It’s Friday! The winter solstice is here, and for the next six months the days will get longer in the best hemisphere. Woohoo! OK, that seems like enough editorializing.
I imagine this guy couldn’t make the trains run on time either.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 launch. Cicero would have loved it.
Ignore all the BS in the article and check out these fascinating Tasmanian sea creatures.
Scientists playing god with plants!
New Horizons will fly by Ultima Thule in 10 days! And then….
Music link: On the occasion of Frank Zappa’s birthday, let go with one of the greatest live performances ever.
Bonus links: Zappa testifies in congress about record labeling, and an animated video of Frank’s business philosophy. I highly recommend this last video, even if you’re not a fan of Frank’s music.
Comments
309 responses to “Friday Afternoon Links”
I can’t think of anything funny to say and I’m too lazy to click on the links.
We don’t pay you to sit around not snarking!
We don’t pay him at all.
Post bobs?
Everyone loves bobs
Yep
Bobs
“Investigators say a 61-year-old Wisconsin man was arrested for tearing down a neighbor’s Christmas decorations while drunk and naked.
The Green Bay Gazette reports that Gregory Brannigan faces misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and resisting an officer.
A criminal complaint shows Brannigan’s neighbor called police Wednesday after to report that he was naked, kicking her door and tearing down her decorations. The neighbor told police Brannigan appeared intoxicated.
Officers say the Green Bay man was stumbling and told officers he needed to take care of supposed drug dealers in a neighbor’s apartment.”
At least he wasn’t an Eagles fan.
.21 BAC. a respectable score, at least.
Surprising, with alcohol you can be naked in winter. Not surprising, a drunk guy in Wisconsin every 15 minutes.
I would have thought it was more often than that.
I was making a funny like the Geico commercials.
He was 61, not 18. As you age, even if the body is willing, you may need a longer refractory period.
New Horizons will fly by Ultima Thule in 10 days! And then….
But can we get the probe pilot to cry on television while apologizing for his shirt?
Oh, the picture of the open wenkel engine in Mad Scientist’s author bio reminded me – what would be a good non-standard engine to use in a modular supervillain vehicle? The guy owns a number of R&D and arms manufacturing companies in a world where superscience isn’t abnormal. So suggestions?
A good non-standard engine in a world where superscience isn’t abnormal? Many possibilities. Ground vehicle, flight-capable, space-capable, FTL, what kind of parameters?
Road legal and able to hide among the crowd of notmal ICE cars.
Mr Fusion?
When this baby hits 1.3122e-7 the speed of light, you’re gong to see some serous shit.
I watched that movie with the kids last night.
Tonight, BttF 2. The kids need to see what the future was supposed to look like.
I wish Just Imagine were available on DVD.
How super is your super science? What sort of output is required for the on board systems? What are the expected threats to the vehicle and occupants? How prevalent is public surveillance? What are the mean parameters for a ‘normal’ car outer mold line?
A cold-fusion reactor powered engine.
Damn your nimble fingers!
Mentioning “super-science” was probably a mistake. I’m thinking more along the lines of “just past today’s tech but cost prohibitive to bring to mass market” rather than “world transforming tech foolishly used by one person instead of monetiszed.”
Cost prohibitive like gas turbines or cost prohibitive like small modular reactors?
closer to turbines than reactors.
If this is nearish future something like an armored Model X with a HEF powered gas turbine generator for range extension and running the Electronic Warfare suite and the solid state laser. More details re: the above questions will provide a more tailored solution.
How about a gas-turbine hybrid? Plenty of power via electric direct drive
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_C-X75
Thorium Reactor powered
https://youtu.be/pRnQFGskg9w
Incase you can’t watch video.
http://www.dukeengines.com/
It’s looks like a bored and stroked AC compressor.
It’s an interesting idea. I’m no engineer, but I assume if it’s not storming the market, there is a good reason for it.
The humidity engine doesn’t look like it puts out much torque.
The first was the one I thought could work, the other four are just for fun.
The free piston engine looks like it would make for a horribly rough ride.
It has inertia dampeners
Still, you’re going about wasting all that energy?
You could do an old hit-and-miss tractor engine. Maybe he’s got an odd nostalgic streak.
Go retro – a built Pontiac 455 with a blower then add a little something to it to make it “supersciencey.”
https://butlerperformance.com/g-21457-8-71-bds-blown-474-cu-in-pontiac-455-pushing-711hp-on-pump-gas.html
So Brock Samson’s car?
Does it need to be refueled in a mundane way? If not, you could go full nazi and use hazardous/toxic chemicals to power it.
Welp, I’ll be going kinda darkish over the holiday season – I’ll check in, but probably a not a lot of commentizing.
Many thanks to the Founders for creating this community. What a great place – fiction, how-tos, links, philosophering, all presented for us to ignore in the comments. Adds to my day, just about every day. Just an awesome little virtual community. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Have a good one. Always enjoy your insightful and knowledgeable commentary.
Who are The Founders?
Merry Christmas, dood!
Are you going to that hunting lodge again?
You too, RC.
Amen RC. Couldn’t say it any better
Merry Christmas! Hope you have a good one! See ya next year.
I’m similarly gonna be reduced in my presence. Less screen time and more hobby time for me.
Thanks RC, I echo your thoughts and couldn’t say it any better.
And extra thanks to the Founders, especially the way they got through that winter in Valley Forge to ensure our posts are on time every day.
Have a great holiday season, RC
“Ignore all the BS in the article and check out these fascinating Tasmanian sea creatures.”
Alex, I’ll take Things I Don’t Want Touching My balls for $500.
What is Lena Dunham?
Lack, you’re a funny guy. You know, Lack, funny, funny.
Funny, like a clown? Does he amuse you?
We have a winner! Shut it down.
Motherfuckers bumped my already obnoxious 16:30 meeting to 17:00 on a Friday before a holiday. And after months of waiting finally got approval from a client to do two changes, meaning I have to keep an eye on a ticket to make sure someone from the overnight shift picks it up.
It’s a Festivus Miracle!
Few things piss me off more then meeting organizers who don’t even call into their own damned meeting. Have the common courtesy to at least send a cancellation notice if you’re not going to be there.
One of mine refuses to call in 10mins ahead of the start time like we’re supposed to, then needs to ask who all is on the call….had you shown up on time, you’d know who’s joined the call already.
There comes a time to tell people to fuck off. Maybe not in those words but the message gets conveyed.
They’re above me in the chain of command, so I have to at least do ignorance. “Oh, I’m sorry, you weren’t at the last four meetings, so I figured they were just cancelled going forward.”
More than 80 firearms and three skulls found in Cannibal Corpse guitarist’s home
Depending on how those skulls were acquired, I’m not seeing what’s the issue.
What I see in common with most reports of crimes is mental illness. It is impossible to overstate the cost of mental illness both to its victims and the rest of us in society. Think of the resources we expend on cops, courts, hospitals, prisons. Think of the loss of human potential and the misery it causes.
If you break a leg people feel sorry for you and they put you in a cast. If your kidney fails people will donate their own. If your brain is broken or fails you are thrown in a cage or ostracized. It is really sad.
Generally this is because the brain is ‘unfixable’, although that is fundamentally an engineering problem. Morally I don’t think we can tolerate any kind of public authority for ‘fixing’ brains.
I think Obama was looking into doing just that.
Not that I’m opposed to manipulating choice architecture, but it wouldn’t surprise me given the administrations interest in Sunstein & Thalers work.
Eighty firearms? See now, that’s just a pedestrian effort.
More surprising is that he only had three skulls.
WTF are “Uzi-style rifles”???
*shrug*
Semi Automatic variants of sub machine guns
How did the flamethrower not make it into the headline.
“Karlie Kloss is 6’2″ But …women are shorter than men! Karlie Kloss is short, even if only in her essence, naturally. She is short and you know it. And the only reason you won’t say she’s short is because you’re stupid enough to be brainwashed by the PC police!”
https://twitter.com/HollyDunsworth/status/1076110614857220096
Holly Dunsworth, Anthropology Professor
I have no clue what point she is trying to make or who she is addressing. And looks like I’m not alone:
Dr Cathryn Townsend
@CathrynTownsend
Her point was that there’s beauty in the full range of female phenotypes even though narrowly applied beauty conventions / notions of femininity may lead one to believe otherwise. It isn’t really that contentious.
Holly Dunsworth
@HollyDunsworth
That’s not my point.
Someone comes in to bail her out of her shitheadery and she shoots them down in flames. Pretty funny.
I’m going with this:
Genocidal racism, served up on a credit card.
“We’re going cashless to keep up with the Millennial trend,” one chirpy winner says in Visa’s promotional YouTube clip. The winners value a post-cash setup because it makes for faster transactions and fewer trips to the bank, they say. “No one likes cash,” one owner concludes. “And we don’t like cash.”
Killing cash makes billions for credit-card companies. “Card swipe” fees, a roughly 1 percent charge that retailers pay to banks when shoppers pay using credit and debit cards, earned Visa and Mastercard about $43 billion last year, according to The Wall Street Journal. Shifting businesses toward “frictionless” card-only pay models is an enormous moneymaker, especially in high-volume food spots where people want to get in and get out as rapidly as possible.
It’s a quick and convenient design, and customers may not know that billions of dollars in invisible micro-charges are motivating the shift to “tap to pay” stores popping up in their neighborhood. But while the distinction between cash and money may be irrelevant to a new crop of Millennial-focused restaurant owners, some lawmakers are arguing that cashless design is classist. In November, the New York City councilman Ritchie Torres introduced a bill to ban all types of cashless retailers, Go stores, and restaurants. Similar bills have been introduced in Philadelphia and D.C. Chicago’s attempt at a ban failed.
“In some ways, making a card a requirement for consumption is analogous to making identification a requirement for voting,” Torres told Grubstreet last month. “The effect is the same: It disempowers communities of color.”
These people are totally nuts.
I won’t even do self-checkout, because I’m a luddite, but holy cow, dial it back, people. Just because “cashless” isn’t perfect for *everybody* that doesn’t mean nobody should have the option.
I do self-checkout so I don’t have to deal with the cashiers.
And I don’t mind cash because I don’t trust the government in a cashless society.
Where did this ‘black people are too incompetent to acquire ID’ nonsense come from? I would like to see these morons go to a predominantly black neighborhood and start offering to ‘help’ people get ID. They would get their asses kicked in two minutes, tops.
Yes, I’m amazed it doesn’t get called out more often, say by someone like Kanye West.
“Hey patronizing liberal assholes! We’re smart enough to get ID! We need it to buy booze and get into the hip clubs.”
And I’m sure that the overwhelming majority of minority folks have some sort of card to use at the described sites, as even bank accounts now come with visa/mc linked debit cards.
But no, the Af-Am power structure goes along with it, because they have a new way to label others as racist against them.
I’m opposed to cashless business only when it is done by the food service industry. There’s a “fast casual” BBQ place I used to frequent that did this recently, and it felt like they may as well have hung up a sign reading NO HOMELESS ALLOWED. I should make the standard libertarian disclaimer that I do not in any way condone even the notion of legislating this matter, but seeing it really bummed me out.
I love cash. Every Friday I walk two blocks and take $300 out of a cash machine. Cash is great because it’s effectively untraceable. With a credit or debit card (I do use them for Uber, Amazon and food delivery from Bite Squad) everything is traceable.
Adrian Fucking Belew. Jesus, what a great lineup that was.
I’ve seen him play with King Crimson a number of times.
I really never got into Zappa when I was a youngster.
Big mistake.
Kids, always explore outside your normal musical comfort zone.
Something outside your comfort zone for you, Tundra
I remember that.
*dry heaves*
Do you remember this?
I’ll assume it, too, is outside your comfort zone.
That might be the worst song I’ve ever heard? You must subscribe to some pretty fucked up YT channels, Ted.
I graduated from high school in 1990. I just remember some of the songs that were big on the charts in the couple of years on either side.
And it’s worse than this that I’ve posted before?
You did say people need to explore music outside their comfort zone, after all.
I did. I just don’t want anyone to be permanently scarred.
This one is a bit more approachable.
This one made me fall in love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=207pbJQNl58
I use to listen to this album constantly in college, especially this song
I have a friend who named her dog Dynamo, because she could never get him to come.
Hah! Excellent.
Thanks for the lynx, man. I’m gonna have fucking nightmares.
what would be a good non-standard engine to use in a modular supervillain vehicle?
A small turbine running an electrical generator which not only provides energy for motive power, but also runs the rail gun and lasers.
Hamsters on a treadmill.
Obviously.
Wrong, capybara.
I’m sorry, but no. Genetically-enhanced superhamsters are much easier to carry around, eat & poop less, can work as a team, and are just as strong as a single big ass capybara.
They are clearly superior in all ways, but especially as a power source in a vehicle.
“By withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan you are condemning millions of women to the Stone Age. No education, no choice about who they marry. They will become property when the Taliban takes over. Is that what you really want Ro?”
https://twitter.com/GovHowardDean/status/1075928025638813696
Howard Dean, Physician & former 6 term Gov. of Vermont.
*checks*
Nope, I don’t care anymore.
Funny how Democrats haven’t given a single fuck about women in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, or Iran in years, but all of a sudden – omg the womens!
Shut up, Dean. You didn’t care a week ago, and i don’t believe you actually care now.
And we also need to ouster the Saudi royal who finally is relaxing rules on women, because reasons.
So essentially nothing would change.
Here’s a rifle, a thousand rounds of Ammo, and a plane ticket Howie have fun.
“.@USCCRgov just issued a major new report about how the federal government is failing to meet its obligations to Native communities. We must take action. Congress could start by passing my housing bill to help end the shortage of housing in Indian Country.”
https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1076136876342501376
How?
I wonder if that bitch has ever set foot on the rez.
Given that she grew up in Oklahoma it would would be quite a feat if she hasn’t.
There are no reservations in Oklahoma.
They’d end the housing shortage if they’d let the tribes sell land.
Unfortunately, that wouldn’t solve shit. Remember that Chappelle skit about reparation money? Generations of government handouts and a complete lack of assimilation isn’t gonna be fixed with more money.
Absent picking on the general character of the red man there are plenty of people willing to build cheap apartments provided they can own the land. I know plenty of indians who’d move closer to town just so they’d have electricity but they can’t afford new land because they can’t sell their old plot to raise a down payment. The BIA and many of the tribal governments have land so locked up they’ve created a bunch of serfs for all intents and purposes. Economic development starts with the ability to alienate property and, generally speaking, if you’re an indian on the res you can’t.
They’re allowed to ground lease.
A lot of Palm Springs is tribal land.
I say it’s time to alter the deal and abolish reservations.
I agree, but what then?
Then they get the invisible hand good and hard.
We all live under the same laws?
Of course, but I’d give odds that the average immigrant from the hills of Laos would acclimate faster than most from the rez.
It’s a weird, sad place.
You got to break the cycle some way.
I agree. Private property would definitely be a good start.
How could they possibly do that without special permission to open a casino and sell fireworks????
They get a choice, they can become independent nations and set up national borders at the edge of the Rez at which point they are no longer our concern. Or they become normal Americans governed by the states and federal laws like everyone else and the Tribe becomes nothing more than a cultural club like the Ancient order of Hibernians
The reservations should be turned into private land.
Correct, along with all federal lands.
How!
A smallish group I know from high school (the one I was kicked out of) are getting together tonight. Can’t decide whether to go or not….
I did that recently and it was a blast. Turns out they have turned into really interesting people.
Wait, you were also kicked out of high school? We need to swap stories…
Me too, but you couldn’t pay me to hand around with the assholes I went to school with.
I was out of dress code more than I was in it. Catholic school.
/unzips
Go on…
Sounds interesting. Pics?
I couldn’t wait to leave HS and cant imagine why I would want to go see those people again.
Earlier this year I was going to be back in my hometown area on business and decided to go to my 40th high school reunion which coincidentally was happening at the time — the first HS reunion I’ve ever attended. I was stunned to see that the same cliques were in place and impenetrable. I caught up with some old friends but never had a word with any of the ‘popular’ people from 1978, I guess I’ll never be good enough for them!
Yeah, that will be the last one I go to, I’m actually surprised I even went, I had never gone in the past because I imagined it would be exactly that way. And now I know for sure.
I guess I missed my 30th this year. Oh well. I still get emails every year – or I did until I ditched FB a couple weeks ago.
I’ve got the twentieth coming up, but unless I just haven’t been invited we’ve never actually had a class reunion.
I hit my first reunion at the 25th. All the old cliques were gone, a lot of kids weren’t there which may have been a factor. I had a great time, exchanging stories, getting caught up on families. Year by year the class has been reduced and the last formal one, the 60th, has come and gone. I doubt that we’ll have any more other than get-togethers of the 8-10 left locals. I have assumed the role of class historian, all gossip goes through me for dissemination. We’ll have a fall meet up at my house, open house type when we harvest the honey. That has become a sort of class reunion.
Never been to my class reunions. Graduated in 1987. I’m still friends with my best friend/like a brother from high school. My other good friend lives in San Diego and we hang out all the time. Everybody else from high school can fuck right off. Not interested.
Hamsters on a treadmill.
Genetically engineered superhamsters?
What other kind are there?
Miniature giant space hamsters.
thicc?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-6521399/Demi-Rose-flaunts-buxom-bust-washboard-stomach-revealing-two-piece-London-salon.html
Pre-diabetic.
I do self-checkout so I don’t have to deal with the cashiers.
I don’t know, maybe I should try it again (my prior brush with self checkout was an infuriating clusterfuck which was far worse than standing in line). I must say I find pay-at-the-pump… liberating, to say the least.
It depends on what you are buying. If the items have bar codes that are easy to locate, self-checkout is the way to go. If I’m buying bulk items like fruits or vegetables, then I go to the normal line.
I always buy the same produce, so it’s quick.
Every weekend, 4889, 4693, 4087, 3412, 4608, and 4048.
Enjoy the recipe.
Those are the exact dimensions of the great pyramid at Giza multiplied by the phone booth at the southeast end of Piccadilly Circus!
Not the phone booth with the secret trapdoor to the vault with the original Magna Carta that has a map to the Templar’s gold treasure on the back?
No, the other one.
I wonder if those are industry wide numbers?
Yes.
The produce is labeled at the farm regardless of where it is shipped.
If you look up those numbers, you’ll figure out what I make every Friday during football season.
Artichoke, Roma tomatoes, bulk Velveeta, Freestone peaches, Meyer lemons, and a bunch of celery?
You actually got one of them right.
You forgot the Ro-Tel canned diced tomatoes to mix into the Velveeta.
“Queso Dip”.
Popular in Big Ten country tailgates, coming soon to Manhattan Beach!
So, my wife has a kickass queso recipe. She gets envious comments every time she makes it, and it may be one of the reasons I married her. After marrying her, I asked for the recipe, expecting some sort of ancient family recipe. Nope! It’s Velveeta and rotel in a slow cooker.
Welcome to the midwest. 🙂
Since they made us buy bags, self check out is the only way. I bag in the order I want, and size doesn’t matter, just leave me alone.
Cash or credit
I asked one of the cashiers at CVS why they got rid of the self-checkouts there. I was expecting “oh the union wanted it taken out” or words to that effect. But she said it was the opposite, too much staff. Because people are generally so pathetic at self-checkout, needing help all the time, the store was having to double the staff — one cashier (who has to be there, to handle liquor in particular, since you can’t do that self-checkout in CA), and a person monitoring the self-checkout. So they went back to mostly one cashier on duty and ripped out the kiosks.
Do you know the story behind the alcohol law? It’s incredibly infuriating, and yet another example of how our state is fucked.
Tell us, papa Manhattan! Tell us!
It was intended to put Fresh and Easy of business because their employees weren’t members of the UFCW union. It succeeded.
They held a press conference/protest in front of one of the flagship stores. I happened to be there. The union leaders and “community organizers” claimed that kids were using self checkout to buy booze and it had to stop.
Do you know how many times the entire Fresh and Easy organization was cited for selling alcohol to minors that year? 3. 3 times, and they had over 100 stores.
Do you know how many times my local Ralphs was cited for selling alcohol to minors that same year? 11. One store, 11 times in a year.
The law still passed, and now there’s an empty building where my Fresh and Easy used to be.
Everyone should love Frank Zappa. The man was a genius.
“Freakout” is one of the best albums of the 20th Century.
From his more palatable music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=girnJH7tvpM
To his stranger stuff (cameo by Captain Beefheart): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpNn1nht0_8
Can’t leave off this Zappa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmcYTShN4Fk
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SLEDes1HyBM
????
Greetings from rainy central North Carolina. I love it here. Need to find a way to move back (note: I’ve said this every Christmas for the last decade).
A little under 7 and a half hours until the “government shutdown”. Which would be a positive if, you know, anything actually was shut down.
NC is pretty
Yes, I’d move there too but my fat ass would be even more challenged.
Challenged how?
Too much good food.
Ah
I’m for the “shutdown..not a shutdown” and I’m a expected employee working with the FAA. I have to forgo my leave and that is okay. This shit has gone on long enough.
My wife socks away enough money in our emergency fund so those sad stories of ‘think of the federal worker!’ do not apply to my family.
It is also why I have been slowly diversifying my experiance and knowledge for over the past 5-10 years.
I wish my job was private, but alas the government has a strangle hold on it.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas
I’ve been in Raleigh for a year and a half, and I love it. Merry Christmas!
The latest talking point being thrown around by progs on social media is that Trump totally ruined the economy. I have no idea where these people get this stuff at this point.
People believe what they want to believe. It’s really that simple. They hate him, so it must be his fault.
Sure, I can understand the impulse to blame everything on him, but there isn’t even an “it” in this particular example. Apparently there no longer enough maladies for which he can be made responsible so they feel inclined to just invent some at this point.
From the Russians?
It’s also the 40th anniversary of the arrest of John Wayne Gacy.
Good Christmas cheer right there
Well… yes. He got arrested. That’s good, right?
Sung to tune of “Another Brick in the Wall”
A birthday clown who did construction,
He liked to dig just like a mole.
Hey! Gacy! Leave those kids alone!
All in all it’s just another kid in the crawl.
We don’t need no excavation,
Just leave us in this basement hole.
It’s too late for resuscitation,
In a million years we’ll turn to coal.
/parody song by Chicago DJ Steve Dahl from that time
The guy they renamed the Orange County airport in honor of?
The Mexican general?
OT: one of the better videos on the differences of giving and receiving in Japanese.
https://youtu.be/bXkMdHOlvpw
The nice thing about Misa is she gives context to the grammar. Usually my teachers have trouble explaining this and you have to pick it by context and learning by example.
Misa maka Misa wanna maka da boom boom- If I were Jar Jar
Very nice, thank you!
Christmas in Japan is the best. It’s like walking through a live action Miracle on 34th St.
Also, what CPRM said, except I’d like a Misa-Risa tutor sando.
The big date day aspect of it I always thought strange. It’s more like Valentine’s Day in that respect.
Yes, but the lead up is just conventional Christmas imagery minus any religious aspect.
The 40th anniversary of the Chicago Police being 2 years late in arresting John Wayne Gacy.
(And the fucker lived in the part of town where half the goddamned cops live.)
We need a new secretary of defense that will restrain Trump from…..ending more wars? Respectable opinion is becoming more and more Orwellian with its nonsense
What happened to Mr. Cleese…sigh
His brain’s pining for the fjords.
He relies on academia for a portion of his income. Giving those people what they want.
I’ll pretend I never saw that.
Did it take Clesse 8 years to figure out how to tap the send button?
Cleese. It only took me a minute to figure out my gaffe.
After the ‘Kavanaugh ran a gang rape club’ circus absolutely nothing they say will surprise me. They just make shit up out of thin air and every time they do they push the bounds a little further.
My cops brother immediately jumped on, “Trump isn’t ending anything, he’s just turning Syria over to Blackwater”
Not sure what to make of that…….
The latest talking point being thrown around by progs on social media is that Trump totally ruined the economy. I have no idea where these people get this stuff at this point.
That’s weird. I just saw something in the last day or two about how Obama’s economy was making Trump look good. I don’t know what to believe, anymore.
OT microrant:
Good, fast, cheap. Pick any two.
My rant: if you’re going to send an inspector to my house, freaking let me know so I can be home.
To hide all of the stuff he’s not supposed to see?
To unplug the grow-light extension cord he runs to the elderly neighbor’s garage.
Correct. Also to put the pit bulls away.
That happened to us, only the guy walked past my office window, scared the shit out of me, and I confronted him and questioned his presence on my property.
Today’s gem was a guy who told me nobody could or would touch his project. “Nightmare,” was the word used. Well, I specialize in nightmares. I gave him my quote. It’s 4x what he was willing to pay (I didn’t know that).
“Everybody else quoted me x.”
“Yeah, except you said nobody else could or would do it.”
“Well, what’s your turnaround time?”
“Two weeks.”
“Oh, that’s a lot farther out than I want.”
Me: Silence.
“Let me think about that.”
Yeah, you do that, pal.
So he wants cheap and fast.
That can be done.
Clown
Hard pass.
He just accepted my terms. Nightmares #FTW
Uh, congrats? ?
I’ll let you know when it’s all wrapped up.
Absolutely. 4X what everyone else was gonna charge FTW! WOOT!!!
Get some $$ up front?
I get half up front.
Stories like this make my day. 🙂
I will confess I was feeling pretty shitty and down on myself all day, but this helped redeem it somewhat.
I had a former client who always wanted to choose fractions that added up to 2.
When did I hire you?
1997, apparently.
I worked for him for 3 years before I want out on my own and kept him as a client for another dozen years after that.
I don’t go for that. You need to balance between the three. “good enough” “fast enough” and “cheap enough” are not so mutually exclusive.
Technically, that is correct, but it isn’t the way to discuss it. I cant really give you 0.3 fast. I don’t even know what that means.
.3 fast?
Thats about 4 beers deep and at least one browser tab open with glibertarians.com.
“Fast enough” is not an option when you’ve got a full slate of clients who paid half up front and want their stuff when you promised it.
That’s why you always quote more time than it will actually take. Makes you seem impressive when you actually get done on time.
“That’s your time estimate? Okay I’ll find someone else. Thank you for your quote.”
Ok. Bye.
At least it’s amicable.
Correct. That’s a “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”
The people who want to negotiate end up being the most demanding and pissy.
That’s one of those things I learned too late in life. Negotiating is fine, that’s business, nothing to take personally. As long as one side pays and the other side delivers. In the end the negotiating time is always rolled into the price.
““good enough” “fast enough” and “cheap enough” are not so mutually exclusive.”
In reality the buyer either always believes he presented you with that without having enough information. Or the buyer is lying about at least one of them.
You’re cheap, and good in the sack. The fact that you’re not fast is a bonus. :-p
Oh, honey, I may be easy, but I ain’t cheap.
*hides Red Lobster gift card*
*pulls out Capital Grill gift card*
Hi.
*pulls out Ruth’s Chris gift card AND a box of chocolates*
Allo, sailor!
Pick 2 if you are lucky. Most of the time you really only get one
Good, fast, cheap. Pick any two.
“It’s gotta be perfect.”
“Ten grand up front, nonrefundable. I’ll let you know when I need more. Probably next week. Don’t plan on having it any time in the foreseeable future.”
Is your Warboner deflating? Kick back, relax and let the AEI lovingly caress it for you:
https://www.aei.org/publication/the-islamic-state-is-not-defeated-in-syria-or-anywhere-else-look-at-africa/
Not Africa! What about the chirrens?
All the neocon whining is inflating my antiwar boner to a level that’s almost painful really. I’m scabbing up over here.
What a shame. Let the Africans deal with it.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria was made hastily, without consulting his national security team or allies, and over strong objections from virtually everyone involved in the fight against the Islamic State group, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.
Erdogan is the nicest most reliable guy, he should really be our best friend.
One man with the law on his side is a majority.
All the “unnamed sources” in that article seem to be unaware of who’s the Commander in Fucking Chief around here.
What a shame. Let the Turks deal with it.
Internecine warfare on la Plantation Progressif
This summer, at the Aspen Ideas Festival, I was on a panel with Brittney Cooper, the African American professor and author of the much loved book Eloquent Rage. She spoke at length and with vehemence about the realities of intersectional feminism. In the audience were many white women who had paid serious money for the chance to attend the session, and whose breathless excitement at Cooper’s oratory made Felicia Bernstein look like a cool-eyed purveyor of realpolitik.
Cooper explained that because of intersectionality, “now we can confront white women to say, ‘Your feminism is suspect if the only thing you want to do is use these social movements so that you can have access to the power that white men have. That’s not what we’re fighting for.’” There was a frisson of excitement in the audience, and she continued, explaining, “White women don’t want to change the fundamental paradigm of race and gender in this country; they want to exploit it so that they can gain access to the power that white men have. White women live in the house with white men, they were raised by white men, they raise white men—and what they want is to be able to rule the world like white men do.”
I thought of Cooper’s remarks about white husbands and white sons when I heard of Gillibrand’s “worries” about the three white men who are currently front-runners for the Democratic nomination. If there’s anything intersectional feminism has no time for, it’s white men—which must have seemed politically useful to her in the moment. According to the intersectional framework, white men aren’t part of the problem—they are the problem. The desperate attempt of progressive young white women to kick free from their shameful racial heritage by emphasizing the taxonomic distinction of gender is responsible for much of the most incendiary language about white men: They are trash, monsters, simultaneously bumbling incompetents and the soul of evil itself.
Senator Sorority Girl gets called out for her white privilege. With any luck, they’ll all turn on each other like sharks in a feeding frenzy, and the carrion eaters will clean up the mess.
I just can’t understand how you can live hating everyone and everything.
White women don’t want to change the fundamental paradigm of race and gender in this country; they want to exploit it so that they can gain access to the power that white men have. White women live in the house with white men, they were raised by white men, they raise white men—and what they want is to be able to rule the world like white men do.
I can’t say that she has a wholly incorrect take on feminism.
White men are truly the most corrupting force on the planet.
I wonder what method they’d use to murder us white guys if they had the power to do so. You just know they would.
Dunno, but I have a plentiful supply of .308 surprises for anyone who wishes to try.
Kill us with the tedium of intersectional word salads and impotent self-righteous rage.
Induced suicide then?
“Pass me one of those .308’s please”
So, like many accomplished, progressive white women who are enchanted by the rhetoric and possibility of personal gain offered by feminist intersectional theory, Gillibrand has embraced an ideology that she assumes allows for a special carve-out for the very special venture capitalists of this world—the sensitive ones, who are promoting right think to their sons, even as they create the kind of ironclad wills and trusts that secure their pampered futures. She assumes, also, that if she inculcates these good values in her sons—whom she obviously loves deeply—they, too, will be spared come the revolution. They won’t.
Good. Get it right out there in the open. If you’re not one of us, you’re the enemy. Bow down before our righteous wrath.
That article is one of the most evil things I’ve read in a while.
I literally burst out laughing.
I like how a bitch with the last name “Flanagan” thinks she’s totes justified in thumbing her nose at Gillibrand for being too white to embrace intersectionality. It’s a truly monumental lack of self-awareness.
She’s one of the good whites.
they [won’t] be spared come the revolution.
Neither will you, sweetie. Neither will you.
I’m not exactly quaking in my boots listening to narcissistic self-avowed victims with a virulent fear of guns promising the coming revolution. They’re the political equivalent of Milton from Office Space, only they never actually burn down the office. They pen bitchy screeds for third-rate websites and wonder why they keep running off the men in their lives.
Agreed. They are the Milli Vanilli of revolutionaries.
Union screws members. News at 11,literally.
https://boston.cbslocal.com/2018/12/20/i-team-seasonal-ups-workers-entire-paychecks-teamsters-union/
“UPS says the union reinstated the payment plan after it collected all of the fees and dues.”
Well, that was kind of them.
White men are truly the most corrupting force on the planet.
To be sure, the world would be a matriarchal paradise of gamboling and peaceful co-operation without us.
Bringing home some of the troops has driven the pols mad. I love it. What assholes all of them.
I haven’t seen one news cast where they interviewed someone (or someone’s family) who has been deployed several times about what he or she thinks of the pull out.
I was never deployed and now my son is old enough to fight in the same battle as I signed up for…bout fucking time to leave that shit hole.
It’s almost like they don’t care.
HOT TAKE FLOW CHART:
1. Conceive “hot take”
2. Does this take GET TRUMP?
2a. If not, return to 1.
2b. If yes, proceed to 3.
3. GET TRUMP.
fin.
Sigh, just found some time to say, HELL YEAH SUGARFREE!
That was great, now we wait to see if The Real Donald will also find the true meaning of Warboner by the 25th.
The wall is whatever but you would think the Repubs would capitalize on the fact that Dems are holding out on 5 billion…that’s a bullshit study in some university. I guess that’s that Pres. Trump is hoping to pine on?
The average DC area federal employee costs over 100,000 dollars per year in compensation. There are over 350,000 federal employees in the DC area alone.
Fire 50,000 of them. There’s your 5 billion.
Broken tips .
You know who else had a similar complaint ?
Dammit SPACE SMITH!
SPACE SMITH LEAVE URANUS LOPSIDED FOR MILLENNIA TO COME
LOL!!!
And in other Space Smith news …
That is one painful-looking artist’s conception.
He always going after Uranus
Ok, that was just bad.
They should just change the planet’s name completely.
Bullshit. Both pronunciations are valid, and I never heard the latter one before we became a country of prudish busybodies terrified of the slightest off-color word or phrase.
No lie, we used to live on Uranus Terrace in San Francisco.
Across the street from us was a nice gay couple who hosted the Neighborhood Watch committee. Their address was 69 Uranus.
I’m thinking they had to pay extra in closing just to maintain that address.
I had a housemate in the first year there, who made it his personal quest to come up with the best line about our little street.
He finally settled on:
“I was so drunk last night I had to crawl up Uranus to get home.”
I was once gifted an old high school astronomy textbook from the early nineteenth century. Back then, the outer planets were called Jupiter, Saturn and Herschel.
William Herschel was the original discoverer of planet Uranus, right around the time of the American Revolution IIRC.
I know that. I just think it sounds funny to my modern ears. Put me on the list to reinstate Pluto as a planet and rename it Tombaugh.
Nothing worse than a lopsided anus. Your poop comes out at an angle.
just need to shim your toilet to compensate
One of our commenters had surgery for that.
He denies how it happened.
Swedish discrimination ombudsman heavily fines and sanctions man-only music festival.
Oh wait, sorry. That should read:
Swedish discrimination ombudsman slaps “male-free” festival on wrist because “no real harm done”
Actually… I don’t give a bleep about your little hate-fest but you left the identity-politics regime (which you never expected to be turned against you) no other choice.
“The event’s organisers said in a Facebook post that they are “too busy changing the world” to respond.”
That pretty much sums up every progressive I know.
Flathead Valley, Montana crime update .
/sighs wistfully. Damn I miss Montana
#metoo
Shame the DNC cant do that in Iowa, amirite ?
Dick move, 12:23.
The little bastard wouldn’t share.
2:18 p.m. A Columbia Falls business owner reported that a rather bold shoplifter was making numerous trips into his store to steal items.
2:47 p.m. A Columbia Falls resident threatened to decapitate someone.
Possibly related incidents.
“I’ll keep him from ruining his life by calling the cops so they can ruin his life!”
I’d like to think all the Kalispell calls were for the same guy.