

  50. Drake

    I think the Republicans pick up seats in November. I’m betting that shortly after the election, Trump decides to notice that all these fuckers in the FBI and DOJ work for the Executive Branch and does some dramatic house-cleaning.

    1. Akira

      If Trump fires any of the people who are openly working against him, that will just prove how guilty he is of being a Russian stooge!

      /prog

      1. Drake

        Which is why it will happen after the election. Until then it reminds Republicans how important it is to win.

  51. Count Potato

    “When my soul is refreshed, I come back into the kitchen and have a big glass of cool, delicious water, free from nasty chemicals.”

    IT’S GOING TO TURN THE FRIGGIN’ FROGS GAY!!!!

    1. Hyperion

      That happens when the free trade non-GMO coffee grounds go down the drain and eventually wind up filtering into SP’s Koi pond.

      1. Drake

        What kind of deplorable savage puts coffee grounds down a drain? They go into the state-approved compost heap along with the biodegradable filter.

        1. Hyperion

          “What kind of deplorable savage puts coffee grounds down a drain? ”

          All of us?

          1. I throw them in the trash can along with the filter.

          2. Hyperion

            So do I, but how do you think I do the Koi pond gay frogs joke with that?

          3. jesse.in.mb

            Parents: Our garbage disposal is broken, fix it!
            Me: why the fuck are you putting coffee grounds/entire citrus fruits/tea bags with strings, labels and staples in here?
            Parents: You can’t do that thing?
            Me: You did it and now you’re crying that I need to fix it, maybe don’t do it again…the trashcan is literally right next to the sink.
            Parents: The plumber said we could
            Me: burns down house, never talks to parents again
            [Time passes]
            Roommate: Hey since we’re redoing the kitchen want to get a garbage disposal.
            [scene change] *We see jesse in a straightjacket gibbering incoherently*

          4. Count Potato

            I lived in a place with a “garbage disposal” and never used it.

          5. My apartment had one. I never used it but if it ever developed a fault, the dishwasher wouldn’t drain.

            *shrugs*

          6. Hyperion

            I’ve had one since maybe 1990. Have never broken one yet. Although I did learn from friend that you can break one if you put 3 lbs of potato peeling and some chicken bones down it and turn it on without any running water.

          7. jesse.in.mb

            you can break one if you put 3 lbs of potato peeling and some chicken bones

            So this is why I was always called on to fix the damn thing. In my younger years I put a bunch of potato peels in one and got around to running it (hey I at least ran the water) a little bit later. It jammed. My dad insisted I take the thing apart and I fixed it with a plunger, packing tape, some guess work and a few how-to guides. My dad was actually pretty angry that I didn’t take it apart and fail to fix it so he could swoop in and save the day, but that’s a tale for a different therapy session.

          8. ChipsnSalsa

            Sister-in-law is a plumber, she hates garbage disposals.

          9. I’m not a plumber, and I hate garbage disposals.

            Though my hate comes from the fact that it’s a blade-filled pit that silverware always falls into.

          10. Hyperion

            “Though my hate comes from the fact that it’s a blade-filled pit that silverware always falls into.”

            Well, as any self respecting Glib should do, I’m about to take mine out and install a woodchipper in the kitchen.

          11. Hyperion

            “Parents: Our garbage disposal is broken, fix it!”

            My experience with the parent fixes was a little different after they got older. Well, it was pretty much everything.

            ‘Can you fix my computer, I don’t know what happened’

            ‘What malware you download this time, mom?’

            ‘Can you come over and fix our toilet?’

            ‘Mom, I’m not a plumber’

            ‘You dad’s tired and watching his news’

            ‘Shit, OK damnit’

          12. I am two and six hours away from my parents. If it can’t be managed through a telephone consult, they don’t ask me to fix anything.

          13. That’s why I hated my parents moving close by. Now they’re like 10 minutes from my job so I get requests to come over and move furniture, check the house, etc. Of course I can go there and get a nice nature break from work but I preferred the distance.

          14. jesse.in.mb

            Mom bought a Mac because of a minor problem with her old all-in-one PC. She never bothered to ask me to look at her old computer, and I warned her I wouldn’t be able to provide any technical assistance once she was on a Mac. Turns out the old computer just had a problem with the touch-screen driver (I fucking hate aio computers), and she has NO idea how to use the Mac. It is possibly my favorite purchase she’s ever made because I’m completely off the hook for tech service.

          15. Hyperion

            “I am two and six hours away from my parents. If it can’t be managed through a telephone consult, they don’t ask me to fix anything.”

            I’m 12 hours away now driving, so same.

        2. Akira

          They actually are a really good addition to my voluntary compost pile. They add acid to the soil, and they’re already broken down to the soil texture.

          1. ChipsnSalsa

            Worms love coffee.

    2. The Last American Hero

      I thought that was the waters at Lourdes.

  52. I have a weekend of circuit board stuffing (ooh la la) planned, along with a tube amp tear down. Also vacation next week – renting a cottage on a little lake near a little town that’s next to a little creek. And a chance to visit the site where my second home once stood, and to tromp through the 20 acres of land that the old man still owns but will become mine.

    Not sure what to do with this 20 acres – may just let it be.

    1. Tundra

      That’s easy. Small cabin and huge outbuilding. Don’t forget the four-post lift.

      1. Psycho Effer

        A castle, with a high wall and a moat.

  53. Chipwooder

    Max Boot confirms in his own inimitably pathetic manner that, for many people, liking soccer is a pose, an attempt at social signaling – “Look at how sophisticated I am!!!!”

    1. Rufus the Monocled

      You messed up the link…BRO.

      Also, there is most certainly a segment of people who are fair-weather soccer fans and know jack shit about the sport.

      1. Hyperion

        Our friend’s son explained the entire game to me, now I know all of the rules and can follow it. Before that, all I knew is that if you start getting behind and think you are surely going to lose, you have to do ‘The Neymar’ to save face.

        1. Rufus the Monocled

          Neymar’s antics don’t save face. He’s a meme onto himself now.

          I think more and more fans are getting tired of it. I think. I hope.

          1. Hyperion

            It’s actually a thing in Brazil now. Someone yells ‘Neymar’ and everyone falls down and rolls around holding their knee. Not making that up.

          2. Simeple fix – no longer stop the game for injuries.

            It might actually start to get interesting.

          3. Drake

            Or, let the opposing players run over and stomp on him until he actually has the injury he was pretending to have. That would get me to at least watch soccer highlights.

          4. That’s the rugby rule, right? Unless you need actual triage, the game keeps going until it would stop for play reasons.

          5. Rufus the Monocled

            And that’s saying a lot given the long tradition of divers and antics from there!

          6. Private Chipperbot

            Last night my son played against the team that won the HS state championship this past season. One of their players went down dramatically and the guys on the field were yelling Neymar.

    2. Chipwooder
    3. Pat

      Meh, goes the other way too. Bros hating soccer because it’s faggy and European.

      Not following any type of professional sports is nice, because you’re a social pariah and nobody wants to talk to you.

      1. Naw, people harass me for not following any sports, as though it’s somehow odd that I don’t care about millionaires playing a children’s game.

  54. AlexinCT

    Oh lord please let this happen! The fun to be had!

    1. Hyperion

      Good grief, look at that mug. You mad, Maxxie?

    2. AlmightyJB

      She could win.

  55. Rufus the Monocled

    Historians agree! It’s settled. Trump one of the worst Presidents ever! Two-years in consensus is achieved!

    Obama is the 8th greatest!

    https://hillreporter.com/scholars-poll-ranks-donald-trump-worst-president-time-2162

    1. The background noise on my commute is supposed to be a lecture on the daily lives in ancient civilizations, and I’m noticing a lot of ivory tower assumptions that sound rather counterfactual, or merely misinterpretations of data.

      1. AlexinCT

        Narrative over facts brah…

      2. Akira

        or merely misinterpretations of data.

        I’ve noticed a great uptick in bullshit dressed up as “data science” or “big data” in the past few years.

        “We used big data to prove the relationship between X and Y” usually means:

        “We looked at two unrelated sets of data and used dubious mathematical methods to draw unwarranted conclusions”.

    2. Hyperion

      Hmm, the progtard media list of president rankings. I pretty much just accept you can reverse that and get the real results.

      No wonder the media are so hated by a majority of Americans. All they do is create a narrative of the perfect progtopia universe. After that they must all have some sort of ritual with Twink of the North at the center and hope it works.

    3. Lachowsky

      The top seven Presidents of all time were Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

      Fuck Lincoln and both Roosevelt’s. I dont know enough about Truman and Eisenhower to form an opinion, but i bet they probably sucked too.

      George and Thomas, you’re both cool.

      1. Tundra

        Silent Cal and everyone else.

      2. Count Potato

        What’s wrong with Lincoln?

        1. Pat

          Oh boy…

        2. Lachowsky

          The death of the 10th amendment. The first national draft. The jailing of political protestors. The suspension of habeus corpus. The exponential growth of the power and scope of the state under him. The first national income tax. I could go on, but you may get the point.

        3. Semi-Spartan Dad

          I’d also add large-scale invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation with the resulting deaths of hundreds of thousands.

          1. Lachowsky

            I was going to leave that out, but yeah. There is that whole war thing.

          2. Semi-Spartan Dad

            I think it’s a critical part of the death of the 10th amendment. There was no way to preserve the 10th once states were forcibly prevented from leaving the union they voluntarily joined as independent actors.

          3. Lachowsky

            Arguably, without the war, one of that stuff I mentioned would have happened.

            But, nobody forced Lincoln to go to war. He did that on his own.

          4. Semi-Spartan Dad

            Good point.

          5. Han Confederates shot first.

          6. Lachowsky

            Yes the confederates shot first. Also, the union lefts troops at ft. Sumpter and in ft. Pickens in a deliberate attempt to goad the south into shooting first. They left troops in those forts in order to be able to control shipping in those harbors so that they could collect t tariffs from the confederates. Yes, the south shot first. However, the south legally succeeded from the United states, formed their own country, and had a hostile army on their land that refused to leave.

          7. The Last American Hero

            So there was no Congress authorizing the use of force in 1860?

      3. Chipwooder

        Eisenhower had his faults, but he’s far from one of the worst. Just my 2 cents.

      4. Drake

        Truman was truly fucking awful and belongs in the bottom 10.

        1. The Last American Hero

          I don’t know about that – I mean look how many people he killed with his nukes. And we know high body counts tend to elevate presidents in the eyes of historians.

          1. Drake

            He purposefully destroyed the military after WWII, then came really close to an outright loss in Korea in 1950. If not for the 1st Marine Division (which he was trying to disband), the Eighth Army would have had to surrender or start using nukes.

            The whole thing was a pathetic series of blunders.

          2. Viking1865

            The blunders and stupidity of FDR and Truman as commanders in chief could fill multiple volumes. Two of the dumbest fucking men to ever win a major war, it really goes to show you just how big an advantage the American industrial economy and the American fighting man is.

            If Churchill had been the American President instead of the UK PM, Hitler and Stalin both would have been footnotes in history.

      5. Viking1865

        Eisenhower deserves to be up there. As far as Cold War Presidents go, he was the best of the lot.

    4. Count Potato

      “scholars”

  56. The Late P Brooks

    Because Trump supporters live in a hermetic media echo chamber, these hearings are part of a predictable, hokey Kabuki dance.

    One more reason to be glad the daily beats locks me out with their adblockerblocker. I don’t think I could survive the idiocy.

    1. AlexinCT

      Do these people not grasp the concepts of projection and irony?

    2. Hyperion

      “Because Trump supporters live in a hermetic media echo chamber”

      Yep, a media who it’s been well documented, provide 90% negative coverage on Trump. I’m sure his supporters just love that shit.

      1. Hermetic media echo chamber, huh? Like one that predicted a landslide victory for Hillary Clinton and then broke down into visible, on-air hysterics when they were proven wrong? That kind of hermetic media echo chamber?

  57. Not sure if it’s been mentioned, but House Reps are complaining because their bill is getting a vote, robbing them of valuable grandstanding.

    1. Scruffy Nerfherder

      That’s almost as pathetic as the GOP failing to repeal the ACA after 7 years of meaningless virtue-signaling votes.

      1. Juvenile Bluster

        And just as unsurprising.

    2. Hyperion

      It’s classic dem today, all the way. Now let’s see how running on illegal immigration, raising taxes, and illegal immigration goes.

    3. Sean

      I approve. Someone finally had a smart idea. Sadly, it’s probably the only one they’ll have this year.

    4. R C Dean

      I don’t know why the Repubs don’t routinely fast-track the worst Dem bills when Repubs are in the majority, and vice versa. And do it high-profile, with a big press smarmy press conference about reaching across the aisle and making sure the minority has a fair chance blah blah.

      Reminds me of a piece of advice I got on negotiating awhile back:

      “Give them what they want, then give them what you want.” To which I add “Good and hard.”

  58. Count Potato

    Putting down the racism watchdog

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQzkKmr-rks

    Is the voice acting kind of annoying?

  59. The Late P Brooks

    Not sure what to do with this 20 acres – may just let it be.

    No way, man. A motocross track and a mud bog for the traktur pullz.

  60. The Late P Brooks

    A man who murdered his wife because she taunted him over the size of his penis has been jailed.

    ——–

    Clark claimed he suffered a “loss of control” as his wife “nearly always” belittled the size of his penis, making him feel “inadequate”.

    The sadly underreported downside of cucking.

    1. AlmightyJB

      Now everyone will taunt him about his micro penis.

  61. Juvenile Bluster

    I went to Walgreens the other day to pick up a prescription and they had this sign posted at the pharmacy:

    “In order to comply with Florida law, effective July 1, 2018, certain pain medication prescriptions may require additional processing time. A government issued photo ID will be required.

    To meet our commitment to dispense pain medications safely, certain prescriptions may be refused at our discretion.

    Thank you for your patience and understanding.

    We apologize for any inconvenience.”

    Once again, government makes a move on the “opioid crisis” that will do nothing but hurt people who actually have chronic pain issues. Yay.

    1. The Other Kevin

      And yet it’s too much of a burden to produce an ID before you are allowed to vote.

      1. AlexinCT

        You would be violating the rights of the dead, the illegal immigrant, the criminal element, and the mutli-voter blocks if you demanded they actually provide details that could lead to someone actually tying them to criminal activity.

    2. Count Potato

      It’s absolutely despicable.

    3. Lachowsky

      Thanks to this one government policy, I switched from hydrocodone to heroin. I have found it works much better and much easier to get.

    4. commodious spittoon

      I read, maybe here, that incidents of opioid addiction correlate very little with opioid prescriptions, something like 2-3%. That’s not nothing, sure. If your palliative care ends up with 2-3% of your patients worse off, that’s something to worry about. But if that’s true, targeted approaches addressing the most likely of one’s patients to suffer addiction would seem to be the better course than a blanket approach that harms far more patients, and is deeply immoral–forcing responsible patients to live in agony for the sake of a fraction who won’t dose responsibly. In what other therapy would we permit the behavior of a tiny subset of users to inform how we treat other patients? Would it stand for a moment if the feds greatly restricted access to abortion on the theory that some women use it as birth control? And how is it serving anyone’s interests to pretend that addiction is an entirely random occurrence for which the only preventative measures is to withhold treatment from everyone? What, is everyone secretly a wannabe heroin addict? Surely we have better means of gauging who are the likely abusers.

      Disclosure: I took half a vicodin once for back pain. I know nothing about opioids.

      1. Drake

        I’ve seen it. A guy in my brother-in-laws family obvious was predisposed to addiction. Got hooked on prescription pain killers after an injury in the Army. They sent him rehab where he met a chick who hooked him up with heroin. After several cycles of using and rehab he died on an overdose.

        I could never tell if was a chemical thing or a weak mind.

        1. I’ve mentioned this friend of mine who suffered from migraine headaches all of his life.

          As a kid – gets pain medication to help with pain
          teenager – smokes pot, a lot. Starts experimenting with pills
          twenty-something: heroin, crack, coke, also a pill popper (with a stolen prescription pad)
          thirty-something: goes on methadone program; afterward becomes a fifth-a-day alcoholic
          forty-something: clean except for the occasional pot smoking

          1. R C Dean

            I had migraines, pretty bad ones I think, for two years or so. I was getting suicidal by the time they found something that could manage them – some kind of hellacious beta blocker that made me a zombie. I could easily see someone falling into addiction to try and deal with them.

        2. Chipwooder

          My uncle who retired from the Army spent a while in the airborne. He injured his back pretty severely on a training jump and developed an addiction to Vicodin. It didn’t go beyond that, and he was able to kick the habit, but my aunt told me once that it kept him from making sergeant major. He retired as a master sergeant after 24 years.

      2. R C Dean

        I read, maybe here, that incidents of opioid addiction correlate very little with opioid prescriptions, something like 2-3%.

        I recall seeing that. To this non-science guy, it looked fairly solid.

        The other thing that I have seen some studies on, again not really able to evaluate how valid they are, and with an additional caveat for confirmation bias, is that the growth in opioid use/addiction has been much slower in states with medical (and recreational?) marijuana.

        1. jesse.in.mb

          Nothing statistically valid, but in my experience (both in a work comp doctor’s office and having a heroin addict sister with a bunch of heroin addict friends) the people who made the transition from pain amelioration to addiction were generally chronic pain sufferers who took medication at levels high enough to obliterate pain instead of manage it, then got shifted around due to changing regulations between multiple opiods with very different potencies followed by some kind of economic change (inability to work due to continued pain/disability or the effects of the drugs) that made heroin the cheaper/more effective choice and took them out of the medical context where there might be any check on the drugs interfering with life (not that you always get that in pain management clinics anyway). It’s not a huge percentage of the population taking opioids for pain, but it’s a devastating trajectory once embarked upon.

          1. commodious spittoon

            And if they idea of blanket regulation is to prevent injuries from turning into addictions (though really the purpose seems to be keeping doctors out of prison for “overprescription, but I digress), why aren’t pain management plans complemented by post-rehabilitation plans? Again, I don’t think even “addictive personalities” are closet wannabe heroin addicts. Nobody wakes up from a car crash thinking “Oh, good, now I can throw away my family and career and become a pill-popper.” So why do we treat patients as if they’re all champing at the bit to become needle junkies? Why no post-therapy plans to ensure that patients, none of whom want to be addicts, are transitioned off opiates?

            Maybe there is. I don’t know.

          2. jesse.in.mb

            I don’t think I could list all of the factors involved here. The two biggest things, with many tiny sub-things:

            The billing markups for prescribed medication are ummm surprising (I was just working on a problem our billing department was having and it turns out dispensing generic ibuprofen bills out at brand-name retail prices for no apparent reason).

            Patients are often really fucking short-sighted when it comes to their own rehab (the pills take away the pain for now, I don’t need to actually stretch, exercise or lose weight, those things are hard and the benefit is in the future!). I ran while fat and busted up my knees. Every lunch break I’d go down to the therapy department, crank up shitty high-intensity electronic music and sweat out 30 minutes on a recumbent bike going as hard as I could without worsening my injury. Our patients who were there doing prescribed physical therapy would ask me why I was working so hard. Ooh, I’m 26 and would like to not be on a mobility scooter by 35? *Blank stares* Folks who put in the effort to follow the post-injury rehab plans usually have very good results, but you can lead a horse to water, yadda yadda.

          3. Hyperion

            I cured myself of Opioid addiction the very first time I ever took it. I puked for an entire afternoon and felt like ass for an entire day after that. I remember very few times in my life being that damn sick. Not even on the worst bout of room spinning alcohol consumption before I had any tolerance at all to it.

  62. AlexinCT

    Did anyone love this move by team read? All the team blue fuckwads demanding ICE be abolished and even going so far as to write a bill to do so, now say they will have to vote no on the very bill they have been grandstanding on, because – get this – the American public is hard against illegal immigration unlike the marxists that hope to import enough welfare recipients to give them a permanent majority at the polls. Go fucking figure.

    1. Scruffy Nerfherder

      UCS loved it upthread.

      1. R C Dean

        Ima love it long time. What are parliamentary rules for, if not to fuck with your opposition?

  63. Raston Bot

    i was going to save this for the next glibfit. but i’m not.

    Leftist Fitness Instructor – Owen Benjamin

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZnJCgqmI28

    “The dentist who shot a lion”

    1. Tundra

      I like the kettlebell swings.

    2. Raston Bot

      “Do you feel the sweat? Even if you’re not sweating, which I know you’re not, you still are because feelings!”

  64. Pat

    Here’s how much more the typical baby boomer makes than the typical millennial in every US state

    In all 50 states and Washington, DC, the median millennial made less money than the median Gen Xer or baby boomer, and in most states boomers earned more than their Gen X counterparts.

    While boomers made more money than millennials in every state, the extent of that age-based pay gap varied among the states, ranging from the median baby boomer making just 25% more than the median millennial in Washington, DC, to a much larger 91% gap between the median boomer and the median millennial in Alaska.

    I’m pretty sure this means all you old fucks owe me something.

    1. derp. More experienced / long-term employees make more $$ than younger ones? Shocking.

      1. But… but… Entry level jobs should pay as much as the executives!

        /derp.

        1. AlexinCT

          I know for a fact that while I make a lot more than these millennials do today, I started off at $43.5K a year back when (and I was way high for my industry because I knew my shitz), while many of them with both lower skill and work ethics levels, start at around $62K these days. Of course I understood it would take time and effort for me to climb up the ladder and make a lot more, which seems to be something these social justice loving douches that form the dominant majority of the millennial demographic, seem not to grasp as you point out UCS.

          1. Pat

            while many of them with both lower skill and work ethics levels, start at around $62K these days.

            Damn. Who’s making 62k starting other than lawyers?

          2. Lachowsky

            I know a lot of guys with no education who are in their 20’s making quite a bit more than that starting off.

          3. Raston Bot

            “no education”

            sales?

          4. Lachowsky

            Drilling rigs, furnace hands, welders, etc.

          5. Raston Bot

            a trade is an education

          6. Hyperion

            “a trade is an education”

            Nuh uh, that’s unedumencated stuff for deplorables! You got to get real smart, like a PhD in gender studies to say you have education!

          7. Hyperion

            I don’t know anyone in IT making less than that starting, unless they’re help desk noobz. I mean certainly not any developers. Thing is, no one much will hire millennials, youngest devs I know are in their mid 30s.

          8. When I graduated, all IT postings were “5-10 years experience Mandatory”. The outsourcing of helpdesk posts to overseas is a distinct negative, because it strikes me as the perfect place to assess both the work ethic and technical aptitude of an employee in a low-risk position. They should be the standard gateway into the industry.

          9. I started as a help-desk noob. And ended up fixing all the junk the more highly paid developers were putting out. Our testing department, needless to say, was toothless.

          10. AlexinCT

            We have hired a few of them here as the company is desperate to get edgy in technology. I have interacted most of them they brought in for IT work. There are few that are not bad, eager to learn, and less entitled, but the bulk of them are just entitled pricks. Full of themselves and lacking in the ability to do real work. And everyone of them feels entitled to CIO level pay after a few months of just showing up an hour late and leaving an hour early every day.

          11. Hyperion

            I started out as a helpdesk noob too. Actually my job title was ‘Computer Tech’ and I was making less than the figure quoted here, a lot less, but that was 21 years ago. Then I became a network engineer, and then programmer, and then web developer, and then software engineer/analyst/consultant.

          12. Hyperion

            “There are few that are not bad, eager to learn, and less entitled, but the bulk of them are just entitled pricks. Full of themselves and lacking in the ability to do real work.”

            I guy I know started his own development company. I actually met him when he was teaching a development class my current employer sent me too. We started talking a lot and he invited me to come check out his company. I noted that the guy had a bunch of really young devs. He told me ‘yeah, so I have a couple of guys my age, but they’re expensive, I just hire these kids right out of high school and pay them a fraction as much, you can work em half to death though!’. I was like ‘uhhh, ok, but how’s the quality of their work’. A couple of years later he called me up and wanted to offer me a job. One of his more experienced guys had left to work for Microsoft and now he couldn’t keep up with clients work. He told me ‘man, these kids can put in the hours and code, but they can’t talk to clients, I need someone more mature and experienced. Didn’t work out, I turned it down.

          13. trshmnstr

            That’s what I made as an engineer starting out

          14. R C Dean

            Who’s making 62k starting other than lawyers?

            I don’t think all that many lawyers are making that much starting out. There’s a glut, and the big firms with phat pay don’t really hire that many relative to the total number of grads every year. Don’t really know, though; I’m only in the market occasionally for a new lawyer, and I won’t hire anyone without at least 7 years experience.

          15. My niece – she is an oncology nurse in Chicago. Started $66K/year. My jaw hit the floor.

      2. RAHeinlein

        I would agree if companies could fire older workers at-will. At this point, a significant proportion of Millenials should be at peak output/earning potential, so this isn’t explained by legitimate experience alone. ADEA is an abomination and Boomers have been the primary beneficiary.

      3. Pat

        To be fair, millennials also make less compared to boomers when they were the same age (and typically are saddled with more debt since undergrad degrees have become participation trophies). But that isn’t what this particular analysis was about.

        1. R C Dean

          8 years of an historically weak economy will do that to the cohort entering the job market during those 8 years.

          1. Hyperion

            Whatttt!!??? *screeches at sky* The economy was great until your orange cheetoh wrecked it with this tax cuts and deregulation!

    2. Gustave Lytton

      Reinforcing the idea that millenials want instant success without needing to either work for it or put their time in first.

      My company started a millennial employee resource group for the snowflakes.

      1. Was it just a guy with a stack of business cards that read “Suck it up, buttercup”?

        1. Gustave Lytton

          I wish.

      2. The one Millenial employee in our department is like this – wants the same income and all the perks as us older guys but doesn’t want to put the time in for it. And vents constantly about the unfairness of it all.

        1. How would it be fair for the people who’ve got years of experience under their belt to be paid as much as the greenhorn who just walked in the door?

          1. AlexinCT

            SOCIAL JUSTICE!

          2. Gustave Lytton

            ATTICA! ATTICA!

          3. Do these people even know the context of that?

          4. Chipwooder

            Sure, it’s a reference to Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon.

          5. The Other Kevin

            I had a conversation with one of my kids when she was little, and one of the takeaways was that her definition of “fair” was that she got what she wanted. When you look at it from an immature point of view like that, it makes perfect sense that millenials think this would be fair.

          6. AlexinCT

            It is sad to see people in their late 30s, 40s, 50s, and even older feel that fairness still means they get what they want. These tend to be the people that love socialism…

          7. Akira

            They must be pretty unhappy people if they are still clinging to the idea that “fairness” is somehow the natural state of things. Life tends to beat that tendency out of you through repeated exhibitions of great unfairness. I guess they’re quite tenacious in their delusion.

            I would add Meditations by Marcus Aurelius to the “List of Books I Think Everyone Should Read”.

          8. The Other Kevin

            The problem is that people are now shielded from those beat downs. As a kid they are protected from failure, and are taught about life being “fair”. I read somewhere that a person’s personality is basically set by the time they are age seven. By that time they’ve been indoctrinated.

      3. R C Dean

        We routinely have millenials ask for promotions and raises after 90 fucking days on the job. Ninety. Days.

        1. “You’re not a cashier at McDonalds.”

    3. commodious spittoon

      Lots of motivated, highly credentialed millennials move to DC. They make up in cheapness what they lack in experience, so loads of boomers lose their jobs to millennials. Eventually you have a relatively anemic disparity like 25%.

      Not a lot of millennials are motivated to move to Alaska to work the oil fields and whatever else it is highly-qualified Alaskans do. So the workforce is older, much more experienced, and much better remunerated.

      Tease out those dynamics across the country and you have boomers making more than millennials in varying degrees, skewed toward parity in places where elite education and credentialism are prized over experience or technical know-how. Like, say, national newspapers.

  65. The Late P Brooks

    That particular section is a 150 foot straight run in between junction boxes. You can splice in a box, but not in a conduit. I fought all 150 foot of that cable out of there and fought another one back in. I made my terminations in the junction boxes at each end of the run.

    Did you use a come-along to drag that cable through the conduit?

    1. Lachowsky

      I cheated. I used an electric hoist.

      1. Semi-Spartan Dad

        Any tips for those without? I cannot run through conduit for shit, even with a come-along. Three 12 gauge wires through 200′ of 3/4” pvc conduit kicked my ass.

        1. ChipsnSalsa

          That’s why we have 50 gallon drums of lube.

          1. Gustave Lytton

            Or cheat

          2. MikeS

            They really do make lube for this. Although I don’t know if you can get it in 55gal drums.

          1. ChipsnSalsa

            Yellow 77® Plus has a creamy texture and clings to cable throughout long pulls. Apply conveniently and uniformly by hand or brush. It is a homogeneous blend that requires no mixing and forms surface coat to control evaporation, so it won’t dry out.

            too much.

        2. Semi-Spartan Dad

          needz moar lube. Got it. Went dry for that run but will try some lube next time.

          1. Lachowsky

            Also, there really has to a person at one end feeding the wire in and another person at the other end pulling it out. Doing it by yourself is 10x as hard as having help.

          2. MikeS

            ^This^ The feeder is damn near as important as the puller.

            Euphemism?

          3. Semi-Spartan Dad

            I hired a couple guys to do nothing but pull cable while I made the connections. Still didn’t work well.

  66. Archive.is seem to be again worky.

    http://archive.is/EuMdZ

    Friday the 13th has always been my lucky and now these tits can make it yours too.

    Too many good options but if I have to choose one, I’ll go with 48.

    1. The Other Kevin

      That was a great collection. I’m stuck at #1.

    2. Count Potato

      #7

      1. Pat

        This guy gets it.

        #33 has the crucifix going on, so she’s obviously a good Christian girl you could take home to mum…

    3. You’ve outdone yourself.

      Also, ladies, duckface is a dealbreaker, but a good smirk is clutch.

  67. Count Potato

    “Online news site Business Insider removed an article from a conservative writer that defended non-transgender actors and actresses playing the roles of transgender characters in movies after the site’s staff complained internally, according to the Daily Beast.

    In the article, which has been rescued from Business Insider by third-party archives, conservative columnist Daniella Greenbaum criticized the “social justice warrior mob” for their campaign against Hollywood star Scarlet Johansson, who is set to play the role of a transgender man in the upcoming movie Rub and Tug.

    Business Insider staffers told the Daily Beast that many employees of the mainstream online publication were “offended” by the article, which criticized the arguments of transgender activists. In response to this internal pressure, Business Insider took down the column from its website, adding a note claiming “upon further review, we decided it did not meet our editorial standards.””

    TW: Breitbart

    https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/07/11/business-insider-takes-down-column-defending-scarlett-johansson-transgender-casting/

    1. commodious spittoon

      Their editorial standards are determined by employee veto?

      1. AlexinCT

        Virtue signalling man..

        That’s the new power trip.

    2. Raston Bot

      and the writer resigned very publicly.

      1. Urthona

        ““Scarlett really needs to stay in her lane,” said a representative for the Sandworm Actor’s Guild of America. “Until you’ve lived it, you can’t possibly understand what it truly means to live underground generating spice. Back off, girl!”

        “Sandworms suffer exploitation from Fremen tribes stealing their spice every single day, and Johansson feels she can just come in and act like a sandworm, like she’s an actor or something,” he added. “We will not stand for this. We want more film roles, no matter how qualified Johansson is for the part.”

        “The roles must flow,” he added ominously.”

      2. kinnath

        A sandworm with perfect tits. I’d pay to watch that.

        1. R C Dean

          *thinks about heading to pornhub, remembers “work computer”*

    3. Mojeaux

      Seems to me the trans movement really doesn’t like mere crossdressers and drag queens.

      1. Count Potato

        I don’t know if there are any trans people on the staff at Business Insider.

    4. I don’t think the game they’re playing will end up as they want.

      All they’re doing is skin suiting every “mainstream” publication and further driving people to “alternative” publications. Breitbart definitely has a bias; they’re very open about it. However, they do more real journalism than any of the Journolist charlatans.

    5. The Other Kevin

      People are going to get tired of this double standard BS eventually. A straight woman can’t play a transgender role, but it’s all great and woke for Hamilton to have people of different races and genders playing the white guys. People making an issue out of every fucking thing gets really tiresome.

  68. Mojeaux

    Excellent formatting job, SP. I haz an impress.

    1. Count Potato

      All the neo-nazis in the country couldn’t fill a Denny’s.

      1. I’ve been in some small Denny’s. I think some of them aren’t rated for two hundred people, so the NeoNazis could fill them.

        1. commodious spittoon

          Before or after the FBI agents exfiltrate the gathering?

          1. Viking1865

            Can’t be said enough. There was some WHITE POWARRRRR group up in Idaho or wherever that was led by a five man committee.

            Four of the five were federal agents from different agencies. An FBI, ATF, DEA, and Marshals Service guy sitting in the meeting with one actual white supremacist.

          2. AlexinCT

            Par for government work…

      2. I know a guitarist who once was in a (non-political/non-racist) Oi band. They’re doing a little tour down in Ohio and stop at a podunk town to put gas in the van.

        Woman at the counter: “You all here for the Klan rally?”

  69. Semi-Spartan Dad

    On a related note to the Millennial and pay thread, our HR department has completely taken over all hiring, promotions, and raises. I assume this trend is happening at other larger companies too. This does result in younger workers getting screwed as HR is no position to evaluate your work or job titles. Sure your boss can still go to bat for you, but it’s not the same as explaining to his boss who understands the department. HR only has a slightly better understanding about how the business works than any random gov bureaucrat.

    Part rant, but also point about how business is changing in the face of crushing regulations.

    1. Mojeaux

      I thought that ship had sailed 20 years ago.

      1. Semi-Spartan Dad

        It hadn’t been that bad at my company until starting about 5 years ago.

        A colleague manager needed to hire an employee. HR screened 64 applicants and sent her 8 ones to pick from. All 8 were females of a certain minority type, the same as the HR person. None were even really suitable and colleague was not allowed to look at the other applicants.

        I guess it’s hitting the older workers too. An employee with 25 years experience and far surpassing every qualification was denied a manager position over his team because he didn’t have a Bacehlor’s which HR deemed mandatory.

        1. Pope Jimbo

          My favorite story like that was years ago, I was trying to get some candidates in to work on a team for me. I kept telling them that my list of tech skills were all optional, what I really wanted were people who were enthusiastic and willing to learn. Instead they treated the tech skills as mandatory and complained how hard it was to find candidates that fit them.

          Finally they found a guy with all the skills I had listed. When they gave me his resume it was from a guy I had fired for being an incompetent weirdo a few years earlier at a different company. I told the HR person this and they still suggested that I interview him because “he had all the skills”. Then got huffy when I laughed and said no way.

          1. Semi-Spartan Dad

            I think we must have the same HR

          2. AlexinCT

            HR derpartments is where all the women and other such meaningless study degrees go to roost and fuck with the productive people.

    2. Hyperion

      That can never happen in my industry, they can’t interview tech workers. That would be a nightmare. All they do is call you up and make you an offer and you say, ‘fuck you, cut spending’. Then after you finally get hired, you go talk to one of them and they ask you dumb question and you just start with some diversity mumbo jumbo and fill out the paperwork.

      1. Pope Jimbo

        I agree that HR is hopeless when trying to hire tech workers.

        I’m not sure that letting other tech workers be the ones to interview prospective employees isn’t worse. Last spring I had to find a new job and decided to down grade my search to go back to being a simple code money (after a few years as an architect/manager). Holy fuck it was off putting. More than half the interviews seemed to end up with some sort of code test with Nick the Computer Guy who would roll their eyes because I couldn’t spot the tricky scope issues on the test.

        Too many of those tests are just a dick measuring contest. In this market (super hot here in MN) who wants to go work for a place like that?

        A lot of days, I’m pretty convinced our industry is fucked because we put up with too much bullshit from the developers. Just like the days of anyone with a pony tail being a linux expert, we excuse poor interpersonal skills from developers because we think that all good developers are on the autism scale. Even if you are on the spectrum somewhere that doesn’t mean you can’t be expected to interact with other humans in a professional manner.

        1. Too many of those tests are just a dick measuring contest. In this market (super hot here in MN) who wants to go work for a place like that?

          I don’t get that mentality. It doesn’t matter if they’re dumber than me, smarter than me, or just as broken as me. I’m looking for someone to take over some of the workload. If you can take over the routine crap when handed good instructions, great. If you can be given more advanced work, fantastic. But HR gave me interviewees who were literally googling the technology during the phone interview and reading off of the first page to pop up even when I asked for examples of work they’d done with it.

          1. Pope Jimbo

            I agree totally. The attitude seems more prevalent amongst the younger developers. Maybe us old coots realize it is just a job and that anyone helping out on any task is a good thing?

            The best way to learn about a person during an interview is to get them to go on a rant about what they would like to do if they could set up a project any way they wished. Good employees all have stories about things that bit them in the past and how it could be avoided. Bad candidates all had no opinion on the subject.

          2. R C Dean

            Our HR department usually has a recruiter sit in on interviews. They’ve stopped coming to mine. My task in an interview is to get the candidate off-balance and off-script, which is hard to do with lawyers and people who work with lawyers, so the interviews tend to be, well, off-balance and off-script. I usually start one of two ways:

            “You get a call about [crazy thing that just actually happened in the hospital]. What do you do?”

            “What’s the worst mistake you’ve ever made in a job?”

        2. Nephilium

          For the current position, I went through three different interviews. First was with a recruiter who worked for the company, second was a technical interview, third was an interview with the Account Manager and the technical Manager. For the technical, they were looking to see what grasp I had of the underlying technology. They accepted the answer, “I don’t know which table it’s in off the top of my head, but I have a collection of queries that I’ve saved and the DB Schema to reference.”

          I think the real issue is the breakdown between managers and developers (with HR sitting between them making everything worse). There were two articles I read years ago that were basically, “How to manage developers” and “How to deal with managers as a developer.” I wish I had saved them, they were great pieces. The included some of the standard tidbits like not all developers want to be managers, nor do they have the skill set, nor will they consider it a promotion. There was a section about how to deal with HR to get people “manager” pay when they weren’t managers.

          1. Hyperion

            Same here, first interview was phone, then I went in and met with a manager and a director, 3rd was group interview. The time before that, it was 4 interviews, then I turned it down. They were not happy.

          2. “Your inability to make a decision in this matter without so much duplicated effort at multiple levels had made me realize that you are a poor fit for my services.”

          3. R C Dean

            I actually like group/peer interviews. The main purpose of an interview is to find out if they will fit in, IMO.

          4. Hyperion

            It wasn’t really that, even though 4 interviews to me does show some lack of decision making. It’s that this happened in the same 2 week period and the people who only did 3 interviews offered me more money, lol.

          5. AlexinCT

            The included some of the standard tidbits like not all developers want to be managers, nor do they have the skill set, nor will they consider it a promotion.

            I have watched many of my peers take the management route because they made a lot more money doing very little of value, only to hit though times when companies hit hard times. I have actually managed and realized quickly that outside of a military chain of command I really don’t want to be a glorified baby-sitter, and personally prefer problem solving and technical work. I have however recently discovered that some of the most inept types you can think of make the same as me, and sometimes more, as managers, while not contributing much of value other than herding cats and doing so poorly.

            When I asked, I was told that was the natural pay progression for companies. individual contributors, no matter how valuable and essential, are seen as less valuable, because they figure if they put them in charge of a bunch of idiots that somehow would make those idiots magically more productive and add more value. Providing concrete proof that this is plain bullshit is not well received by the HR and manager types, whom too often have made some huge money peddling this bullshit (kind of like showing how out off-shoring/out-sourcing work to the lowest bidder results in low quality work plays havoc with bonuses for these manager types that claim to save the company money this way).

        3. Hyperion

          My clients all use group interviews. We’ll have a manager or two and typically 3-4 devs. What we are trying to do of course, is to see if they can come in and start producing right away. It’s so easy to quickly discern if the candidate actually knows what they are doing. The other thing, of course, is to just try to discern how well they will get along with others. So if you know what you’re doing and you ain’t a dick, you can probably get hired, because good devs are not easy to hire.

    3. Akira

      HR departments will probably make the hiring/promotion/salary decisions with an eye towards avoiding any uncomfortable “disparities” rather than rewarding competence.

      I can’t really say I blame the HR people or the companies… As you said, regulations affect the business environment, and companies have to do what they have to do to survive.

    4. R C Dean

      our HR department has completely taken over all hiring, promotions, and raises.

      I think that’s not unusual, although in our hospital HR is still more in the “process what the real people tell you” than “HR is the almight gatekeeper of all things employee.”

      Regardless, I am blessed with a job title (and a reputation for callous indifference) that allows me to look at resumes I want, hire who I want, fire who I want, and promote who I want, subject only to the CEO’s veto.

      1. Semi-Spartan Dad

        Mine is so much the gatekeeper that I actually have two job titles. One is my official HR-designated job title within the company. This one has as much to do with my job as Farmer would related to Lawyer.

        After weeks of battling, I was given permission to use a closer though not still not accurate title on my business cards and email signature. It took 3 levels of bosses above me to force HR to cave that much.

  70. Hyperion

    I was looking for some SciFi to read and I ran into a collection of sort of short stories by a guy named Frederich Pohl. Anyone heard of him? I hadn’t before. So I read one of them named ‘The Merchants of Venus’. It was ok. Now started reading another named ‘The Gold at the Starbow’s End’. The stuff is pretty old, but his writing isn’t bad. The first one was sort of like ‘Anything that can possibly go wrong, will’.

    1. I heard of him. The main issue with his work is – I’ve forgotten about it. I couldn’t name a single piece from him, though I recognize the name and know I’ve read it.

      1. robc

        THIS

    2. Sean

      I read his stuff as a young teenager. I remember liking it at the time, but I don’t recall how well it would hold up for an adult.

      1. Hyperion

        It’s adult enough, it’s just more of how well it would hold up to stuff written today. It’s just OK, but I also find Asimov just OK, well a little more than just OK, even today. And probably because stuff that old seems odd for today. I mean, it’s hard to immerse yourself it in when it takes place 1000 years in the future from now, and there’s no internet, not even cell phones.

        Also, just my opinion, but none of those old class guys compare with Vernor Vinge, his stuff is pure genius, some of the best I’ve read, maybe the best.

        1. robc

          Vinge is my favorite of the modern era.

          Plus, the theme of Deepness in the Sky is “fuck off, slavers”.

        2. But Enough About Me

          V.V. is definitely a force of nature, but I find his books overly-long now. I keep thinking he needs a really good editor to cut back on the bloviation factor. Kinda the same way I feel about Connie Willis’ stuff (though I loved To Say Nothing of the Dog).

          1. Hyperion

            I don’t mind the tediousness or slowness. I read and enjoyed a lot of Stephen King’s stuff, like the Gunslinger series and I know people who scream and tear their hair out after about 50 pages of that stuff. The only book I’ve read in a while that was really too tedious and boring for me was Ready Player One. Good god, nothing more by that author, I felt 20 years older after suffering through that. I mean it’s good, but it could have been 20 pages, literally.

          2. So what you’re saying is, I should pad my word count?

            /Cathy Newman.

        3. commodious spittoon

          Thanks for the rec. I need a break from all the paperback mystery novels around the house, those are getting depressing.

          1. Hyperion

            You haven’t read Vinge?

          2. commodious spittoon

            Hadn’t even heard of him till now.

            The stuff I know could fill thimbles.

          3. Hyperion

            Holy bat cow! If you like SciFi, Vinge is a must.

    3. Raven Nation

      He was part of the “golden age” of the 1950s, 1960s. In addition to a ton of writing, he edited Galaxy. His novel Gateway won pretty much everything in 1977.

    4. But Enough About Me

      Pohl? Was one of the classic sci-fi guys, back in the day (old-timers like me would’ve mentioned him in the same breath as Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, etc.). Was an editor and agent to several of the greats. Here’s the Wikipedia entry about him:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederik_Pohl

    5. The Coming of the Quantum Cats

  71. Count Potato

    “Oh, it gets better: the cops who were totally not there to get paid to watch the Stormy Daniels routine on-duty blew their “human trafficking” investigation to arrest her for a misdemeanor she couldn’t have committed, as the DA immediately recognized.”

    https://twitter.com/MaxKennerly/status/1017455889316564992

  72. The Late P Brooks

    Online news site Business Insider removed an article from a conservative writer that defended non-transgender actors and actresses playing the roles of transgender characters in movies after the site’s staff complained internally, according to the Daily Beast.

    In the article, which has been rescued from Business Insider by third-party archives, conservative columnist Daniella Greenbaum criticized the “social justice warrior mob” for their campaign against Hollywood star Scarlet Johansson

    The big surprise here is that there is/was a “conservative columnist” at that lefty hack site.

    1. Hyperion

      I read these words today on CNN.

      “President Donald Trump’s nomination of eminently qualified, mainstream conservative Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court — combined with the predictable Democratic outrage machine — has put red state Democratic US senators in a political box: side with their constituents or with the clown show that is the modern American left.”

      Is it just that their irrelevancy has reached such a low that they’re going to now pretend to have some balance?

      1. Gadfly

        They’ve always had the occasional token contrarian opinion, but a pinch of salt doesn’t improve a pile of shit.

  73. Private Chipperbot

    Starbucks new strawless lids use more plastic than straws they replaced…

    Straw banners have proven stubbornly resistant to this logic. Instead, they have chosen to rely on either debunked statistics (such as the claim that Americans use 500 million straws a day, which was the product of a 9-year-old’s research) or totally unproven notions (like the theory that straws are a “gateway plastic”) in order to justify petty prohibitions on innocuous straws. And they have been helped along by an uncritical media. Coverage of Starbucks’ strawless move saw The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic all cite the 500-million-straws-a-day figure.

    LOL.

    1. Hyperion

      Sort of like electric cars being charged by fossil fuel plants and the batteries being full of toxic compounds. But you can’t tell the proud Prius driver that.

      1. commodious spittoon

        Well, thank God they’re locked up in those batteries so they won’t get out.

        1. Early in filming the second season of the Grand Tour, Richard Hammond crashed an Electric ‘supercar’. The damaged batteries caused the car to continue to sponteneously catch catch fire and reignite for eight days before it ran out of cells to rupture.

          Say what you will about fossil fuels, but once the fire’s doused, it will usually stay out.

      2. R C Dean

        electric cars being charged by fossil fuel plants

        True, but I did see a study (again, not qualified to evaluate, really) claiming to show that running an electric car has a significantly smaller CO2 footprint (and presumably other emissions) than running a gas car, mostly because we generate so much electricity now with highly efficient natural gas generators.

        1. So you’re saying it’s even worse than before – You don’t even get the consolation of feeding the plants?

        2. Hyperion

          Here’s the formula for that:

          Big Power Plant releasing CO2 into air: OK, I mean they have lobbyists and I got free dinner last night!

          Individual Citizen releasing CO2 into air: BAD!

        3. Trolleric the Goth

          with a combined cycle plant you’re looking at an at-source thermal efficiency about 3-4 times as high as a modern ICE, but you lose some in transmission, transformation and charging. However, It still comes out better in total CO2 for the ‘lectrics because natural gas and electricity are piped/wired, and gasoline is trucked around to gas stations.

          But CO2 is just a sales pitch for the cultists; The main emissions benefit (for actual pollutants!) is natural gas burned in a combined cycle plant doesn’t generate any particulates, doesn’t generate any NOx, and doesn’t emit sulfurous compounds. Those are much, much more important IMO

    2. But Enough About Me

      Starbucks new strawless lids use more plastic than straws they replaced.

      Why of course they do. :-/

  74. R C Dean

    Just got out of a meeting on Lean management and using A3s to develop countermeasures. My contribution:

    “I’ve gotten pretty good results so far by going straight from incomplete information to ill-considered response.”

    1. oh gawd, not A3s.

      A few years ago the company went through week-long lean meetings, pulling in people who didn’t know jack shit about how something works to find “better ways.” Like I could speak on the best way a giant multi-ton press could be run. Luckily my reputation proceeds me and I was only called into one meeting.

      And the fucking heijunka board which made more work for production and screwed up scheduling if no one stayed on top of updating it. It’s not the 1960s, people, we have these things called computers.

      1. ChipsnSalsa

        We now have two whiteboards (one was insufficient) up to maintain the shop schedule. This is after year two of SAP implementation.

        1. We have an ERP package… and a gui scheduling tool. Which in turn will tell the operators at the press level what they should be making. A large LCD (or any manager can use their own computer) to show press activity with drill down detail, including down reason codes, amount of material used, quality data, etc, etc

  75. Count Potato

    “Almost immediately, Democrats on the House and Government Reform Committee attempted to shut down the hearing. When that failed, they resorted to near-constant parliamentary inquiries and objections. At one point they actually cheered and applauded Strzok, despite his ethical failings and poor judgment, which have threatened the entire Russia investigation. The man is under internal investigation for his behavior. Yet one Democrat said he’d like to offer Strzok a Purple Heart, a military decoration awarded to those wounded or killed while serving in the U.S. military.

    As silly as this behavior may seem, it indicated how Democrats hope to handle all oversight of the FBI and DOJ’s handling of the Russia probe. The message went out that every hearing will be a clown-show, even by the typical grandstanding attendant to congressional hearings. Democrats on oversight committees have fought transparency of the Russia investigation, portraying it as obstruction of a legitimate probe. All signs indicate that opposition to oversight will continue.”

    http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/13/5-key-takeaways-from-strzok-hearing/

    A Purple Hart?

    1. Probably the only military decoration the congresscritter had ever heard of.

    2. Hyperion

      “A Purple Hart?”

      Well, since you have to get near to dead for that…

      1. jesse.in.mb

        Purple Hart

        Weirdest. Stag. Do. Ever.

        1. Hyperion

          I’m just off my game today, that one slipped right by me.

    3. Pat

      A Purple Hart?

      Yeah boy

    4. Mojeaux

      Does a purple hart taste different from a regular hart?

      1. Yes, it tastes like sea snails.

    5. commodious spittoon

      People keep asking why neither Trump nor Sessions order the DOJ and FBI to comply with Congressional subpoenas. Maybe it’s because these agencies aren’t just corralled by lefty obstructionists in the leadership; perhaps they’re so thoroughly complicit with the DNC that any attempt by their bosses to exert executive authority would be met with full-scale rebellion in the ranks. Remember how CNN was fishing for an excuse to report on the Steele dossier when Comey went to Trump with a bare adumbration the document, and served up their excuse to publicize the meeting (and, therefore, the salacious memo)? Others here have noted the leverage FBI agents hold over even menial members of Trump’s circle: staging an interview with a cabinet member which can retroactively be used to ruin him, or dredging up years-old financial crimes of a known quantity (and former FBI informant!) to incriminate the administration by association.

      Maybe Sessions convinced Trump that going to war with the FBI and DOJ is not in his interest, because the moribund Russia investigation is in fact a murder-suicide held in abeyance by Trump’s milquetoast response. The lefty media would spin any accusations made by the FBI into crimes of the century, no matter which crime, nor how weak the evidence, nor how old the acts, nor even what agents had previously concluded. We aren’t suffering from a legitimacy crisis, we’re suffering from zealous, partisan faith on the parts of Democrats and the leftist media. So Trump does nothing more than grouse on Twitter, and the FBI declines to unleash its agents on his cabinet.

      1. tarran

        To understand Trump, read Machiavelli.

        Seriously. He’s a ruler that is loved by some of the people, hated by some of the people, and loathed by the aristocracy.

      2. At this point, I don’t care. Trump was sent to Washington to kick ass, take names and break shit. Our “federal agencies” (read: politburo) have been outed as not only an ineffective waste of money, but thoroughly partisan and borderline treasonous. Even the Dems are tacitly acknowledging that the Emperor has no clothes by their frank defiance of Congressional oversight. Furthermore, Congress continues to out itself as comprised of spineless pond scum so terrified of their own shadow that they won’t exercise their Constitutionally-granted authority in the face of blatant disrespect.

        Since Trump is the wrecking ball that’s supposed to be draining the swamp, he should be firing anyone and everyone in the Executive Branch that looks at him sideways. Frankly, the only way this ever gets fixed is if the FBI is dissolved, the DOJ’s authority is savagely curtailed and everyone over a GS-13 is given a pink slip. I’m not holding my breath.

        1. AlexinCT

          At this point, I don’t care. Trump was sent to Washington to kick ass, take names and break shit.

          Also to chew bubblegum, but he was out of bubblegum…

          /Rowdy Roddy Piper R.I.P.

        2. Hyperion

          I wonder what the government were thinking when they started creating all of these unaccountable agencies, who could unleash their given power on private citizens with no authorization or oversight by anyone outside of their own? Did they never think these beast might turn on them and devour them? Well, stupid is as stupid does. It’s the same with these college administrators and leftist faculty creating a horde of little monsters. As they should have expected.

  76. Brasidas

    One of my suppliers has lost a few thousand dollars of paint from their warehouse again. Great start to a Friday.

    Warehouse management isn’t that hard, is it?

    1. How many gallons is that? And what size containers do they use at that facility?

      1. Brasidas

        Forty one-gallon pails.

        The inventory my company owns there is in quarts, gallons, five gallons, or five liters.

        1. forty?

          I figured one large container could have been the result of a miscount somewhere along the way, but that’s a lot of individual items.

        2. commodious spittoon

          “Nope, no forty-one gallon pails here.”

    2. Tundra

      Warehouse management isn’t that hard, is it?

      It is. Because people.

      1. Brasidas

        This is pretty much the reply I got from the manager at the warehouse. There seems to be some confusion about what inventory my company owns and what the supplier owns.

        Their annual inventory audit is going to be fun.

      2. mikey

        The people who work in warehouses are even more people-like.
        Former warehouse rat.

    3. R C Dean

      Probably depends on the warehouse. We have a huge off-site archived records facility (think Indiana Jones warehouse), and we can’t find shit in there. It actually comes in handy when we get subpoenas. “It could be in there somewhere. No way to know, really. Undue burden blah blah” is pretty much our version of FYTW to plaintiffs. Those archives might as well have been burned years ago.

      1. But is your archive run by Top Men?

        1. R C Dean

          Even better. Our archive is run by nobody. Its essentially a dumping ground when people run out of room to keep stuff in their office.

          Sadly, it has a pretty good fire suppression system, although now that I think about it, putting out the fire would probably ruin the records anyway.

          *Googles “Elon Musk flamethrower* Dammit. Sold out.

          1. Brasidas

            Sounds like you should update your document retention policy.

          2. R C Dean

            Why? It serves my purposes just fine.

        1. Hey! He hasn’t confirmed or denied their existance yet.

  77. The Strzok inquiry is the absolute quintessential example of DC dysfunction in action. I couldn’t think of a better microcosm encapsulating essentially everything wrong with the system. You’ve got:

    1) Creepy, sociopathic career bureaucrat lying is ass off about how he’s not a wannabe petty dictator.
    2) Republicans raining down ultimately meaningless fire and brimstone while secretly longing to be cucked.
    3) Democrats acting like spoiled children having a tantrum at the supermarket because Mom said they can’t have any more candy.
    4) Millions in taxpayer money wasted on kabuki theater.
    5) Nothing will happen, despite an Olympus Mons-sized pile of evidence that aforementioned sociopathic bureaucrat should not only lose his security clearance and be fired, but probably locked up.
    6) Life goes on, business as usual, the lack of consequences further emboldening future sociopathic bureaucrats to play tyrant.

    1. R C Dean

      The real bomb shell in that hearing was the casual mention of the fact that EVERY SINGLE FUCKING ONE of Hillary’s emails was being sent to an unnamed foreign country (but we are assured it wasn’t Russia).

      Every. Single. One. of the Secretary of State’s emails was being read by a foreign country. And nobody cares.

      1. Some of those emails contained Special Access Program information. Just mishandling that stuff is 10 years in the pen. Knowingly giving that information to a foreign entity is a Capital offense. The Rosenbergs were executed for that.

        1. AlexinCT

          This is precisely why anyone that believes or argues Hillary was not given a pass and should have instead been wearing an orange jump suit and getting a tattoo from a bull lesbian to mark Hillary as her property, because what she did was no big deal, is a moron IMO.

  78. Count Potato

    “The Rise and Decline of Black Lives Matter: A Toronto Case Study”

    https://quillette.com/2018/07/13/the-rise-and-decline-of-black-lives-matter-a-toronto-case-study/

    Black lives in Canada?

      1. commodious spittoon

        Nannies?

        I keed, I keed.

        Au pairs?

        1. Canadian immigration failings. The Quebecis wanted to shut out a lot of brown people, so they made French fluency a high point item – something the Haitians had in spades while having little of anything else, so a lot of Haitians moved to Canada before the policy changed again.

      1. The answer to this is to STOP USING THOSE FUCKING PLATFORMS. Everyone knows they’re run by leftists who have no compunction about censoring content they don’t like. Stop expecting a cat to bark and either use another platform, or create one yourself.

        1. Hyperion

          If not for being overly redundant, I’d say it’s about time for a non-leftist alternative to the media and academia.

      2. Hyperion

        She’s cute, articulate, funny, and can meme. Leftists hate that, all they got is scream incoherently about everything they disagree with. In a free market of ideas where there’s no censorship, they’d be bitch stomped so hard every day, well it just wouldn’t be fair.

        1. AlexinCT

          That is why they are making sure they are in the position to take the ball away and stop the game for the people that would curb stomp their asses.

  79. Gilmore

    ELLESBOROUGH, England (AP) — In a fresh bout of diplomatic whiplash, President Donald Trump denied Friday he had criticized Prime Minister Theresa May and declared the U.S.-U.K. relationship “the highest level of special” — not long after lobbing thunderous broadsides against her.



    Gee its almost like its a formula.

    You’d think by now they press might have caught onto Trump’s whole, “First i neg you for months, then i give you huge hugs and declare you my best friend (even if you’re a totalitarian slimeball)”-methodology

    If its so unrecognizable to the media, its probably because none of them have ever worked in business.

    Trumps whole personality is a conglomeration of tactics he picked up from a shelf-full of “100 HABITS OF THE ALPHA MALE SALES MANAGER”-self-help/business-tactics books of the 1980s

    and while that Amway-sales-psychology shit is silly and embarrassing…. *it fucking works*. with most, at least.

    If you come at people like you’re pissed off and their are possible dire consequences… but then suddenly go, “Hey! we’re best friends now”, they’re so fucking relieved that they’ll basically do whatever they can to keep things in the happy-place. They’re grateful, and they don’t even know why. Everyone feels like something good happened.

    You have no idea how many times i had meetings set up w/ clients who, right beforehand, bombarded me with 100 complaints and demanded answers to these things and warned that our relationship was at stake. I would be preparing for days in advance, panicking that some screw up in the meeting would result in huge calamity. When they arrived? They’re like, “Hey its my favorite guy” and proceed to tell their partners what an awesome person you are.

    the effect is to completely rip your legs out from under you and make you putty in their hands. They go, “forget about that other stuff, we have a new idea and we need a proposal ASAP: and it needs to be super-awesome and cost nothing, but don’t worry, even bigger things are coming”. And you give them everything they want because you’re like, “anything to keep them happy”.

    Trump is a human encyclopedia of this sort of “dumb guy psychological warfare”. Its all he knows. But the pundits and the wonks *don’t even recognize it for what it is* because they’ve literally never seen anything like it before.

    1. I hold a grudge. “Oh, Now you’re nice to me? Fuck you, asshole.”

      1. Gilmore

        The world needs back-offices too.

    2. commodious spittoon

      Trump’s not a secret genius. It’s just that nobody else realizes how dumb they are. That’s Trump’s secret genius.

      1. Gilmore

        I’m not at all suggesting he’s a genius.

        I’m suggesting he’s a moron who operates according to formulaic-rules that anyone in the corporate world would recognize as ‘well-tested sales psychology’

        1. Hyperion

          It’s not possible to be a moron and get the results he’s getting. It’s not rocket science smart, of course, but that kind of smart typically doesn’t get the results he’s getting. It makes rockets fly, but it doesn’t get other people to do what you want against their own will.

          1. Gilmore

            ok, fine – delete the “’s a moron who”

            i’m not trying to argue he’s either ‘smart’ or ‘dumb’; just that he’s a stereotype

            one of my old bosses once said (about managers/bosses) –

            “everyone has one of a few approaches to the same thing: some people manage like ‘analysts/accountants’ (constantly worried about numbers/trends, trying to measure things) , some people manage like “operations directors” (constantly worried about process + systems, getting ‘right people’ in place), some people manage like “entrepreneurs/inventors” (always having ‘big ideas’ and product innovations), some people manage like “Sales guys” (always looking for the next deal, and bullying their way through the current one)

            (i may have missed one or gotten one above wrong, but you get the idea)

            Trump is that last category. He’s just a sales guy. And nobody in the media understands sales guys. (or to the degree they do, they have contempt for them)

            They seem to think there’s only one way to ‘do politics’ and they think what he’s doing is “norm eroding”. I think there’s probably been far more people like him in politics before, just maybe not the presidency, and not in recent memory.

          2. R C Dean

            What I keep coming back to on Trump is “This is a man who made a ton of money in commercial real estate, much of it in New York. Those are famously difficult markets to survive in, much less succeed. That should tell you something about his capabilities.”

        2. commodious spittoon

          That was serious. I mean, facetious in that last bit, but my genuine thought.

    3. Hyperion

      I’m surprised no one has figured this out by now. He’s been doing the Lucy to Charlie Brown trick for nearly 2 years now to the Democrats and they all still react exactly the same way. So then he does a different trick on heads of other states, and gets the exact same results. Over and over, they never learn.

      Donald Trump is this, Donald Trump is that, he’s mean, he’s rude, he’s not nice. Well, no one is paying much attention to that, instead they’re looking at how you dummies are being played. That goes for the stoopid trifecta of May, Merkel, and the Twink of the North. He should take the three of them and crack their heads together like Moe.

      1. AlexinCT

        Donald Trump is this, Donald Trump is that, he’s mean, he’s rude, he’s not nice. Well, no one is paying much attention to that, instead they’re looking at how you dummies are being played.</e."

        And that is what is pissing this class of globalist credentialed elite douches the most. They have forever thought themselves the smartest people in the room because they went to the right schools, bought into the right marxist bullshit about social justice, and traveled all the right circles. Now along comes this orange bull-in-a-china-shop, and proceeds to totally wreck their well formed illusion/delusion by proving that everything they peddle is nonsense and in the real world it is exactly the opposite of what they peddle that works. And that is the most unforgivable crime of all. He has exposed them for the charlatans they are. And they will not only punish him – if they can – but everyone that brought Trump to power and in the process destroyed their carefully manufactured faux-reality.

    4. Mojeaux

      Always. Be. Closing.

    5. Drake

      Yes. One other big difference is that Trump does the act to get things done in the best interests of the U.S. Most of these assholes cannot conceive of that and worry only about the next election and keeping the big donors happy. Obama wanted nothing more than to be worshipped by his fellow leftists.

      So they can understand neither his methods or his motivations.

      1. Akira

        Trump does the act to get things done in the best interests of the U.S.

        So much this.

        I’m not a “rah-rah ‘Murikka” kind of guy, but it’s nice to have a president who doesn’t think of America as a welfare agency for the rest of the world.

        1. Viking1865

          The fact that the supposed American elites, the best and the brightest, the people who are supposed to be running the country with the best interests of the actual American people in mind think that “America First” is some kind of horrible fascist evil thing to say should concern people.

          If the people running the country, spending the tax dollars, sending the military into battle, passing laws and making policies aren’t guided by “America First” then what exactly are they guided by?

          1. R C Dean

            Why, their own self-interest, of course.