Hangover food, and this is actually painful.
Old Man With Hangover Food. No idea of what he’s going to do with that roach clip.
Hangover food and please beat those children, they’re making my hair hurt.
Hangover foo… wait. Don’t. Just don’t.
Hangover food, and this is actually painful.
Old Man With Hangover Food. No idea of what he’s going to do with that roach clip.
Hangover food and please beat those children, they’re making my hair hurt.
Hangover foo… wait. Don’t. Just don’t.
Comments
414 responses to “There’s Got To Be A Morning After Links”
There’s Got To Be A Morning After Links
You just want to see Nonnie in her hot-pants.
Umm… Yeah
I sense a theme.
Appropriation?
That one clip is painful, and I’m not hungover.
I’m not hungover; I’m just hung.
And they wuz right!
On the road to AL from VA this morning to pick spawn #1 up from grandmom’s. Thank Zarsoz for y’all to keep me entertained.
4 drinks and no hangover! It’s hit or miss nowadays.
Any of y’all from Northern AL?
Keep the kid safe from Roy Moore.
My family is from Winston County. My mother still lives there.
It’s about halfway between Birmingham and Florence. I think they recently installed a traffic light.
Happy Fucking New Year.
They just keep coming. Better than the alternative, I guess.
Better words never spoken.
…
Yeah, it’s cold here too.
Maybe somebody unplugged his heating rock?
We needed the outlet for the extra lighting at the celebration. Used to be the lamps would provide enough heat. Damn these LEDs.
EVEN TRUE DOMINEERING SPECIES SUFFER HANGOVERS
As I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling at 3:45, I thought of another movie for the list.
The Loved One.
\If you’ve seen it, you know. If you haven’t seen it…
What list? The movie post from last week?
in Romania one type of hangover food is a very very sour ciorba (which is what I had)
In Soviet Russia over hang you!
Bacon, eggs, toast, coffee, and a shot of Tabasco sauce to clear my head is my go to hangover breakfast.
So sad
The threats began last December, when Drexel University professor George Ciccariello-Maher tweeted that all he wanted for Christmas was white genocide.
This week, he resigned, after a year of enduring unrelenting harassment and death threats for his controversial tweets, he said.
“After a year of harassment by right-wing, white supremacist media outlets and internet mobs, after death threats and threats of violence directed against me and my family, my situation has become unsustainable,” he wrote in a statement on Facebook.
—————-
In his Facebook post addressing his resignation, Ciccariello-Maher said tenured faculty should defend all faculty members from attacks by the far right and white supremacists.
“Only then can we build campus solidarities that transcend such artificial boundaries among faculty — and beyond, to campus workers and students as well — solidarities that will be the last line of defense in what is today a losing battle for universities,” he wrote.
Go ahead. Go full Commie. That will engender sympathy.
He’s openly advocating for the violent deaths of hundreds of millions. What did he expect?
He thought he was the right Top Man.
But the real important fact is that he received threats over the internet. And nobody should be allowed to speed hatred over the internet.
Oh, wait…. I think I see the problem here….
But they shouldn’t defend people like Milo Yiannopoulos.
“We are not identical, he is black on the left side”.
“This week, he resigned, after a year of enduring unrelenting harassment and death threats for his controversial tweets, he said.”
con·tro·ver·sial
ˌkäntrəˈvərSHəl,ˌkäntrəˈvərsēəl/
adjective
giving rise or likely to give rise to public disagreement.
There is public disagreement over whether or not whites should be genocided?
Sadly, there is. The Academics say they should, sane people say they should not.
C’mon, it was clearly satirical. Now if someone tweeted about a black genocide (or even one black guy getting punched) that would absolutely be foh real serious and we should probably just go straight to the guillotine.
Don’t forget that this guy was no one hit wonder:
Let’s see some proof of those threats. I wonder, if they actually exist, how many are false flags.
Ah, the schadenfreude continues into 2018. I approve.
“Only then can we build campus solidarities that transcend such artificial boundaries among faculty”
Engender solidarity through genocide!
I still haven’t seen any evidence of true threats. Then again, when Bill Kristol is literally Hitler, words lose all meaning.
What a wonderful thing to wake up to on a brand new year.
There may be more to this story than he reveals. I wasn’t the only alumnae who sent Drexel a note along with my zero annual contribution.
I wonder if the prof would call for “faculty solidarity” if a libertarian economics professor tweated “abolish the welfare state?”
Yes, yes he would demand solidarity in condemning and burning the witch.
What list? The movie post from last week?
Si.
I think SP said she might distill it into a permanent resource.
It’s linked under Entertainment above.
Yes, thanks. We have already used it twice to find something to watch.
Keep adding to it! 🙂
I added one earlier.
Been listening to a heart to heart among my in laws all night. I don’t know what they’re saying, but I simply agree with my brother in law. He’s the type of guy that lets stuff go until there’s a problem and the puts his foot down. They ask for my opinion and I just say, “I agree with him.”
Awkward, or what?
One time the hubs and I were at a party with old friends, who decided to argue the _whole_ night long, so it seemed. So my mission that night was to entertain them by how intoxicated I could be. I ended up showing a lot of people my bra, did a bra comparison with the arguing wife, and then went to show off part a scar on my lower abs… the room became very quiet. I think the arguing wife and I were the only females at the party, too.
The tactic worked though, they stopped arguing.
Not arguing. Family stuff is always a mess. I wish I had a bra to distract them with.
Got it.
What’s stopping you from getting one?
Were they afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Happy New Year, Glibs!
I was out for a whille.
What did I miss?
Turns out everyone is Tulpa.
I am, you are, he is, we are all together
Tulpa is what we do together.
goo goo g’joob.
Happy New Year!
Miss? Lots of people got drunk last night.
Welcome back…Tulpa.
*narrows gaze*
Happy New Year, Slammer. Welcome back!
He’s openly advocating for the violent deaths of hundreds of millions. What did he expect?
It was a JOKE, you troglodyte. He was merely turning overwrought white supremacists’ hysterical rhetoric back on them, ironically.
That’s what he says, so it must be true. He’s a college professor.
That would make sense if, you know, all white people were white supremacists.
Who’s hungover?
I’m just fine.
#meToo – I have moderation down pretty well (though it took me enough years)
Not hungover. Just sleepy. Gonna take a nap.
neither hungover or sleepy but then again went to bed at 22 local time. Yesterday I drank 2 beers, on bottle of wine and two scotches though, but it was spread out over the entire day so no hangover today, I did take a ibuprofen preventive before going to sleep.
I’m fine. I partied alone so I had full control of the contents of my glass.
I contrived to disinter myself from the winter-wonderland-scape long enough to get to the cat food store, yesterday. So I got that going for me.
Plus, the temp is apparently on the plus range. Heat wave comin’.
We’re going to hit 20 today. Not enough to unfreeze my windows and remove the ice building up on the inside, alas.
What a morning. It’s 9 whole degrees outside. I’m at work. The plant has been shut down for several days. Our task for today is to get all the water systems up and running. This ought to be a hoot. We have miles and miles of piping in this place and hundreds of valves. I can guarantee you some of them are fozen. Today will be the day of the torch.
-6 here, but I don’t have to defrost a foundry
-2 here. It’s warming up!
wait what does electricity have to do with water pipes?
Torch != Flashlight
Torch == blowtorch
Oh I forgot Euros get taught the wrong form of English, thank you.
Aren’t you the guy with all-electric heating? I know this next part is a bit hard to grasp, but when a building gets too cold, the water in pipes can freeze.
huh? you talking to me?
Sometimes.
Nothing at all really. My job title is electrician and that’s what I specialize in. My actual job is to make this Mill run, no matter what the issue is. Today, it’s frozen pipes. Tomorrow it might be burned up wiring, or hydraulic valves not shifting, or a mechanical failure that can’t be fixed on the fly, but can be compensated for by rewriting the machine programming to compensate for it, or motors burned up, or a million other things. Some days I carry a screwdriver and a meter, some days I carry a sledge hammer and an acetylene torch.
*upgrades Lachowsky’s Man Card*
You should take a sledgehammer and acetylene torch into work…maybe that will get things moving your way!
it’s all pretty simple
http://imgur.com/DqD1b6c
Budweiser?
Not generically bland enough for your taste?
Unfortunately, WD-40, JB Weld and Duck tape are all verboten in the cleanroom. And no wooden handles on the hammers.
There is public disagreement over whether or not whites should be genocided?
The real question is “If?” it’s “Which ones?”.
Chester P Moneybags had better watch his six.
Still no winter in sight in old Bucharest, another 12 degree day.
Looking at this anomaly map though, there be a lot of cold purple in the States and lotsa hot red on Europe, proving once more Europe is better. Do not put your tongue stuck poles would be my advice.
http://models.weatherbell.com/climate/ncep_cfsr_t2m_anom.png
No wonder you Euros have so many people fooled into believing global warming.
D’oh. …real question is NOT “If?”
The Washington Examiner posted an article featuring a list of Trump’s accomplishments over the last year. I’m curious to see what everyone agrees or disagrees with on the list. (Other than the combatting opioids section, I’m sure no one here will agree with that one). http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/year-one-list-81-major-trump-achievements-11-obama-legacy-items-repealed/article/2644159
Justice announced grants of $98 million to fund 802 new cops.
That one is no good.
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Monday, January 01, 2018
WASHINGTON SECRETS
Year One List: 81 major Trump achievements, 11 Obama legacy items repealed
by Paul Bedard | Dec 21, 2017, 1:04 PM Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Email this article Share on LinkedIn Print this article
With the passage of the GOP tax bill this week, the Trump administration has scored 81 major achievements in its first year, making good on campaign promises to provide significant tax cuts, boost U.S. energy production, and restore respect to the United States, according to the White House.
And along the way, President Trump even outdid his own expectations and slashed at least 11 major legacy items of former President Barack Obama, including cracking down on the open border, slowing recognition of communist Cuba and effectively killing Obamacare by ending the mandate that everyone have health insurance or face a tax.
Al Franken should skip the ethics probe and resign over sexual misconduct
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According to the White House, the 81 accomplishments are in 12 major categories and include well over 100 other minor achievements.
The unofficial list helps to counter the impression in the mainstream media and among congressional Democrats that outside the approval of Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch and passage of the tax reform bill little was done.
Administrations typically tout their achievements broadly at the end of each year, but Trump plans to list jobs added, regulations killed, foreign policy victories won, and moves to help veterans and even drug addicts.
And in a sign of support for conservatives, the White House also is highlighting achievements for the pro-life community.
Below are the 12 categories and 81 wins cited by the White House.
Jobs and the economy
Passage of the tax reform bill providing $5.5 billion in cuts and repealing the Obamacare mandate.
Increase of the GDP above 3 percent.
Creation of 1.7 million new jobs, cutting unemployment to 4.1 percent.
Saw the Dow Jones reach record highs.
A rebound in economic confidence to a 17-year high.
A new executive order to boost apprenticeships.
A move to boost computer sciences in Education Department programs.
Prioritizing women-owned businesses for some $500 million in SBA loans.
Killing job-stifling regulations
Signed an Executive Order demanding that two regulations be killed for every new one creates. He beat that big and cut 16 rules and regulations for every one created, saving $8.1 billion.
Signed 15 congressional regulatory cuts.
Withdrew from the Obama-era Paris Climate Agreement, ending the threat of environmental regulations.
Signed an Executive Order cutting the time for infrastructure permit approvals.
Eliminated an Obama rule on streams that Trump felt unfairly targeted the coal industry.
Fair trade
Made good on his campaign promise to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Opened up the North American Free Trade Agreement for talks to better the deal for the U.S.
Worked to bring companies back to the U.S., and companies like Toyota, Mazda, Broadcom Limited, and Foxconn announced plans to open U.S. plants.
Worked to promote the sale of U.S products abroad.
Made enforcement of U.S. trade laws, especially those that involve national security, a priority.
Ended Obama’s deal with Cuba.
Boosting U.S. energy dominance
The Department of Interior, which has led the way in cutting regulations, opened plans to lease 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling.
Trump traveled the world to promote the sale and use of U.S. energy.
Expanded energy infrastructure projects like the Keystone XL Pipeline snubbed by Obama.
Ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to kill Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
EPA is reconsidering Obama rules on methane emissions.
Protecting the U.S. homeland
Laid out new principles for reforming immigration and announced plan to end “chain migration,” which lets one legal immigrant to bring in dozens of family members.
Made progress to build the border wall with Mexico.
Ended the Obama-era “catch and release” of illegal immigrants.
Boosted the arrests of illegals inside the U.S.
Doubled the number of counties participating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement charged with deporting illegals.
Removed 36 percent more criminal gang members than in fiscal 2016.
Started the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program.
Ditto for other amnesty programs like Deferred Action for Parents of Americans.
Cracking down on some 300 sanctuary cities that defy ICE but still get federal dollars.
Added some 100 new immigration judges.
Protecting communities
Justice announced grants of $98 million to fund 802 new cops.
Justice worked with Central American nations to arrest and charge 4,000 MS-13 members.
Homeland rounded up nearly 800 MS-13 members, an 83 percent one-year increase.
Signed three executive orders aimed at cracking down on international criminal organizations.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions created new National Public Safety Partnership, a cooperative initiative with cities to reduce violent crimes.
Accountability
Trump has nominated 73 federal judges and won his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
Ordered ethical standards including a lobbying ban.
Called for a comprehensive plan to reorganize the executive branch.
Ordered an overhaul to modernize the digital government.
Called for a full audit of the Pentagon and its spending.
Combatting opioids
First, the president declared a Nationwide Public Health Emergency on opioids.
His Council of Economic Advisors played a role in determining that overdoses are underreported by as much as 24 percent.
The Department of Health and Human Services laid out a new five-point strategy to fight the crisis.
Justice announced it was scheduling fentanyl substances as a drug class under the Controlled Substances Act.
Justice started a fraud crackdown, arresting more than 400.
The administration added $500 million to fight the crisis.
On National Drug Take Back Day, the Drug Enforcement Agency collected 456 tons.
All those suck.
Damn it. I accidentally copied the whole article. Please disregard this comment.
Alright, never mind then.
Neil Gorsuch, lobbying ban, and an audit of Pentagon spending suck? Arresting MS-13 gang members sucks? Ending DACA sucks?
DACA hasn’t ended, and the illegals are still here.
Well, it does say “started” the end of DACA. So obviously, not yet complete.
please see above comment. I fucked up and accidently copied the whole article. I meant to just copy the shit about the warring in the middle east for that post.
If we take out ones where his connection is tenuous, then take out the ones that are purely symbolic, then take out the ones that are more police state expansion, then take out the ones which are more Forever War expansion… the list becomes mighty slim.
He has been status quo on war. Better than average on the economy. Better than I could have expected at shrinking the administrative state.
As shitty as everyone else on drugs.
Depends on your viewpoint on immigration.
Great at appointing judges.
I have lived almost the entirety of my life under clinton, bush, and obama. He is better than those guys and way better the Hrod.
You know what I’ve noticed? A few people can’t grasp that I can both not like the man but still think he’s doing a good job.
This, I got kick of my conservative father and his Trumpster buddies defending Don on all counts, It wasn’t enough that his ideas might be good for America he had to be a great guy as well. My opinion that he’s a douche bag means I think he cant govern well, l got tired of explaining that a douche bag might be a decent president, no reason to pretend he’s a saint.
Totally agree with this. Trump has been way better than I expected him to be. Certainly not a libertarian wetdream, but very solid. Certainly the best president of my (admittedly short) lifetime.
This looks like a new college grad trying desperately to pad his resume.
Worked to increase defense spending
sucks
It does, but mostly because it means we aren’t scaling down to defense as opposed to world police. Until the mission changes, even I must admit we need to fund better to actually do the mission. But NO FUCKING POLITICIANS will actually talk about the fucking MISSION. No baby, it’s globo-cop at the President’s discretion!
It’s actually kinda funny reading about how we need a “third offset”. The first offset was nuclear deterrence; the second was a collection of technical advances that improved both lethality and survivability (and functioning as force multipliers). Both of those offsets were geared to well defined threats, and were effective responses (creating advantages for U.S. forces). Now, because threat is a secondary consideration and capability is paramount – no one has a fucking clue. Threat is a secondary consideration because once the Cold War ended, there wasn’t a focal point for what we were “defending” against. Oh, funny – back to the fucking mission thing!
Point taken. It doesn’t excuse him though. He is the CinC. He is the one responsible for the mission thing. If we would get the fuck out of the middle east, we could cut defense spending and increase the strength of our military at the same time. I know that’s a crazy idea to the critters in Washington, but it would work.
We could reduce active Army strength over 100,000 (since there are ~180,000 deployed around the world right now) – and increase the reserve by double that or more. Army could then fund both modernization and readiness – for a smaller force. But that would also mean fewer generals, and by gawd we can’t have that. [ICYDK – we have more flag/general officers today than at the height of WWII, chew on that.]
We don’t need to divide the defense budget into thirds. Navy and AF have a much more significant role in actually protecting the country; Army is all about expeditionary warfare (and yes, the day will likely come when we need to do that – but that isn’t what we are doing today). In a real, near-peer fight, all of our forward deployed will be wasted before we can mobilize to sufficiently support them.
Announced a new Afghanistan strategy that strengthens support for U.S. forces at war with terrorism.
NATO increased support for the war in Afghanistan.
Approved a new Iran strategy plan focused on neutralizing the country’s influence in the region.
Ordered missile strikes against a Syrian airbase used in a chemical weapons attack.
All 4 of those are no good.
Because Iran should have more influence?
Why not? I don’t care which state in the Gulf has influence over the others. It should be the U.S. business to poloce the foreign affairs of the rest of the world.
I would, but I have no Internet and I am also dead with no healthcare. Thanks Trump!
Ah, Britain, never change …
British chicks are definitely not my type.
But what about that sexy accent?
Chav-tastic!
But really, one can hardly make a blanket judgement based on the evidence provided in their tabloids.
They run that same story every year.
They update the pictures, it’s true. The narrative is unchanging, and truthy.
Messiest New Year’s until next year.
Not hungover, but I look like hell.
Had some codeine cough syrup fueled dreams last night. Very weird.
Back to bed!
Get well!
I hope you are feeling better.
Codeine’s da bomb when it comes to weird hallucinogenic dreams, although I have to say, a percocet drip comes pretty damn close.
Get well soon!
She didn’t get her fill so eggs benedict again this morning. I have got this hollandaise thing mastered. Free handed a quarter batch in the microwave this morning and it came out perfect. I didn’t have lemon juice so I used lime. I think this is better.
Make migas for her. A few hot peppers in the mix and you could call it Cajun.
Oddly, the woman who eats Tabasco like most people eat Catsup doesnt like hot peppers in her breakfast.
Go figure.
Tonight I am frying chicken filets, putting them over egg noodles and dousing with mornay sauce. Green beans with small red potatoes and neck bones on the side. She will drown it in Tabasco. But eggs? Nope.
me – “How was the hollandaise sauce? I flew blind making that batch and not the usual amount.”
Her – “There is a problem with the sauce.”
Me – *wince* “Really? what? The lime juice?”
Her – *speaking with mouth full* “There isnt enough of it.”
She didn’t say it in Audrey II‘s voice, did she?
As a matter of fact, she did. I had to jerk my hands back quickly when I put the bacon on her plate.
Hollandaise is great. I haven’t made any in a long time. I’ll have to fix that soon.
A stick of butter in a glass dish. Stick in the microwave for 15 seconds. Check it. Keep putting it back in for 10 second intervals until it is about half melted and the bottom of the dish feels warm, not hot. Whip in two egg yolks, 1 tbs lemon juice and a pinch of allspice.
Keep whipping and you will notice the butter get lumpy almost like you have broken the sauce. Keep whipping and bang! it will suddenly turn homogenous and creamy.
You can whip up a perfect hollandaise in three minutes. Supposed to be the most difficult sauce to master? Nonsense.
Saved. I’ll be home in the morning in a few days. I’ll try that. It doesn’t sound too difficult.
I want to try it but I’m afraid of wasting a stick of butter. Plus all I have in the fridge is this tub of half-butter, half-olive oil concoction from Land O’ Lakes.
HNY suthen
You too Slammer. May 2018 see your bank account swell, your bed warm and your powder dry.
I hear that the best way to serve Eggs Benedict is on an old Dodge hubcap. Just clean that old hubcap up and put the Eggs Benedict right on there.
Why?
(wait for it…)
Because there’s no place like chrome for the Hollandaise.
Hey! Hey! I need some narrowed gaze muscle over here!
DOH!
I was so excited to use that pun, that I failed to see if anyone else was horrible enough to use it.
*tips cap to Animal*
Will you serve her eggs benedict on a hubcap?
That is how I always serve them. Because there is no plate like chrome for the hollandaise!
Migas and… square latke? Or just hash browns?
Making the lucky foods for New Year’s dinner now. Ham, black-eyed peas, cabbage (cut into noodles as a nod to my favorite lady) cornbread, and the last bottle of champagne from last night.
That’s one of those food service hash brown patties. In that context, it really works. Trudy’s in Austin is wonderful, especially the one on 30th Street.
You have to work to find a bad Mexican breakfast in Austin. Or actually, any bad breakfasts in Austin.
I was always partial to Counter Cafe, Mi Madres, and El Chile (yes, I lived on the East side).
But yes, +1 Trudy’s!
La Posada and Curras are two of my favorites in Austin. The salsa plate at Curras is great by itself.
I woke up this morning and the missus had my coffee on and was putting the black-eyed peas into the crockpot. Then I made breakfast.
I’m standing in the kitchen eating ice cream out of the carton.
Buck up – 2018 should be better.
That brings up a question…… Blackeye peas for new year’s…. Who else knows that tradition? My wife had never heard of it. I hadn’t until college.
Anyone else know of culinary traditions for New Year celebrations?
Pork roast and sauerkraut.
That’s a very old Southern tradition. We used to have blackeye peas and cornbread (of course) every Jan 1 when I was a kid.
Anyone guess what I had for breakfast?
SP gave in to CPRM’s wheedling and cued up “Ed Wood” for our movie last night. I’d seen it several times and loved it, but I wondered how much would be lost on her because she’d never seen “Plan 9” or “Glen or Glenda” or “Bride of the Atom.” No worries, she really enjoyed it, kept saying, “Wow, this is a great movie!”
So, CPRM is now her hero.
I watched Ed Wood when it came out, before I saw any of his movies. Maybe I would have caught additional points, but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and got perhaps more of a sense of who he was when I did see Plan 9 and the like later.
“Sidekick?”
Took her long enough.
Sssshhhhhh.
Shh.
Please turn the light back off.
You appear to have sprung a leak.
That explains why it feels like there’s a hole in my head.
Four young men die in New Year London stabbings
Knife ban imminent?
Might exist already? I know they’ve had multiple buy-back-type events to get street thugs to turn in their knives. I’ve also seen pictures of large buns on street corners deploring people to throw their carry knives into it.
*sigh* There’s actually a MADD-type organization called “Surrendeer Your Knife, Save A Life.” It appears that surrendered knifes go to two ironworks companies.
So, state sponsored murder weapon disposal. Cool.
They did not specify which lives were going to be saved.
Whut? England has had a knife ban forever. It is illegal to sell pointy kitchen knives. You cant carry anything with you on the street that could conceivably used as a weapon. Screwdrivers, rolled up newspapers, a rock in your pocket…etc.
Really, who needs a knife? Scissors will do in almost any situation that you would use a knife.
Other than carrying it in your pocket.
Only criminals would want to conceal their weapons
I wonder how those après-rape tents worked out in Berlin.
Sometimes, looking for loopholes is good!
Governors and legislative leaders in New York, California and other states are considering legal challenges to elements of the law that they say unfairly single out parts of the country. They are looking at ways of raising revenue that aren’t penalized by the new law. And they are considering changing their state tax codes to allow residents to take advantage of other federal tax breaks — in effect, restoring deductions that the tax law scaled back.
One proposal would replace state income taxes, which are no longer fully deductible under the new law, with payroll taxes on employers, which are deductible. Another idea would be to allow residents to replace their state income tax payments with tax-deductible charitable contributions to their state governments.
And this is especially mendacious:
They are looking at ways of raising revenue that aren’t penalized by the new law.
Up is down.
How about this – cut spending.
I saw “The Last Jedi” the other day. Christ, what an awful mess! “The Force Awakens” was bad enough, but I tried to give this one a shot. It started out alright, and then all downhill from there. Mary Sue’s still a Mary Sue (×1000), Kylo’s still a whiny bitch, Finn is bad comic relief in a skin suit. And “Luke” is a coward — #notmyskywalker. Stupid decisions abound, they continue to crap on the lore that they haven’t yet retconned. I’m pissed.
The more I hear about this movie, the more I’m against going and seeing it. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m thinking Star Wars would’ve been better off left in Lucas’s hands.
Lucas would be no improvement. This is all that Hollywood is capable of offering – spectacle not story; CGI over screen-writing. It isn’t just SW that suffers from this – everything is made to the level of a comic book.
Sure he would be. After the prequels as far as I can tell he had no interest in doing any more Star Wars movies. That would be a big improvement as far as I’m concerned.
sly devil
Yeah, she got a little chunky too.
‘Hangover foo… wait. Don’t. Just don’t.’
Wait,…I thought yours was a vegan household?
No. Our daughter is vegan, I’m vegetarian (eggs, dairy), and SP is omnivore.
You can make excellent vegan food, but making a vegan version of something which is centered on eggs and cheese is wack.
I learned to cook vegetarian/vegan. It turns out if you know how to cook the veggies, adding meat is the easy part.
If the NYT featured an article about a private, for- profit business concern, like Uber, for example, which included the sentence, They are looking at ways of raising revenue that aren’t penalized by the new law. their commentariat would go apeshit. But, since it’s about state and local governments squeezing everything they can out of their tax cattle, it’s not just perfectly reasonable; it’s commendable.
And the beautiful irony is that readers of the NYT are prime, grade-A, tax cattle; right down to lacking self awareness.
We went out in the cold (around 10 degrees here) to get breakfast. I had a couple beers and half a bottle of champagne last night, so no hangover here. We got some Duck Donuts and demolished them. They are so freakin’ good fresh!
Unfiltered Fervor: The Rush to Get Off the Water Grid
dafuq?
Dude, Dr. Strangelove.
General Ripper.
Shorter Nellie: “I’m crazier than a shithouse rat.”
IT’S GOING TO TURN THE FRIGGIN’ FROGS GAY!
I approve!
Happy New Year Glibs! One of the best parts of last year for me was the creation of this wonderful place. It helped me keep my sanity and end my 20+ year relationship with TOS / magazine. I no longer have to filter through DERP and getting pissed off on my way to reading the comments section.
What, no Old Man music this morning? How about this? The singer from yesterday’s post kind of reminds me of the banjo singing brother from this band.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abQRt6p8T7g
Music is too damn loud for me this morning. That last bottle of Hermitage did me in.
The newborn allowed me about 45 minutes of sleep last night, so I feel hungover. Time to fire up the coffee pot.
How new is your newborn?
New enough to get the tax credit
13 days
Just in the nick of time for the tax credit.
Well done and congratulations!
Congratulations!!
I think the blob stage is when they’re cutest, but I am holding the fort against a 2 and 4 year old while my wife helps her mom get mom’s bf to chemo and radiation. Like any other lone parent, I’m having a pitcher of mimosas after making blanket forts for the kids. And making broth for a beef stew.
We make pillow forts all the time. My wife is never too excited about my son and I plus the dog playing with her nice pillows.
If you have a large closet, put the blanket fort in there. When kids go in, lock the door. And then drink the mimosas. Quickly.
Congrats, Brasidas – hope everyone is doing well. Sleep will come in a couple years.
Thanks all. Everyone is indeed doing well. The little guy was born a bit early and needed a good half pound of fat on him, but he is already above his birth weight.
This is my second, so I know what’s coming. If I can get to where he is waking up only twice a night I’ll be fine. The first couple of months were the hardest for me. From then on parenting has been fun.
Once in a while I’m reminded of how awesome empty-nesterhood is.
Yep
Engender solidarity through genocide!
Only by eradicating the dissenters will we achieve true consensus.
Snark aside, that really is a basic tenet of socialism. Baked right in. Compliance is required. Non-compliers must go.
Well we know there’s a least one New Year’s Resolution P neither made nor kept.
😉
Happy New Year.
Speaking of music, this is the sort of thing I am usually listening to while y’all are playing…stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyKgyo0gOrA
Happy New Year everyone. I enjoy this place in a way that no other place could do. Hell, I have been jibber jabbering with some of y’all for over a decade. I like y’all better than most people I know in meatspace and know some of you better.
Don’t get the wrong idea. You still have to get off of my damned lawn.
Nobody is interested in being on your lawn.
http://imgur.com/gbOStcJ
Happy New Year SB. I enjoy the hell out of this place too.
Hey, it’s pretty green.
Thats because you haven’t seen the bass that….wait. No. There is nothing in there. Just bugs. Nothing at all you would be interested in.
In all seriousness, some of the most fun I’ve had bass fishing was in a marshy backwater that was covered in lily pads. I was flipping a rubber worm out with a conical slip sinker right onto the lily pads. Then pulling it off and letting it dive straight down. I caught bass all afternoon that day.
The north border of my property is bayou Rigolette. A lot of it looks exactly like the photo you posted. It is drainage for Iatt lake, a rather large, marshy lake. It drains into the Red river which is nearly a mile wide by the time it gets to me. There be monsters in there. Catching gar or catfish over four feet long is not uncommon. Both sides of this bayou have trees overhanging the water. If you cast under those trees you can walk along and catch a bass every fifty feet. Also excellent for hanging yo-yos.
The first time my brother came here he looked at it and said “Hell, that aint nothin’ but a gar hole!”
Then he cast his worm and five minutes later a damned catfish as big as he is nearly yanked his ass off of the bank into the water. That was a fun day.
Oh: Rigolette is pronounced ‘Row gully’. Frogs…go figure.
You are gonna have to let me come down there and fish that someday. That sounds like a lot of fun.
You are welcome any time.
How bad are the mosquitos? Should I buy #8 shot or #4 shot for them?
The Cheesecakes turned out well.
Half of them are regular cheesecake cupcakes, the other half have a swirl of raspberry filling added.
Nice.
My wife makes these with either cherry or blueberry pie filling on top.
Yummy!
With those videos, are you asking us to commit cultural appropriation?
I can’t handle watching someone cook wedged between two TV personalities. The dialogue is all so awkwardly forced.
Makes me want to break an egg on a baby seal’s face.
Kevin Smith dresses like a little kid 24/7. Does he have custom hockey jersey jammies?
The two most underreported stories of the year (no particular order):
1) The defeat of ISIS.
Trump’s collaboration to defeat ISIS, especially in Syria, was a masterstroke.
Hillary Clinton could not and would not have worked with Putin.
2) Social transformation in the Middle East
Big changes in Saudi Arabia. I was reading stories over the holidays about the new regime in Saudi Arabia’s mistreatment of the losers of the power struggle inside the royal family. To my eye, this reads a little bit like someone complaining that the Ceausescus didn’t get a fair trial before their heads were “put on a pike”. Losing a royal power struggle is always hazardous to your health, but that doesn’t mean the new boss is the same as the old boss.
The winners of the power struggle have done a number of things that are pretty historic. Women are allowed to drive for the first time. Women are allowed to attend public sporting events. The new regime is allowing public movie theaters for the first time. This is all welcome stuff, and while the new vicious dictatorship in Saudi Arabia isn’t likely to subject themselves to elections any sooner than the old guard, normalizing the place of women in the public sphere is a big deal–and I don’t think you get to take that shit back without as lot of problems.
We’re seeing similar transformations elsewhere. The ongoing protests in Iran may not mean regime change over there any more than Occupy Wall Street meant the end of American government as we know it either. Still, the protestors there aren’t just going after local corrupt officials–they’re going after the religious leadership. They’re screaming about what we might call “Iran First”–they’re sick of the Iranian regime squandering tax money on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and other groups in Yemen and elsewhere–even as average Iranians are still suffering economically. Feeling free to criticize the religious leadership is a big move.
Maybe even bigger is the Iranian regime’s recent announcement that they would no longer criminally prosecute women for the way they dress. They’re still handing out the equivalent of traffic citations, but that’s a pretty big deal. It’s not legalization of women’s dress, but it is decriminalization.
Talk to me when they turn off the spigot to the Wahhabi clerics. As for this being the latest incarnation of the Arab Spring – I’ll remain skeptical since it has yet to play out well anywhere but one country of the greater ME.
I am hoping the Saudis are taking the clerics means to cause trouble away first, then can cut them off. Anything is better than those SOBs having free reign.
normalizing the place of women in the public sphere is a big deal–and I don’t think you get to take that shit back without as lot of problems
See pictures of 1970’s AFG for the counterpoint.
You know who else saw Jewish conspiracies everywhere?
Screen shot, just in case
It’s gone now, good call KK,
HNY!
Pirate Truther?
Al Sharpton?
Al Reuters?
Comments are good.
The left sure loves them some totalitarian Mullahs.
Mel Gibson?…
Reuven Rivlin?
Telly Savallas?
Sweet sweet salty tears. Sportswriter can’t even. Trump is like Pearl Harbor and Hitler plus 9/11:
https://www.theringer.com/2017/12/29/16828886/donald-trump-sportswriter-twitter-bart-hubbuch-new-york-post-fired
Silly cunt.
Sad.
Yes. It was Trump that made everything political. Fucking dipshits.
That is grounds for termination right there – terminal stupidity.
” I asked if Hubbuch could imagine writing about football and not tweeting about Trump. “No,” he said. “I consider it my duty as an American almost to say something. To speak out. Because I just think he’s the worst thing that ever happened to us.”
Oh shut up and grow up.
It’s amazing how all the utter stupid shit Obama did is overlooked. It’s mind boggling.
That right there is what pisses me off most about Obama – not that he did stupid shit, they all do; that his fucking sycophants think he walked on water.
The guy is so paranoid and full of hate that he ruined his own life. Greek playwrights used to write stories like this.
He might legitimately be a better, happier person if he started taking medication.
I larfed.
Gentlemen, this isn’t difficult. If you don’t like Trump, that’s OK. If you’re a political neophyte, we understand. Simply recognize that some of our shareholders – the people who ultimately own this organization – are also Trump voters, who don’t like being called simpletons, and might be insulted when you tell them that their chosen representative is liderally Hitler.
If you can’t attack a policy without demonizing the man, don’t Tweet.
If your first reaction is to resort to ad hominems (if you don’t know what one is, we advise you to stay off social media) – then don’t Tweet.
If your Tweet is capable of destroying shareholder value – don’t Tweet.
You are an ambassador for our brand whether you, or we, like it or not.
Inability to follow these guidelines demonstrates a lack of self-control and introspection which we consider incompatible with a career at our publication.
They were raised with no consequences for their actions, so they don’t understand how consequences work. One has a right to be an asshole, but not to be free from the consequences for being one.
OT: coin mining
Just a report on my first full week of mining coins. I have been mining electroneum 24/7 for the past week; electroneum is a small coin (usually ranked around #50 on coinmarketcap) based on a fork of monero, and I chose it for that reason, and because it is currently far less valuable than monero, and yet on the order of 2.5x as profitable. Currently valued at around $0.08, this coin ostensibly targets an eventual value in the $1 range, with a max. supply of 21 billion, as opposed to monero’s 18 million + (0.6/2 minutes). Being less well-known, electroneum is a bit of a long-shot, but the machines I’m using for this were previously sitting idle (most were not even turned on), so I figure, I’ll just try to mine some thousands of electroneum while it’s not overly difficult to do so, hoping for it to eventually hit its target, rather than targeting monero, which is already quite valuable.
Now, on to a bit of a technical summary; I have here several CPUs and GPUs mining; one each of:
– i7-4930mx (quadcore haswell, ~220H/s)
– i7-4771 (quadcore haswell, ~293H/s)
– i7-970 (hexacore gulftown, ~193H/s)
– i7-3930k (hexacore sandy bridge, ~302H/s)
– e5-2697v3 (14-core haswell, ~709H/s)
– 3120A (57-core xeon phi, ~543H/s)
– quadro 2000 (fermi, ~58H/s)
– quadro 4000 (fermi, ~104H/s)
– quadro 1000 (pascal, ~185H/s)
So that is a pretty diverse collection, which can hopefully give others a ballpark on what they may expect from their own hardware, and which together, produce a bit over 2.6KH/s mining on the CryptoNight algorithm. After trying a few different pools, I eventually settled on etn.spacepools.org, where I currently mine around 120-130 coins per day. This is a larger pool, with around 35MH/s, finding a block around every 7 minutes, as opposed to the 3-4 hour window with some of the smaller pools I had tried. Though the law of large numbers dictates that it should not make a difference in the long run, in reality, I find that I much prefer the consistency of the larger pool; if you were running a purpose-built rig, maybe it would not make a difference, but if you have been mining for 8 hours on a bad-luck streak with a small pool, and your miner should lose its connection, you are not going to get a payout, should the block happen to be found while you were unaware of the issue. And indeed, on a smaller pool, I did in fact lose what would’ve been about 20 coins that way already, when my internet connection decided to stop working for awhile in the middle of the night, one night.
I intend to keep on mining, but given what I have described above, I have to say that I think it unlikely I would end up wanting to join a smaller glib pool, should one be built. I’m sure it would be a lot of fun, but in terms of actually finding coins, I am just not seeing it at this point. It just seems to me, so far, that with the size of pool we’d be likely to be able to put together, we might expect to mine for a very long time before finding even a single block (currently worth around 7400 coins for electroneum).
Anyway, I hope this is helpful, and just let me know if you have any questions you think I may be able to answer.
“let me know if you have any questions you think I may be able to answer.”
But can I fuck it?
I have to say that I think it unlikely I would end up wanting to join a smaller glib pool, should one be built. I’m sure it would be a lot of fun, but in terms of actually finding coins, I am just not seeing it at this point.
Yeah, I’ve come to the same conclusion. Even if we were able to get going and make some coin, there is a whole other host of issues when you get your first modicum of success. I think I’m gonna deep-6 the pool idea.
Awww…I has a sad 🙁
I wanted to get filthy rich with this pool.
Thanks! Good stuff – any suggestions on how-to guides to get up and running with mining?
Most mining pools will provide a page listing which miners they support, and how to set them up. I tested a couple different ones, eventually settling on xmrig (github.com/xmrig/xmrig) on windows, and lukMiner (sites.google.com/site/lukxmrminer) on linux. That’s for CPU; for GPU, I am using ccminer (ccminer.org), but only on windows, as I have no gpu on my linux machine. Some miners use a configuration file, but most accept a fairly-universal set of command-line arguments, so I ended up with a small batch file I copy to each machine, which I use to start the miner; it is placed in the same directory as the miner application, and looks something like this (just open new text file and save it with .bat or .cmd extension):
The “addr” is the public address of the wallet to mine to, the “pool” and “port” are the URL:port specified by the pool, “diff” is a difficulty setting (you can adjust this according to the power of your processor; if you accept too-high a difficulty, you won’t find solutions before they’ve already been found by someone else, so your work won’t be accepted), and “name” is used by the pool to report results on a per-machine basis. Some pools will support the difficulty/name arguments, and some won’t (some have you use a different port for different difficulties, and then automatically adjust from there, based on your results), in which case you’d just delete the “%diff%%name%” part from the second-to-last line above). In general you will have a setup that looks something like this, but be aware that it may be a bit different for each pool. There are generally other arguments you can pass as well, for controlling how many threads are allowed to be used by the miner, and so forth; to see them, you can generally open a command prompt, CD to the directory where the miner is located, type “xmrig.exe –help”, and hit Enter (where “xmrig.exe” is the name of the miner, of course).
The wallet address is something you will need to generate; generally this is done using an application downloaded from the website of the coin you’re mining. For CryptoNight-based coins (I have tried monero, aeon, electroneum), you have two main (command-line) applications; one is a “daemon” (named “monerod.exe”, “electroneumd.exe”, etc) which will download and synchronize the blockchain, and another a “wallet” (named “monero-wallet-cli.exe”, “electroneum-wallet.exe”, etc) application, which scans through the blockchain looking for coins bearing your wallet address. Be aware that it can take quite a long time (hours) for the daemon to initially download and sync the blockchain. There are other ways of doing this, but I’ve not used them, so will not go over them here.
To generate a wallet, you can use the wallet application; when you run it, it will ask for a wallet file name, and either open the file you specify, or create a new wallet. The wallet is really just a set of keys (similar to the wallet address shown above) which are used to uniquely identify coins in the blockchain as being yours, and to allow transferring ownership of coins from you to another person. When you generate your wallet, you will definitely want to put the keys in a secure location, because possession of your keys == possession of your coins. There’s no bank, and no customer support to help you, if you lose them. For the same reason, some people are pretty paranoid about disconnecting from the internet, or using an air-gapped machine, when generating the wallet.
I should mention that there can also be different ways of doing this; in the case of electroneum, they have a web page you can download as a .zip file, unzip, and open in your browser, while disconnected from the internet. This will actually generate a wallet as a PDF (with string keys, and also QR codes), which you can then print out, hence the “paper wallet” terminology that’s commonly used. In this case though, you would only have the PDF, and would then need to use the wallet application to generate a wallet file that it understands, from the keys on the PDF, if you want to use the wallet application to monitor the blockchain. Some people don’t do that, and instead use an online wallet, but I don’t personally know anything about that — I have a paper wallet that exists only on my own machine, and I’m mining coins to it, period.
Once you have your public wallet address, you just pass it to the miner executable as shown above in the batch file, the miner starts accepting work from your pool, and new coins are tagged with your address, as you help to find new blocks. Aside from giving your address to the miner, you can then generally also paste it into the pool’s web page (for example, see the “Your Stats & Payment History” section on etn.spacepools.org), and it will show statistics for how much has been mined to your address.
If you’ve gotten this far, you have a “daemon” running on your machine, constantly synchronizing the blockchain, you have a “wallet” running, which you can use to find how many coins you have, and you have a miner running, accepting work from a pool, and submitting finished work back to the pool. Pools have minimums, where you are paid out only after reaching x-number of mined coins, so depending on your processing power, don’t be surprised to see that you have N coins “pending” payment; eventually you will go over the minimum, coins will be paid out, and after some further delay, your daemon will add that block to your local copy of the blockchain, and your wallet application will then register the addition of your new coins (with the wallet application running, you can generally type “refresh” and hit Enter, to recalculate your current balance).
So, this should give you some idea of what is involved; I would also recommend using google, to read more on how to set things up for the coin you choose to mine. Between the two, you should not have too much difficulty getting set up.
And now the website you mammals both need and deserve.
https://floridaman.com/
Convenient
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/police-man-arrested-for-rigging-door-in-attempt-to-electrocute-pregnant-wife
^^^This guy gets it.
A little GBV in honor of the Siberian air invasion.
Baby, that’s cold!
The Russians are retreating! 0 today and 13 above tomorrow! Hallelujah, it’s almost over!
My truck hasn’t started for 2 days. *fingers crossed* that 0 is warm enough to get it running again.
2 and 14, here!
Diesel?
Gas. And it’s always started in the cold before. I’m thinking maybe I put off changing plugs a little too long. This winter it has started just a little bit tougher on “normal” cold mornings.
Fairly new battery? They seem to go to shit faster than they used to.
Copy paste from reply to Brooks below:
My battery is in real good shape. It cranked like a champ (it’s less than a year old).
It’s something with spark or fuel (I know…really narrowed it down). It would fire randomly, but never enough times consecutively to fire up and run.
11, feels like -3 currently. Wife went for a run!
Shocking, The end of Western Civilization will be brought about by the lefts two favorite boogymen, Climate Change and Income Inequality. Would have never guessed. Also Brexit and Trump comparable to ISIS. I wonder how much money I could make freelancing as a leftist parrot. Certainly a lot easier than working for a living
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse
Given that the left’s stated goal is the destruction of western civilization I should be forgiven for being a bit skeptical of anything they say.
“I wonder how much money I could make freelancing as a leftist parrot.”
I’m not sure these actually are people, they might just be crude algorithms. They don’t seem to pass the Turing Test.
And any attempt to stop this will cause Western Civ to collapse. Makes perfect sense.
The new ready-made useful idiots.
First tits of 2018.
http://archive.is/pzqh6
I would say 7, 7, 7 and 7 but that would be giving short shrift to 11, 20, 22, 23 and 30.
So I’ll just say orgy.
Happy new year, Q!
4 is the winner. Great smile, great everything!
2018 is already off to a nice start!
First squirrel of the new year! Isn’t that a good omen in ancient IT lore?
Happy new year, Q!
4 is the winner. Great smile, great everything!
2018 is already off to a nice start!
Woohoo! A pair!
Did 2018 bring a squirrel?
12 has got the nostalgia factor of “Tool Time era Pam Anderson” working for her.
I want to reenact the “little sizzling belly” scene from Hot Shots with 35
And a New Year’s Japanese totty dump!
http://www.frombearcreek.com/happy-new-year-2/
See y’all in 2019. I’m spending this year in my bunk.
3 can keep those white stockings on. Something about blondes wearing nothing but white stockings. Hawt.
#15 is Angela White. She is mine.
“Why is this the first and only time I’ve seen weed and gay sex being used in the same sentence wtf”
https://twitter.com/andrealoko_/status/947351887002472448
Welcome to the internet?
From the comments:
https://twitter.com/DresdenCG/status/947362246686109696
My truck hasn’t started for 2 days. *fingers crossed* that 0 is warm enough to get it running again.
Yeah, I went through an inordinate amount of fucking around getting mine started yesterday. Of course, as I was fucking around with it, I noticed the sticker on the top shows 12/08 as the date of purchase. I might pick up a new battery next time I make it to Costco.
The motor isn’t exactly “fresh”. I really need it to get through the winter.
My battery is in real good shape. It cranked like a champ (it’s less than a year old).
It’s something with spark or fuel (I know…really narrowed it down). It would fire randomly, but never enough times consecutively to fire up and run.
How long has the gas been in it? Is it possible the station you got it from is still running summer blends?
I drive 100 miles a day to work and back. Old gas is never an issue.
It’s colder here today than it has been in a couple years. I rebuilt the engine on my truck back in May. I couldn’t recall how much antifreeze I put in the coolant when I refilled it. When I got home from work last night, I started it up and got it up to temp so I could pump a half gallon of water out and add a half gallon of antifreeze. I got my hands and sleeves wet while opening the bleeds on the bottom of the radiator and damn they were cold.
50/50 pretty much works everywhere, doesn’t it?
Yes. However, after I rebuilt my engine, my heater core started to leak. When I changed out my heater core, I lost quite a bit of fluid and I’m pretty sure I just poured water in to replace what I lost. If at some point in the last 7 or 8 months I would have bought a hygrometer, then I wouldn’t have had to worry. That would have been too easy though.
Haha! Gotcha. Come to think of it, my garage is 100% hygrometer-free as well! It seemed like I was doing a water pump on the Tahoe all the time, so I never had to worry about the condition of the coolant…
Why citizens need to be armed, part 2132379878
Well, we’ve armed everyone else – why not the Iranian citizens?
Crazy talk. They might start killing TOP.MEN if we arm them.
But that could mean another Adam Lanza or Dylan Roof! BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS!
They were raised with no consequences for their actions, so they don’t understand how consequences work. One has a right to be an asshole, but not to be free from the consequences for being one.
Exactly. They all want to be brave freedom fighters, but the idea of paying a price for their actions is completely unendurable. Tell the world the “truth” about Trump, if you want, but don’t act surprised when you get escorted to the parking lot with your family photos and your potted plant.
A lot of “outdoor equipment” company executives have been screeching and flinging shit at the walls over Trump’s repudiation of Obama’s two-minutes-before-midnight national monument maneuver. I’d like to hear what their boards of directors have been saying, behind closed doors.
They’re saying “Bass Pro/Cabela’s is cutting into our market share, how can we accelerate that process?”
Question for trshmnstr, other resident tech glibs, . . . It’s about secure email–and which technologies/email providers are likely to better at protecting one’s privacy going forward.
I have specific concerns about the trade offs and vulnerabilities, and I’ll use of two encrypted email providers as examples–ProtonMail and Lavabit.
Concern Topic 1) : 5 eyes, 9 eyes, 14 eyes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement
One of the issues that came up during Snowden revelations was about the mechanisms by which our government spies on us, especially about how the U.S. cooperates with intelligence agencies in various countries to share intelligence. I’m not even sure this is unconstitutional. If the U.S. government can’t spy on American citizens, well, the UK can–and if the UK shares that intelligence with our government in exchange for us doing surveillance on the UK’s citizens, then whether there was a Fourth Amendment violation is a big question. In regards to email providers and privacy, that should mean it’s better to avoid services in those 14 countries.
Concern Topic 2) :ProtonMail is in Switzerland, which is outside the 14, but in the user agreement, there’s a statement where they acknowledge that they will comply with government subpoenas. It is unclear whether they’re talking about subpoenas from the U.S. government, any government, or from the Swiss government. If you’re an American concerned about privacy, that’s an important distinction.
On the other hand, there’s Lavabit, which is based in the United States. If you’ve heard of them before, it’s probably because they famously chose to shut down their service rather than comply with a subpoena–that turned out to be looking for Snowden’s emails. Even when dragged into court and found to be in contempt, Lavabit’s “CEO” gave his users a head’s up that the government was coming to get them, which gave everyone a chance to do whatever. Since shutting the service down, the Lavabit team has been working on a new email protocal called “DIME” (Dark Internet Mail Environment). This protocol purportedly makes it so that there are no encrypted keys on the email server for the government to subpoena–nothing that an email provider can give to the government that will be helpful.
Concern Topic 3) Lavabit has relaunched and is rolling out DIME on their system; however, 1) I don’t know if this protocol is hype or legit and 2) the Lavabit “team” appears to have dwindled to the guy that stood up to the government and his dog. (link to follow).
I’d be really interested in what some of you geek ass mofo’s have to say about these privacy concerns. I’m not really worried about price differences so much as I’m interested in reliable privacy. I don’t know what the government will be like in 20 years, but I strongly suspect that we won’t get any privacy by accident. You know how they found Ulbricht? They searched the web for the earliest ever mention of Silk Road, and they found someone trying to recruit coding help for a darkweb marketplace. You were supposed to reply to ross dot ulbricht at gee mail dot com or something very similar to that. I don’t know what’s going to be illegal in the future (piloting my own motorcycle, Chipotle, and speech?), but I don’t necessarily want everything I say to everybody over the next twenty years to be searchable by the Millennial Red Guards of tomorrow. Oh, and not every email I write needs to be read by the competition either.
https://darkmail.info/downloads/dark-internet-mail-environment-march-2015.pdf
The issue is that current internet email protocols have intermediate servers that – by design – can be anywhere. Secure Email as a standard is simply too complicated, hence DIME.
As I understand it, as of about a year ago, if you want to communicate securely and confidentially with another person via email in complete security, you should be using a reliable, trusted host that – if it does store emails, stores them encrypted, and you and your correspondent own and hold the private key yourselves. Doing this on a normal platform without considerable effort is a challenge, unless the email clients you use accommodate these complexities.
Unseen.is does this, and combined with Iceland’s data laws, seems like it’s “good enough”. Another possibility is Shazzlemail, which turns your smartphone into a mail server, which, if set up correctly, (and the sender is also secure) ensures that the only place emails are stored is in equipment you have control over. I’m not dissing protonmail, but I doubt their ability, given sufficient pressure, to NOT release metadata and content. I have a number of dark email accounts which will only wake up if I ever needed them to – one is with shazzlemail, one with protonmail, and I have a few others elsewhere.
Ultimately, if I want to get something to you that has content that I don’t want someone else to see, I wouldn’t use email. I’d create a file that I made available to you to download, encrypted using a mechanism that encrypts with keys that aren’t based on NIST algorithms, and then tell you the location where I dropped it. Then, via a separate method, I’d give you a public key that you could use for all subsequent items I made available to you, and then at my end, I’d lock down access based on IP, if I could.
I’d also ensure that even mundane, non-incriminating communications happened via this channel too, and I’d (continue to) use a VPN homed outside the US for EVERYTHING I do. Metadata is just as useful to intelligence personnel as the content of the communications itself.
Thanks!
[flagged as terrorist]
If one million Americans did what I – as a totally innocent, but concerned Legal Alien – do, the surveillance state would crash and burn. I consider it a public duty to fuck up the Security State’s efforts to surveil every single legal resident of the US, and by extension all the nation signatories of PRISM.
if the UK shares that intelligence with our government in exchange for us doing surveillance on the UK’s citizens, then whether there was a Fourth Amendment violation is a big question.
I see this as a parallel issue to Dole v. South Dakota. Can the US government do blatantly unconstitutional things by paying somebody else to do it? My vote is no. I think Dole is absolute shit.
They shouldn’t be allowed to do that shit, but just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean the Court won’t pull a “penaltax” out of their ass.
This protocol purportedly makes it so that there are no encrypted keys on the email server for the government to subpoena–nothing that an email provider can give to the government that will be helpful.
This is the gold standard. If all of the encryption and decryption is done at the endpoint, then it’s as secure as you’re going to get.
Question: What about good old fashioned PGP? As far as I know it hasn’t been broken yet, and it doesn’t matter if the message is retained on a server, because it’s fully encrypted. The only limitation is that the recipient needs to use PGP, too.
That’s a limitation–if a recipient needs to use it. I’d like to communicate with people who aren’t especially tech savvy, too, without having to rethink everything.
PGP works fine. The problem is that it doesn’t help normal users be secure. Case in point. Firm I did some consultancy for were trying to implement Secure Mail between Zurich and the Isle of Man. Without getting into the weeds, the problem was that the traffic passed thru’ the UK Mainland, and the regulations at the time were that the financial firm had to be registered in the UK in order for the traffic to be permitted. The first thing people did when they received those emails was to decrypt them and store the emails in plain text on their servers and local hard disks. Operationally, for my client, this wasn’t an issue, but the point is that you need software infrastructure in place that makes secure internet behavior as ‘easy’ as everything else.
The human element in security is the one where everyone fails worst at. Look at it this way. Ken blind copies 6 of us with the schedule for The Revolution. Let’s ignore that’s big for a cell, but one of us polls his email on a connection and retrieves the PGP email. The email contains lots of metadata that isn’t encrypted, and with sufficient surveillance, The Man can see who else that email was sent to. So, it has all 7 members of the cell. One of those 7 is going to be insecure.
Special Branch turn up and ransack your house. If they can’t find Ken’s public key anywhere, they send the email to the NSA, who probably offer a ‘friends and family’ program for PRISM signatories. Or, Special Branch decide to hit the most vulnerable with a Terrorist charge or decide to invoke the OSA because their victim’s auntie used to serve tea from the trolley at Admiralty House in the 1960’s.
What was the downfall here? Ultimately, metadata. It’s just as dangerous and incriminating as the content of the mail that’s being delivered.
What was the downfall here? Ultimately, metadata. It’s just as dangerous and incriminating as the content of the mail that’s being delivered.
This is why I’m not super concerned with security. They don’t need the contents of your emails to connect you to other people. They have all relationships catalogued and recorded based on the origination and destination of your packets alone. They know when your college girlfriend cheated on you with her ex based on texting patterns. They know about that goth phase you went through in high school. They know when you fought with your wife and spent the rest of the evening at the bar. All of this without cracking a single packet open and inspecting the contents.
Which is why the trick is to partition your subversive identity off from your more-or-less public one. You can’t avoid being profiled, but you can develop subchannel communications. The NSA and FBI know I’m a consistent and committed user of a foreign VPN and they have no access to my DNS requests. I have a number of other relatively painless mechanisms that ensure that they’ll have a tough time figuring out connections and conversations I initiate. My background, such as it is – they have that from the UK.
With enough man-power and effort, they could reconstruct all the stuff you cite, but it’s going to be far more costly than figuring out what the average social media over-sharer is doing. It’s not necessary to be perfectly secure to bring down the whole apparatus. You just have to make it consume >100% of the national budget.
The NSA and FBI know I’m a consistent and committed user of a foreign VPN and they have no access to my DNS requests.
I wonder how much security a VPN gives against the NSA. Can they match incoming traffic to outgoing traffic? It wouldn’t be easy, but neither is collecting and maintaining metadata profiles on every single person on the planet.
A properly encrypted VPN using a cipher that NIST didn’t design is *likely* to be non-trivial to crack open. They can see bandwidth use, so if you’re a heavy bandwidth user, then yeah, they’d see that. With enough sampling, they can probably even differentiate between streaming, torrents, etc., but it would all be highly inferrential for routine file exchange. A huge and often ignored issue is DNS resolution – because that’s the starting point for you being profiled.
I don’t do anything with the expectation that it is secure. I do everything with the expectation that someone at the appropriate agency says “he’s been doing this for years, and it’s easier to read Lindsey Lohan’s twitter feed”.
A properly encrypted VPN using a cipher that NIST didn’t design is *likely* to be non-trivial to crack open.
I’m not talking security of the contents. I wonder how hard it would be for the NSA to “pass through” the VPN and match the metadata from the VPN’s output to your input traffic. Even though you’re looking at glibertarians through a VPN, I bet the NSA can use pattern matching to connect the VPN’s connection to glibertarians to your connection to the VPN.
Well, if the particular WordPress instance had some kind of behavioral artifact, or the content I was retrieving was in any way notable (size of posting maybe), then there might be something they could infer, but there’s no reason to expect that the route from the VPN to Glibs for my connection is even over the save path as the VPN to Glibs connection that is established for their session.
One of the points that I think are worth making is that this kind of analysis is unlikely to EVER be automated. It’s going to require someone somewhere allocating significant resources to make it happen. When people consider the INT community, they imagine offices full of dedicated, driven, patriotic zealots with a high intellect, working at maximum efficiency. The reality is they have a lot more in common with Harry Palmer than they do with Sherlock Holmes.
One of the points that I think are worth making is that this kind of analysis is unlikely to EVER be automated.
I’m not so certain. The actual analysis doesn’t need to be done in real time, but as long as they have the necessary info, it can be done in the future.
Imagine that the NSA has retained all IP headers going in and out of a VPN server. A future administration wants to find dissidents who post on glibertarians.com and knows that somebody has been posting on glibertarians through that VPN server. I think that it would be trivial (meaning that it would take less than 5 minutes) to match up timing patterns in your incoming connection to the VPN with the outgoing connection to glibertarians.com using a properly designed pattern matching algorithm. I would think that designing such a pattern matching algorithm would have been one of the top priorities at the NSA.
There’s an interesting documentary called A Good American that I watched a few months back. I haven’t been able to track it down since.
Essentially, it described the creation of ThinThread, whose main component is MAINWAY/MARINA. Such a program makes me wonder whether the NSA has the capability to catalog and programmatically analyze almost everything on the internet.
True, but I routinely hop servers (and for that matter, VPN providers) – but your point is taken.
However, knowing I post responses to Q Continuum’s titty postings on Glibs doesn’t do them much good. What they’d really want to see is that 200k encrypted file transfer that I initiated to a hitherto unknown and unused endpoint, and seeing Gilmore pick it up 8 minutes later from his underground lair in Ulan Bator. The only notable thing they’d see is a blob of data that – even if they cracked open the VPN – all they’d see is an SSH connection.
I’d like to hear what their boards of directors have been saying, behind closed doors.
If they are smart, they are reminding the execs that their job is to build the brand, not signal to a small subset of flighty, less affluent shitheads.
A big ‘if’.
With companies like Patagonia, they think their brand is about that.
I’ll never understand writing off a hundred million potential customers.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s a religion. No cost is too high to remain committed to the faith.
If you could guarantee getting all the left as costumers by pissing off the right, or vice versa, it would probably be a good trade off, unless you’re Coke or Pepsi you probably don’t have that kind of market share, that said you most likely wont get that guarantee.
It’s something with spark or fuel (I know…really narrowed it down). It would fire randomly, but never enough times consecutively to fire up and run.
Sounds like mine (except for the “crank like a champ” part) It’d cough, but not carry enough rpm to keep going. Cold fuel, cold plugs= poor ignition (as in making the gas catch fire).
I was under the impression that block heaters were fairly common for those of you living in the frozen north?
Not as common as the old days. Newer ignition/injection systems work really damn well down to some absurd temps. Diesels are the exception. I am willing to bet most of them have block heaters.
I bet you are right on the diesels. That’s a standard item even in the south.
They seem to be becoming less ubiquitous. I think advances with computerized ignition is allowing cold cars to start easier than in the past. This is the first vehicle I’ve owned that didn’t have a block heater in it. And for 5 years, I haven’t needed one.
Yep. That’s why I’m hoping 0 is “warm” enough to get things going again.
I suppose could pull the plugs and bring them in to warm up. Worth a shot anyway
Wouldn’t hurt to throw some Heet or Sea Foam in the tank, too.
Good idea. I’m pretty sure I have a bottle of Sea Foam in the garage.
“This thread will include fifty of the most “2017” headlines this year (in no particular order).”
https://twitter.com/OrwellNGoode/status/947576091950157825
“The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/947802588174577664
TW: Don’t read the replies.
Could. Not. Agree. More. Pakistan is certainly not an ally and skates very close to being an outright enemy. Why the F are we giving them so much money?
Why are we giving any other country money?
So they don’t say anything when we “accidentally” invade their airspace with a drone strike.
Bribery to keep a lid on even worse behavior?
LOL gold
TW: Don’t read the replies.
Obama with a MAGA hat and a pacifier is pretty good, though.
The replies are at least half the fun of it. Doesn’t matter what his tweet actually said, the first half dozen replies will be “Impeach Trump now!” “Muller is going to have the goods on you and your Russian collusion any second now! Have fun in jail!” Oh, and one of those top comments will almost always be from some clown called Ed Krassenstein. He always tweets some good derp.
Holy fuckerballs… TOS is just totally Hihnfected these days. lol.
Comments are now truly unreadable.
*giggles and farts*
BULLY!
That whole selfishness thread was Hinh, Shrike, Tony, and Tulpa .
They may be actively hurting the cause of libertarianism with the comments section now.
“Documents reveal Margaret Thatcher didn’t trust pandas”
https://www.salon.com/2017/12/29/margaret-thatcher-pandas/
Who does trust pandas?
“TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Nationwide protests in Iran saw their most violent night as “armed protesters” tried to overrun military bases and police stations before security forces repelled them, bringing the death toll in the unrest to at least 12, state television reported Monday.
The demonstrations, the largest to strike Iran since its disputed 2009 presidential election, began Thursday in Mashhad over economic issues and have since expanded to several cities, with some protesters chanting against the government and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Hundreds of people have been arrested.
Iranian state television aired footage of a ransacked private bank, broken windows, overturned cars and a firetruck that appeared to have been set ablaze. It reported that clashes Sunday night killed 10 people.”
https://apnews.com/a53371dc213c4f7ab6841ee30dea0197/Iran-state-TV:-12-killed-in-protests,-attacks-on-security
“As widespread anti-regime protests in Iran continue on into their third day, American news audiences are starting to wonder why the US media has devoted so little coverage to such dramatic—and possibly history-making—events. Ordinary people are taking their lives in their hands to voice their outrage at the crimes of an obscurantist regime that has repressed them since 1979, and which attacks and shoots them dead in the streets. So why aren’t the protests in Iran making headlines?
The short answer is that the American media is incapable of covering the story, because its resources and available story-lines for Iran reporting and expertise were shaped by two powerful official forces—the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Obama White House. Without government minders providing them with story-lines and experts, American reporters are simply lost—and it shows.”
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/252332/why-cant-the-american-media-cover-the-protests-in-iran
No, that’s not the short answer. The short answer is that they’re not reporters, they’re political operatives masquerading as reporters and their job is to take down Trump, not report on important stories.
But our friends in the MSM would much rather talk about DRUMPF TWEET MEANIE THING.
Front page at CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/01/politics/donald-trump-2018-pakistan/index.html
Well there is this crap:
” (CNN)When protests erupted in Iran in 2009, then-President Barack Obama reacted cautiously, concerned that a forceful intervention could make America — reviled as the “Great Satan” by Iranian revolutionaries — a rallying cause for the clerical regime.
Eight years on, with demonstrations and violence breaking out again in Iranian cities, the US position is reversed, with President Donald Trump and his team almost gleefully leaping at the chance to line up alongside Iranian protesters.
In one of his first tweets of the new year, Trump was openly rooting for regime change.
“Iran is failing at every level despite the terrible deal made with them by the Obama Administration. The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They are hungry for food & for freedom. Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE!”
The sharp change of tack reflects the gulf in the intellectual and temperamental approach of the last two presidents and illuminates a dispute between rival schools of foreign policy thought about how the US should act and wield power in the world.”
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/01/politics/trump-obama-iran-protests/index.html
“Obama reacted cautiously, concerned that a forceful intervention could make America — reviled as the “Great Satan” by Iranian revolutionaries — a rallying cause for the clerical regime.”
Sure. That’s why he turned his back on them. By the way, I have this swamp land for sale…
“Several reports indicate that telecoms providers in Iran have begun blocking internet access across several cities in the country as mass protests erupted for the third day in a row.
Among the telecoms company was Hamrahe Aval, the primary Mobile Telecommunication Company of Iran (MTCI or MCI) as social media continues to play a pivotal role in documenting mass protests and subsequent brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters in the country.”
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2017/12/31/Iran-cuts-off-Internet-service-in-several-cities-as-mass-protests-erupt.html
This is why we need net neutrality! Putting the government in charge of the internet will stop a tyrannical government from cutting off the internet!
I heard the Saudi spec ops were doing some sort of mobile wifi network with directed antennas for Iranian border cities
This is a good deal for a respectable brand. I had a Del-Ton a while ago and was very happy with it.
https://www.cdnnsports.com/delton-ar15-echo-316-556-nato-b5-system.html#.WkppiktG28U
I can’t have one of those 🙁
I could outfit my army if Floridamen at those prices
Hell, let’s start a GoFundMe to get them to the Iranian protestors.
I could outfit my army of Floridamen at those prices
I was under the impression that block heaters were fairly common for those of you living in the frozen north?
In all the years I have lived Out West (Colorado, Idaho, Montana) I’ve never had one. Many many moons ago, I was skiing at Steamboat in a horrendous cold snap. My good old hot rod pickup fired right up every morning at -40. It took just about the entire drive from Craig, where I was staying, to the mountain, to get the heater to heat. Unfortunately, that truck is long gone.
I think the only place it makes sense to have a block heater is if you live in Interior Alaska.
Ford pickups sold here come standard with one. It looks like that’s the case for AK, MN, ND, SD, MT, WI, AND WY. My buddy bought his from a dealer in IA, and his does not have one.
Mine fits in the garage, so I won’t likely need it, but who knows – this global warming has been pretty goddamn cold so far.
I wish Chevy did the same. I”ll be putting one on mine, or making room in my shop, before the next cold snap hits. (hopefully next year)
I know some folks who lived in Alberta who used block heaters.
Canadians!
My main vehicle has been up on jackstands for awhile, so I’ve been driving a ’64 fairlane lately… which sits outside… and that bitch has started right up every day this week (in the -20s here). But probably only because with over 140K miles, the old 170ci inline-6 is as loose as a goose.
The TDS is strong with this one:
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/947369119497752576
Oh God. They’re really going to keep up with this “we’re right on the cusp of proving Trump/Russia collusion” lie throughout 2018? These idiots really don’t know when to stop digging, do they?
Why would they want to stop? This is red soy patties for the base.
100 tweets in a string!? If you do more than five you need help.
If you do more than
fivezero you need help.FIFY
Well, yeah. In the spirit of the new year I was being charitable.
I think the only place it makes sense to have a block heater is if you live in Interior Alaska.
Those guys just leave everything running 24 hrs a day for four months, don’t they?
It is rather interesting to see; I’ve visited Fairbanks a couple of times in the winter and people leave their cars running when they go into the grocery store, run errands etc. It would be super easy to steal any car you want but there is an unspoken rule that everyone leaves the cars alone.
I do that all the time when it’s cold. It’s a common practice where I live. I left my car running when I went into the gas station to buy a drink this morning.
Apparently if she don’t eat meat, she doesn’t really like the bone.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5225265/Meat-eaters-sex-vegetarians.html
From the sidebar:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5226247/Kimberley-Garner-shows-posterior-Caribbean.html
Not as top heavy as I’d prefer, but that ass…
No idea who she is, but she is beautiful.
The top looks awful. She should take it off.
The vegetarians I’ve dated liked my bone.
For those looking to sleep off their hangovers just tune into the outback bowl
You know- morons
There’s a disconnect between what housing costs and what many Bozeman households can pay. The city is creating a new job title to try and reduce that gap.
Next week, three candidates will interview to become Bozeman’s first affordable housing director — a person charged with pulling pieces together to help spur low-to-middle-income housing.
————-
As Bozeman leaders consider whether to add condos and rentals in the city’s affordable housing ordinance, the workload for city planners could grow from cumbersome to impossible.
“We need someone to do the tracking and to talk with the advocates and nonprofits about how we’re going to move forward with affordable housing,” Matsen said. “We need a resource on an ongoing level.”
He said the affordable housing director job description was broad so that people with various backgrounds like planning, development and social work would apply.
While the city has a clear idea of what it’s lacking, Matsen said it will be up to the new hire to lay out ways for Bozeman to become a more affordable place to live.
Let’s pass an ordinance. That’ll fix the problem. And, while we’re at it, let’s make building anything in Bozeman as expensive and complex as we possibly can, with lots of “oversight” because that’s how you get innovation. In fact, an ordinance requiring innovative solutions is what just what we need.
The idea of saying, “We’re not going to micromanage everything, and allow the people to offer up a broad variety of solutions” is completely outside their capabilities.
How about this?: “Government isn’t the solution, government IS the problem”
I hear taking houses from the rich and giving them to the poor works.
Maybe introduce them to the city planners of Houston?
“‘Mindfulness’: Corporate America’s Strange New Gospel
Buddhism without Buddha promises to make workers happier and more productive.
Andy Lee has an interesting job title: He is his company’s “chief mindfulness officer,” and he is not employed at some voguish Silicon Valley start-up or by a chain of organic-food co-ops — he works for Aetna, as old-fashioned a corporate giant as you could ever hope to find. In an interview with Healthy Workplace author Leigh Stringer, Aetna’s mindfulness program was described in familiar terms: “Participants are regaining 62 minutes per week of productivity,” Stringer wrote. “They are seeing an approximate dollar return, in terms of productivity alone, of more than $3,000 per person per year.”
Never mind karma — this is a bottom-line issue.
“Mindfulness,” a meditation practice that is in essence Buddhism without Buddha, is everywhere in corporate America and celebrity culture. (The two are no longer entirely distinguishable: Bill Gates is a celebrity, and Oprah is a vertically integrated global conglomerate.) Google offered a course under engineer-guru Chade Meng Tan (employee No. 107) that at one point had a six-month waiting period; Meng has since gone off on his own. Goldman Sachs has caught the mindfulness bug and uses a mindfulness app to keep its employees mindful. Intel is on board, and a study undertaken by the National Business Group on Health and Fidelity Investments found that one in five of the companies surveyed offered mindfulness training, with another 21 percent planning to do so — at a cost of up to ten grand per session.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455026/mindfulness-fad-corporate-america-buddhism-without-buddha
New Agey Far Eastern Mysticism is the religion of the Bay Area corporation. When I worked at [insert Fortune 50 tech company here] 5 years ago, we were infected with that crap. There were 5 yoga classes a day and maybe 2 or 3 other classes. There was a meditation room. Buddhist catchphrases worked themselves into just about every email from HR.
Now that I work at [insert Fortune 100 tech company here], not much has changed. It’s a bit more contained to the Bay Area office than at the other company, but it’s still the corporate religion.
At [Fortune 500 finance company] on the east coast, there’s none of that shit. Thank the gods. Yet.
It’s coming. My company, in an effort to “retain talent” have just started offering reiki to staff, which really is a fucking boondoggle to buy off the feminazis.
Guys, you want to retain talent? Figure out the cost of that program and just give the money to your employees. Holy fucking Jesus on a rolling cheerio, this ain’t rocket science.
Don’t even get me started on their decision to provide free fruit once a month to staff. This is a fucking hedge fund, not the Royal Navy circa 1715. I can’t remember the last time one of my coworkers died from scurvy or rickets. If you need to remind any of them to eat healthy, maybe they shouldn’t be anywhere near managing billions of dollars.
It’s coming. My company, in an effort to “retain talent” have just started offering reiki to staff, which really is a fucking boondoggle to buy off the feminazis.
Reiki? Seriously?
I mean, if they’d just said “massage”, at least the guys could have gone and got a fully comped “rub and tug”.
The fuck. They’re going down.
If you need to remind any of them to eat healthy, maybe they shouldn’t be anywhere near managing billions of dollars.
If you’re concerned with their unhealthy lifestyle, maybe you shouldn’t expect them to answer emails 24/7 and work 70 hours a week.
My company benefits site has a “calculator” that shows me the entire amount of compensation they pay me. Beyond the basics like insurance and 401k match, they include a whole bunch of ridiculous shit I’ve never used. Online doctor? Online concierge? Tutoring for school age children? Emergency daycare? Just pay me the difference and ditch all that crap!
This is why it’s stupid to mandate benefits like health insurance and maternity leave. If the brakes on my only car are about to go out, I need MONEY to get that fixed ASAP, and I can’t pay the mechanic in fringe benefits.
Mandating benefits by law is just going to lead to a reduction in money wages, which is going to put people in a difficult situation when they need actual cash for some kind of urgent expense.
This is also why I think that any welfare that exists should just be direct payments of money (if we’re granting for the sake of argument that government welfare absolutely must exist in some form).
A-fucking-men.
I’m grudgingly OK about health insurance stuff even though I haven’t used any of it yet. Surely I will some day.
But the “lifestyle” nonsense really needs to go.
But yeah agree with Akira – even better would be end it all and let me decide.
–
holy shit the bloat that HR departments create is insane
i predict HR will continue to get worse in 2018. because they’re hiring all the worst sorts of SJW retards from colleges
because they’re hiring all the worst sorts of SJW retards from colleges
This x1000. There are ten times as many HR people as there need to be in the average large company. Our CEO recently said that we had 154 different HR systems in place in our company, and they’re engaging in some rabid back patting because they’re cutting it down to 76.
What the hell is that? You need maybe 6 functions in HR: Hiring and Retention, Payroll, Expense Management, Insurance and 401k, Workplace Disputes, and Office Supplies.
HR is basically glorified compliance/litigation-mitigation
And, of course, the areas which the Bozeman NIMBY preservationist brigade are most fiercely protecting are neighborhoods which arose spontaneously in an era long before such a thing as a planning and zoning department had ever been contemplated. But now, in some parts of town, you can’t paint the fucking trim on your house without getting permission to select a color from the approved palette.
The University of Oxford will this week become a founding member of a new pan-European network of future leaders aiming to tackle the continent’s problems and “step over” the immediate disruption of Brexit, according to the scheme’s British originator.
Oxford and St Andrews are among 13 elite institutions to have signed up to a scholars programme run by the Europaeum, an association of leading European universities that asks postgraduate researchers to come up with practical solutions to social and political issues such as human trafficking, youth unemployment and regional separatism.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/01/universities-to-work-on-policy-solutions-to-europes-social-malaise
well it is good they already know themselves as future leaders. they will surely be the right top men this time
TOP
MENPEOPLENON-CISHET-POLITICALLY-APPROVED-BEINGSbut *of course* they are. surely the public won’t continue to vote in complete neophytes like trump *again*!?
the hubris of the ivory-tower-anointed is absurd. they literally do nothing, accomplish nothing, but pretend to be deserving of total control of the universe because they’ve collected a few sheepskins.
i have always thought the “Copenhagen Consensus” was one of the better academic ideas of the last few decades: force these pseudo-big-brains to actually weigh the cost-benefits of their various knowledge in key policy areas, then prioritize them.
the results were, obviously, the opposite of what many of the Right Thinkers assumed. The most cost-beneficial ideas were small, and banal. climate change bullshit ended up on the bottom of the pile because absolutely no one could demonstrate that ‘doing something’ actually mattered.
naturally everyone ignored them.
At the risk of talking in circles, I’ll meet you more than half way (agree with you about 97% of the time according to my spreadsheet).
A sheepskin is worth whatever you put into it; I value mine because it’s practical, and therefore practical employers bid for my services. Other sheepskins for writing in complete sentences and such don’t much impress me. Legitimate expertise isn’t the enemy.
But that’s neither here nor there. The problem is this notion of “leadership.” If we don’t need big government, then there’s nothing to be head of. And then it doesn’t matter which flavors of sheepskin are advising/composing Top Men.
Further unpopular (literally!) thought: the masses are idiots; I’m not one whit comforted that the combine commandos of Ohio are able to fend off Herself; she is bad, and that was great, and the Hair might accidentally do some okay things, but most of our neighbors are stupid and evil and would have us all serving their redneck theocracy if they could; if Drumphf does a ton of terrible, autocratic, un-American, unconstitutional things, they’ll (almost) all stand and cheer as fervently as any Chavez crowd would; there is no Smithian guiding hand working its way to a more perfect electoral college.
I’m not lecturing, just venting (where have we heard that before?). The commentariat has weighed all this before. I just wanted to say that studied competence is a good thing; however, most people are stupid, and I believe in everyone’s freedom to be as stupid as they wish to be; but I’m looking for tiny governments that are so insignificant that it hardly matters who the top men are or which toothless hillbillies voted for them.
shorter: you have to be intelligent *first*, and the paper doesn’t make you that.
for technical applications its a utilitarian certification. for anything else – particularly public policy and economics – its simply window dressing
Locke went to Oxford, so we know some good ideas have been associated with the school
300 years ago or so.
Reform in policing is being blocked by members of the Freemasons, and their influence in the service is thwarting the progress of women and people from black and minority ethnic communities, the leader of rank-and-file officers has said.
Steve White, who steps down on Monday after three years as chair of the Police Federation, told the Guardian he was concerned about the continued influence of Freemasons.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/31/freemasons-blocking-reform-police-federation-leader
could be worse could be the Jews
How about this?: “Government isn’t the solution, government IS the problem”
ANARCHY! CHAOS! MAYHEM!
* falls out of chair, swallows tongue *
*crosses one more name off the list of needs housing*
Thanks be to Ken Shultz who clarified what “that other place” is in the comments over on Reason.
Commented a few times over there then decided to stop doing that when my painful earnestness came through as trolling. I’m not, I promise. I’m just painfully earnest and I forgot how to ease into a space.
I noticed the comments over there were getting sparser. Haven’t seen Agile Cyborg, and I really miss him.
Welcome over, TULPA!
*snort* Thanks.
Perfect – you’ll fit right in, awkwardness and all.
I had a bet with myself how many comments it would take to get to Tulpa. LOL
Who told you you were trolling?
Give me its name. I’ll go punch it.
Rufus! *hugs*
/wink.
OK, so I can’t help but note the irony of the mythical libertarian women (my gawd, plural, really!) and their migration to this playground of miscreants.
We exist. I can’t speak for the others here (3? 4?), but I’ve got way too much to do to hang out and play a whole lot, more’s the pity. Besides the husband and kids, I’m self-employed and I have a moneypit of a house. I very often just need my fix of cynical humor, which is in short supply over at Reason nowadays.