Since everyone else is still recovering from tequila binges (and don’t have a culture of methamphetamine use), I’m up for today’s Morning Links as well. Lemme see…
In sports, Cards beat the Wee Red Machine, Balmer took one from the BoSox, Phils walk off against LA in 16, Twins, Pirates, Mets, Wankees, A’s, D’backs, Brew Crew, Royals, White Sox (did I read that right?), Giants and World Champion Astros all won.
Today’s birthdays include some British dude named Balfour, Walter Payton, Iman, idiot who played himself Matt LeBlanc, Fun musician Roger Creager, and the world’s first test tube baby Louise Brown.
On this day in 1394 Jews were expelled from France and in 1587 Christians were expelled from Japan. Napoleon beat the Ottomans, the Crittenden Resolution passes and Civil War becomes inevitable in the US.
I totally forgot that Chucky is coaching again this year. This is gonna be a great trainwreck.
She sure showed them! Woman ticketed for 92 in a 75 runs it up to 140 leaving traffic stop. Perhaps most surprisingly, no one was shot.
Half of publicly available government spending data is wrong.
This proves everything I believe about state workers. It must be true!
Racist Warren supporters in Massachusetts? No. Next you’ll tell me the KKK was mostly Democrats.
Its a love or hate band.
Comments
552 responses to “Wednesday What am I Doing Here Links”
You know who else was involved in political street fighting…
Crispus Attucks?
The Rolling Stones?
Boss Tweed?
Vidal Sasoon!
The Blues and the Greens?
Does Rand Paul’s yard count as ‘street’?
M. Bison?
Napoleon beat the Ottoman’s what?
Army. I’ll leave it so you don’t look crazy. Fuck.
He is crazy, apparently.
/looks innocent
Patio furniture.
The best way to get the dust out of your ottoman is with a good beating.
We all know FEMA sucks, but somehow I feel like the author of this story is ignoring the elephant in the room.
And note that everybody takes that 4645 number as the gospel truth.
Just be glad they rounded up from the numbers after the decimal point.
“FEMA’s lack of preparation is a testament to the U.S.’s colonial relationship to its territories.”
Horse fuckin’ shit. New Orleans does not have a colonial relationship with the US. The problem is FEMA. It is a black hole for money employing useless slugs that actively make disasters worse. Private relief efforts would be exponentially more efficient and effective. Wanna get rid of a federal agency? Forget ICE, kill FEMA.
No. FEMA is just a resource and training provider. The problem is local agencies are supposed to execute disaster plans with some logistical support from FEMA.
FEMA’s most important function is to help those local and state agencies develop disaster contingencies and inspect their plans.
PR and NO were fucked because the local response was fucked.
FEMA does not have an Army of people to come in after a disaster. It is one of the smallest federal government agencies and half their force involves reserve employees.
(though they are ineligible to vote for President!)
and don’t pay federal income tax
No US citizen is eligible to vote for president, other than electors chosen by the states.
Electors don’t have to be US citizens.
I’ll take that deal!!
Half of publicly available government spending data is wrong. – this is why data should not be publicly available, to avoid such mistakes,
Its a love or hate band.
I refuse to believe there is anyone who could actually hate the Pixies. You did, however, pick possibly their absolute worst song (excluding Indie Cindy and Head Carrier which do not exist in my reality).
I have no love for the Pixies. They’re just kind of meh. No real strong singer, and nothing really sticks out musically or lyrically. But I have odd tastes.
No real strong singer, and nothing really sticks out musically or lyrically.
Depends what you mean by “strong”, but I’d say Frank Black is probably among the most distinctive singers, in more of a David Thomas sense. It’s hard to imagine anybody else shrieking out Debaser, for instance (except maybe Isaac Brock, who copped a lot of his vocal style). Also, nothing sticks out lyrically? At least half their discography is about mythology, incest, the old testament, UFOs and aliens.
Strong as in being able to actually sing. Still boring lyrically – ie, doesn’t spin a story like Nick Cave, or give a sense of longing like Paul Simpson (of the Wild Swans).
Strong as in being able to actually sing.
Feature and not a bug for me, but I like off the wall vocalists. Tom Waits, Doug Martsch, Calvin Johnson, David Thomas, Ryan Kattner, David Portner and Isaac Brock definitely aren’t going to be winning any awards for their voice any time soon. Post-punk and alt rock aren’t exactly genres known for the proficiency of their warblers anyhow.
Still boring lyrically – ie, doesn’t spin a story like Nick Cave, or give a sense of longing like Paul Simpson (of the Wild Swans).
Meh, I think if you look at songs like Nimrod’s Son, The Happening, Motorway to Roswell, Gouge Away, Dead or Crackity Jones it’s hard to say Frank Blank can’t spin a story. Although I can see how the subject matter and delivery might not be to everyone’s taste.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t actively dislike the Pixies – just not my cup o’ tea to actively pursue buying everything they own. I had Doolittle for a spell but it didn’t get much play time
Nah I feel you. That was kind of what i was getting at originally. There’s not all that many bands that I can actually get inspired to hate. It’s either fandom or disinterest.
Death to the Pixies
Compilation albums are for plebs.
I was using the title as a … oh, nevermind.
I seen that thing you were doing so I was doing a counter-thing.
Pixies. Somebody likes “College Music”.
*shocked face*
The military has been a black hole of budgetary reporting for decades. I knew an investigative auditor for the Navy when I was younger. He said they paid him to go to bases, find all the accounting problems, write a really long report, and then stuff it in a filing cabinet, end of story.
My shocked face is all wore out and saggy.
>>Woman ticketed for 92 in a 75 runs it up to 140 leaving traffic stop
Worst speeding ticket I ever got? Going 75 in a 45 construction zone. Funny thing, I was driving the slowest car of my then stable, a 1991 Buick Park Avenue. It was the floaty / soft suspension which gave such little feedback of your speed that screwed me. So I’m talking to my wife while I’m driving, thinking that I’m just going with the flow of traffic. The wheels just edge into the construction zone. I see a cop. Look down at my speedo: “Holy shit! I thought I was going 55!” Instant 5 points on the license.
The insurance premium, however, never went up since at the time all of the cars were registered/insured in my wife’s name.
If I were to move outside Romania I think I would have a difficult time at first to get used to keeping speed limits.
Don’t worry, Pie, we have cars and paved highways here. No one cares how fast you ride your donkey cart as long as you don’t ride it on the interstate.
Euphemism?
I was clocked doing 95 on a 55 mph Oklahoma back country road. I actually had my motorcycle up to 120 moments before I saw the cop car.
I contend that you lose 20 IQ points as soon as you swing your leg over the seat of a motorcycle.
Given how stupid the act itself is, I’m not surprised that it has additional detrimental effects on cognition.
The first time I rode a motorcycle, I learned in a hurry what “defensive driving” really meant.
Motorcycle = coffin on wheels = organ donor machine
I saw a bike with the license plate “ICU RN” one time. I laughed.
Do they get an employee discount?
Hey, I had a 1991 Park Avenue too! I loved that car.
That’s because you’re both Tulpa.
Napoleon beat the Ottomans
But did he beat the point spread?
Vegas always wins. Except, off course, when it doesn’t
Napoleon wasn’t even involved. It was the Tick!
/SPOON
I shouldn’t be surprised when I come away from reading a “news report” knowing less than when I started, but sometimes I still am. What the fuck happened in that “punched in the face” story? I’m damned if I know.
But- with a name like that, he must have been a Nazi.
After reading his reaction and sputtering that all america is white supremacists, i can see why someone might have punched him.
I’ll leave it so you don’t look crazy. Fuck.
You’ll have to work harder than that to make me not look crazy.
Trump Hollywood star BTFO
Gottem
Destruction of property. Nice.
He can bring peace to the world and these deranged moonbat babies still won’t be happy because they’re batshit crazy.
Probably just another gold digging whore.
“Multiple people—including police—tell me a man walked up with a guitar case and pulled out the pick axe. Then, it’s believed, he called police himself to report it, but left the scene before they got here. Now, he’s nowhere to be found.”
It doesn’t sound like the police are looking.
Polyamory is wrong. Either its multiamory or polyphilia.
You cant mix greek and latin word roots. Its wrong.
/saw that on a sign once
Yes, you can. English has already plundered both languages, so they’re English -affixes, and we can recombine them as we please.
While there was not any malintent against Puerto Rico, FEMA’s lack of preparation is a testament to the U.S.’s colonial relationship to its territories.
Wrong.
I think this is my favorite SJWednesday link so far this year. It needs no witty title.
SJWednesday: Here Are 7 Reasons Why Polyamory Is More Difficult When You’re Disabled
Well shit. I’ll repost below, no edit fairy needed.
Works here …
I am not reading that.
Now that is a niche market.
Vacation report. Update New York is beautiful – what a damn shame it’s in New York.
Great scenery and abject poverty thanks to city folks running things for rural folks.
I still have New York 2.0.
Yonkers is neither beautiful nor upstate.
I think this is my favorite SJWednesday link so far this year. It needs no witty title.
SJWednesday: Here Are 7 Reasons Why Polyamory Is More Difficult When You’re Disabled
I doubt polyamory works with very few exceptions no matter how much some people want to make it happen/ Certainly not easy.
When I was in the Army, we had an E4 in the company who lived with his wife, his girlfriend, and his wife’s boyfriend; there was a passel of kids involved, and they didn’t seem too sure which kids were whose.
Sleeping arrangements in that house were unknown but were the subject for a lot of snickering speculation in the company. Frankly, given the rather Puritanical nature of the Army is such matters in the 1980s, I’m surprised he didn’t get tossed out, but he was pretty quiet about it and was, after all, only an E4. An E7 or an O4 would have been bounced out on his butt.
Compared to what?
Are you seriously trying to argue that monogamy works?
How are we judging “works”?
Are you seriously trying to argue that the only definition of works is “together forever till death do us part”? Sure using that criteria monogamy “works” better than polyamory but even then it’s success rate is not much above polyamory and when you add in actually being happy in that relationship Polyamory closes entirely and might even eclipse monogamy
You know sometimes I say to myself maybe the right woman isn’t out there for me. And then I think, somewhere out there is a paraplegic aspie whose third girlfriend had to make her house wheelchair accessible so she could bang him and his other two girlfriends. What a time to be alive.
No pics in the article. I have a sense these people are probably twos or (generously) threes on the 1-10.
It could be that their disability is, in their words, “visibly challenged”
‘…I am using the terms interchangeably…’
Isn’t everyone these days?
It’s all fluidity to me.
a
pimpmuppet’s love is very different from that of a square?I second that question/emotion…
Very different. It’s really hard to get body fluids out of the felt
^^^Do whatever you want bro, it’s a free country.
But I will be damned if there needs to be some kind of law to help you get your disabled swing on.
Hold on there buddy.
Are you saying the sex swing in your basement isn’t ADA compliant? There is no ramp access?
I’m giggling now because I see a Chapelle like Clayton Bigsbee character who travels around the country suing sex clubs for not having ADA compliant dungeons.
Oh, I just stopped giggling because I am now thinking about how many people in this country wouldn’t even crack a grin at that skit.
I’ve discussed with my old friends that us old guys need an early week end for deer hunting, since we walk slower, can’t see so well, etc. I’m afraid to say that out loud ’cause the DNR might pick up on it.
I also proposed seat belts in boats, since many drownings are caused when people fall out when the boat tips over.
If it saves one life…
No, not seat belts in a boat. Bathrooms.
I remember reading a “statistic” that a huge amount of drownings are when some guy (who’s been drinking beer) falls out of the boat while pissing over the edge.
So make all boats install a marine head and problem solved.
I don’t stand up in a boat any more, kneel down with a can or hit the shore if the ladies are on board. The women would like a 3 or 4 piece bath, I suppose.
Is he saying that most published material in the popular press tries to appeal to the largest audience possible? Inconceivable! I wonder what other fascinating insights this person has…perhaps he’ll discover that water is wet and that the sky is blue.
I call bullshit.
As an able bodied neurotypical non monogamous person with no mental or physical disabilities to speak of (unless you consider being a libertarian shitlord a disability) I am not sure what world this person is from. Something like 85% of the people I have ever encountered in the Poly community has some form of phyiscal of mental disability. In addition to many with obvious physical disabilities I think like 60% of the women I have ever encountered in poly circles “had” either lupus of fibromialgia (some likely did actually have them others were obvious cries for attention) and 75% had anxiety or depression issues often with a side dish of “ptsd” thrown in that they were in permanent therapy for. On the male side probably half of them are on the Assburgers spectrum and at least a 3rd are in permanent therapy for anxiety or depression.
Get any collection 10 self identified poly people together and you will have at least 12 actual or claimed physical or mental disabilities among them and no more than 3 of the 10 will admit to having no disabilities.
Wait, you mean the author (who I assume has autism or is on the spectrum) wasn’t able to perceive the social cues given off by other people that signal that the other person has a particular social or mental state, and thus writes an article about how no one they run into has a particular social or mental state??
so weird.
If I had known this was frowned upon…
Worldcon Is Redoing Its Entire Program After Widespread Backlash [Updated]
https://io9.gizmodo.com/worldcon-is-redoing-its-entire-program-after-widespread-1827829009
Over the weekend, writer Bogi Takács revealed that eir Worldcon 76 bio had been rewritten to misgender em using masculine pronouns. After discussing the situation on Twitter, program division head Christine Doyle replied saying she had taken the bio directly from eir website, which Takács later noted would be impossible seeing as how e never goes by he/him.
But nosiree the Hugos are not a SJW infested swamp… That is just a gamergate style conspiracy theory…
“which Takács later noted would be impossible seeing as how e never goes by he/him.”
That doesn’t really prove that the copy could be wrong on the website.
Why can we not just use “it” and “its” now? “em” and “eir” is still plural. /grump
I prefer the pronouns &^# and $*+. If you don’t use those, I will file a strongly worded complaint.
Besides which, eir means “eggs” which unfairly implies “female” rather than the proper nonbinary term.
“…who goes by the pronoun formerly known as ‘he.’”
Why not “hey, asshole!”
It might be less triggering, too!
There are letters missing from that paragraph, FYI.
We could use a really good World War right about now.
Oh, this gets so much better…
http://www.prezzey.net
And who might the lovely
ladyperson inhisem’s life be?http://roselemberg.net
I feel sorry for their mental illness … But if they are happy good for them. Let them fuck with Worldcon as much as they like.
I haven’t written seriously until my early thirties, when I finally chose the language for my poetry and prose
Whereupon you immediately started writing serious gibberish.
I really try not to pre-judge, but I’m almost 100% certain I’d hate those two people.
neuroatypical means crazy as shit, right?
It means DON’T YOU DARE JUDGE ME FOR BEING “AN ASSHOLE!” i CAN’T CONFORM TO YOUR BOUGIE CONCEPTS OF COURTESY OR RESPECT! i HAVE A DISABILITY!
It’s okay, we brought your white jacket. You’ll be back in your safe space in the sanitorium soon, and you won’t have the worry about the mean people.
“WHITE” JACKET? OMFGICAN’TEVEN! AND THIS PADDED CELL IS NOT A REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION FOR MY DISABILITY AS DEMANDED BY THE ADA! I AM ENTITLED TO BETTER!
Childperson? I think we have a new winner for the worst name ever award. Not surprising, given the context. Although I do wonder if the ? is just an emoticon or actually part of the poor kid’s name.
Presumably, in a couple years they’ll be Vincent Adultman.
Up there with Chareth Cutestorey.
It was either that or Childy McChildface
At least Childy McChildface has some gravitas.
Wow, that’s ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag.
And the bag is on fire on the front stoop.
At least this person is successfully doing something. I guess. I’m kind of glad the SF-F community went off the deep end. It makes me feel much less bad about not buying books from authors I used to love and think haven’t written a thing worth reading in 5+ years.
If these progs are so big on the “social contract,” wouldn’t it be fair to say that linguistically useful pronouns be viewed as a social contract? If I have to pay for your health insurance, I get to call you whatever the hell I think you look like.
You’re probably one of those Alt-Right Peterson fanbois.
No, I didn’t just assume your gender. The language in which you engaged me requires that to happen. If you would engage me in Japanese that wouldn’t be required but, well, you don’t speak Japanese so here we are.
most articles and self-help books focus on abled and neurotypical folks.
Wait, what? How can this be?
Not everyone is catering specifically to me, im so oppressed!
Krieger approves
She’s Poppy.
I’m Poppy….
No, you are clearly Tulpa.
I predict in 10 years this author will be chased out of society for writing an article so bigoted towards the non-existent female community.
Holograms are almost-people too!
+1 Jem
Truly outrageous.
Or a backlash will be underway and actual oppression of ‘the disadvantaged groups’ will be happening. Human affairs tend to follow a pendulum path and this pendulum is pushed almost to the vertical on the privileges to women and minorities side.
Hatsune Miku has been doing shows in Japan for something like ten years now.
Surely that should be Rei Toei
Make with the dogfights using experimental fighters using prototype brain-machine interfaces or IDGAF.
Music link. Man, I loved this. I need to track it down and watch it again. And dig up the soundtracks again. I know I had them in digital format somewhere.
^^^ this guy gets it
The agency told state auditors that it is training the supervisors “on the importance of following the State’s progressive discipline process.”
Hear, hear! See, if it weren’t for unions, this poor oppressed state worker would not have the protections of progressive discipline processes. This is why we NEED unions, people.
How dare you think that unions could create less productive workers. They are unambiguously good.
I had a fellow library worker let the mask slip one time when we were putting in magnet strips; she was talking about Paul Walker and said there’d be blood in the streets. I replied that such an outcome would be terrible and unamerican and she got this crazed look on her face and rasped “don’t fuck with the unions!”.
There is a whole class of people who think unions are not only a necessary evil but a good and uplifting part of our culture.
Gives me the heebie-jeebies
Why was this person going to go start a riot over Vin Disel’s co star in Fast and Furious series?
I’ve seen those guys with ‘Local 123xyz’ t-shirts. They exude assholery. The sort of jerkoffs who piss legs spread at the urinals.
Like a talented women? or “wide stance” ? I’m confused.
There’s a big push on in Missouri to vote for a prop that would keep us from becoming a right to work state. The propaganda is strong in those commercials. Even has my husband thinking twice and he escaped from Commifornia years ago.
Private unions? Knock yourself out.
Public unions? Hell no.
^This. Public unions pervert “public servant” into “public master”. Kill it with fire.
MSG, the notorious flavoring agent, may actually foster healthy eating. Several studies find that consuming glutamate before a meal decreases energy intake and a new study now finds it improves self-control:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-018-0044-6
Ah yes, that poisonous glutamate that’s in pretty much every protein powder in the world, and yet somehow only inspires the “MSG alergy” when paired with a single sodium ion.
And is ignored when it’s naturally occurring, it only causes a reaction when it’s added separately.
I have a strong natural reaction to consuming glutamates. It’s called happiness. Last night I made pasta in sauce made with tomatoes and banana peppers from the garden.
Lol, I read MSG as “RBG, the notorious flavoring agent…”
Needless to say, I was confused and kind of turned on (?)
Is there a Chinese rapper called the Notorious MSG?
Yes, yes there are
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a flavoring agent? And you’re turned on by that?
Listen, these people are literally Hitler. They leave the good guys no choice but to lash out violently.
Also. I always speed up after getting a speeding ticket. It’s my fuck you to them for wasting my time with their shitty speed traps.
Pretty pictures of the GA coast.
It’s hard to believe that someone from Yulee doesn’t know about Georgia’s coast. When I lived in Jacksonville we went camping on Cumberland Island a couple of times. Lovely place.
Anyone who looked at a map really…
There’s a SUBMARINE BASE in Georgia (King’s Bay) about 20 miles from Yulee. If you live in Yulee and don’t know about it, you need to kick your sister out of bed and pick up a book.
Thank you. Those are amazing.
Police facial recognition system faces legal challenge
Niqabs would work better as a challenge.
It’s Britain, so Guy Fawkes masks?
The agency told state auditors that it is training the supervisors “on the importance of following the State’s progressive discipline process.”
I have been told it’s easy to hold people accountable for their job performance; you just have to be sure to maintain the “proper documentation” and follow all the procedures.
Fuck that. “You’re fired. Grab your shit and get out.”
Yeah I remember all the jobs i had where my supervisor couldn’t touch me, despite my gross inadequacies.
“I totally forgot that Chucky is coaching again this year. This is gonna be a great trainwreck.”
If I remember correctly, Chucky never had a losing season in Oakland.
Yeah, and he’s bringing back all the players still around from that era!
Well, I did see Rich Gannon hanging around there, but I think Barret Robbins is a no go even if he’s not in prison at the moment.
He also hasn’t lost in 10 years.
I wouldn’t even bother watching any Raiders games this season if not for the ‘Return of Chucky Part II’. I want to see the Chucky dolls come out and see his reaction. He used to hate that.
He had Rich Gannon, who, on paper, is no where near as good as Carr.
But Gannon was worlds better than Carr when the pressure was on.
Because he was more mobile. Carr is a pocket passer, but definitely a lot better passer than Gannon. What I don’t get is why the hell they got rid of Crabtree, he’s been the Raider’s best receiver for years. Granted Cooper has elite skills if he could not drop the ball every time it’s thrown his way, but that’s not been improving.
The Metropolitan Police says the technology will help keep London safe.
What’s that legalese saying about “facts not in evidence”?
Pro Gamer Dumps ‘World’s Sexiest Weather Girl’ to Focus on Playing More Video Games
“I’m so focused on Call of Duty, I can’t give her the attention that she wants.”
No matter how hot, there’s always some guy who would rather play video games than sleep with her again.
I think I first saw her in an old ozzyman video. Damn hot… But apparently some dude is bored of doing her
I, for one, would welcome a chance to get tired of her.
“Pro Gamer Comes Out As Gay”
Professional gamers require peak reflexes – these atrophy quickly starting in the mid twenties. At 23, he is the equivalent of an 38 year old quarterback. He needs to make as much money as he can before age forces him to retire at 26.
I can’t even tell if this is sarcasm or not.
Hilarious, a bit terrifying (when I realize that I am almost 30 years past my “prime”) but not sarcasm.
https://www.ranker.com/list/what-its-like-to-be-a-pro-gamer/zack-howe
Depending on connection speed and available hardware. This isn’t your grandma’s computer gaming era, we’re now effectively half cyborg, meaning with better hardware, I can fell every teen running a potato, in a half mile radius by head shot before they can even aim.
No worries, she can star in next season of Secret Nazi President. I’m sure she’ll get lots of attention from Random Drunken Asshole ‘Titties, mmm, let’s see em’.
I have a suggestion: Any agency that has an error rate greater than 1% is immediately defunded. The Swamp would look like a suburban wetland overnight.
These are the same agencies that are always screaming for more funds and can perfectly justify why they need it.
Well if they were better funded they could hire a guy to keep better track of their funding.
I would hate to think what it would cost to require six sigma on the government, and God the smug that would happen, but maybe it would be worth it.
The VA uses it….I’m a Green Belt and they (you) paid for it.
If you defunded those agencies, Tundra, who would pay for those noise abatement walls on the freeway (that don’t work)?
(my emphasis)
So the only reason those noise barriers are being build is because some bureaucrat a long time ago decided that was all that he would pay for. (and to be honest, if there wasn’t a rule like this, who knows what crazy Rube Goldberg noise abatement systems the govt would pay for).
I am several miles from 94 and can hear it at night. The walls are a fucking joke, but at least they are trying to make them more attractive.
Well, in the tonier suburbs than ours, anyway.
WTF? You live in swanky W Maple Grove. I’m in the barrio of E Maple Grove. And yeah, if you stop and listen, you can hear the freeway at my house too. I think it is more noticeable when traffic is light. During rush hour, it is constant enough that it just gets filtered out.
I’d love for the manlier men here to weigh in on how inflated they think $2M/mile for these walls are?
Lol. Swanky, huh? I’m a mile from Walmart and the kid across the street is a tweeker.
Keep an eye on that tweeker. That’s the little bastatd that will break into your house while you’re on vacation, or when everyone is at work, school, etc.
Or worse, break into your garage and steal your beer https://youtu.be/zBz8NXdCBcg
The federal standard for body armor is based on the following:
A bureaucrat grabbed a vest (he didn’t even write down what vest he used!) and laid it over some modeling clay. He then shot the vest several times, and measured the size of the dents in the clay, and set the standard of “any dents larger than X mean the vest is not suitable”.
The answer? The answer, as always, is mass transportation, which we here in New York City have figured out, nay, perfected.
The downside of course is living in NYC.
Mass Transit so good people go out of their way to avoid it if they can?
N.Y.C. Land Area 304.6 square miles U.S. land area 3.8 million square miles. Somehow I think this is relevant data in the discussion of replacing the private auto with mass transit. Given the facts that the best number I can find for the MTA expenditures in a year is $15 billion and that the subway is already built so you don’t have start up costs, I think we might have trouble affording the national mass transit system….
Awhile back someone mentioned the ghastly scenery along the Acela corridor–all these downtrodden areas between upscale suburbs where our elites live and their offices in D.C. I wonder how many people living along that route get stiffies for public transit the way the people cutting through their neighborhoods do.
I can only speak to the NYC to Boston chunk, but “ghastly” is not the right word. It’s largely beautiful once you get out of the short bit in NYC itself – I’m not even sure that counts as ‘downtrodden’ any more than the rest of the 5 boroughs.
(re-reading your comment, maybe you’re just talking NYC to DC? I haven’t been on that bit).
The journalist (maybe think tank researcher, I can’t remember) was talking about working in D.C.
Oh, no, that’s not a problem. Forced relocation to ulta-high density zones is a-okay from the perspective of the mass-transit enthusiasts. The better to contain the blight of humanity.
These enthusiasts think doing this makes it easier to exterminate the human parasite too when the time comes, I bet..
Trump voter ‘ashamed’ to be American after daughter-in-law is deported
Maybe she shouldn’t have called ICE after that argument.
“said she was “ashamed” to be an American”
This is so overplayed and depends on the target audience sharing moral principles with you.
But if she married an american does she not get right of residence?
Let’s parse that for a second. She’s ashamed to be part of a collective unit after she made an individual decision.
Yeah, fuck right off.
If she had just said she was personally ashamed, it would have at least been a tolerable statement.
Don’t forget the DUI. Somehow that is not considered a crime to these people, when it is convenient.
States usually don’t classify DUI as a “crime” in their statutes, so they can use that fiction to deprive you of your right against self-incrimination, 4th amendment protections, etc. Because it’s not actually a “crime crime”.
Also the legal limits are ridiculously low.
And subjective.
These are the same agencies that are always screaming for more funds and can perfectly justify why they need it.
If these agencies, which provide vital services, are not properly funded, people will die!
Lol, I read MSG as “RBG, the notorious flavoring agent…”
“This tastes kind of dry and moldy…”
A conservative writer went to an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rally and accidentally wrote a plug for her socialist manifesto
““I saw something truly terrifying,” reports Kruta. That is: She witnessed first hand the power of a socialist platform.
While listing what she sees as the worst parts of the goals Ocasio-Cortez shared on stage, she unwittingly wrote a powerful, pithy summary of the Democratic left’s manifesto:
I saw how easy it would be, as a parent, to accept the idea that my children deserve healthcare and education.
I saw how easy it would be, as someone who has struggled to make ends meet, to accept the idea that a “living wage” was a human right.
Above all, I saw how easy it would be to accept the notion that it was the government’s job to make sure that those things were provided.”
That’s a lot of derp.
“notion that it was the government’s job to make sure that those things were provided.”
This is the worst part. Things have to change and government has to do it.
The part they never talk about is what happens if you don’t agree to the government job, or the government doctor paralyzes your kid. Shut up or go to the work camp, comrade.
They never talk about the people that have to foot that bill, and it isn’t the 1%.
Sounds about right. The flaw with socialism or social democracy has never been that it’s not appealing to mid-twenties aged wanna-be intellectual that has never made anything in their life and hasn’t had to face the unyielding constraints of solving a problem with a combination of their hands and their experience.
So its not a surprise that the insidious lies of socialism would creep into the heart of an editor who’s primary job is to own the libs.
Its a love or hate band.
They are a weird one for me. I played the everloving shit out of a Surfer Rosa tape back in the day, showed mild interest in Doolittle and then moved on. Bought Teenager of the Year and enjoyed it a lot, but then nothing for years. I actually think I enjoy them more now.
Regardless, nice choice!
I only like about half of their songs, but the ones I do like, I REALLY like.
An open letter to Mark Zuckerberg: our child died at Sandy Hook – why let Facebook lies hurt us even more?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/25/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-sandy-hook-parents-open-letter
Treat victims of mass shootings and other tragedies as a protected group, such that attacks on them are specifically against Facebook policy.
Provide affected people with access to Facebook staff who will remove hateful and harassing posts against victims immediately.
Facebook plays a mammoth role in exposing the world’s masses to information. That level of power comes with the tremendous responsibility of ensuring that your platform is not used to harm others or contribute to the proliferation of hate. Yet it appears that under the guise of free speech, you are prepared to give license to people who make it their purpose to do just that.
Why don’t they just, oh, stop using Facebook?
Get the fuck outta here!
Oh fuck off
Stop using the platform or create an alternative.
One of the most libertarian/interesting morning radio guys I ever heard was fired from his show in Minnesoda telling the Sandy Hook families to ‘go to hell’.
Bob is right. I will buy him a beer if I ever see him in the wild.
I still think he had the best show on in the morning that I ever heard. I enjoyed that he would call out both sides when they engaged in stupidity.
They kept replacing him with yahoos that are tradition “Team Red” conservatives who mock liberals and defend the GOP at all times.
My question: Is there a huge untapped market for a center of the road media source? One that would savage both sides? I would love something like that. Or is our country so devoted to Team Politics that everyone would hate that except a few weirdos?
Honestly, I don’t think most people care to do the heavy lifting that an open mind requires. Way easier to just go Vikings/Packers on the bit.
But if you want to pitch it to KTLK, I’m in.
I think you are right.
The Packer/Vikings rivalry is the same analogy I always use too.
David Brock/Brett Favre greatest ever!
David Brock/Brett Favre is a total loser, always has been!
My question: Is there a huge untapped market for a center of the road media source? One that would savage both sides? I would love something like that. Or is our country so devoted to Team Politics that everyone would hate that except a few weirdos?
A) I doubt there is. The center-of-the-roaders are probably apathetic and don’t really want to consume that type of media, whereas the rabid partisans voraciously consume it.
B) O’Sullivan’s law would eat any such a media source within months.
Fox News and the WSJ are pretty much center.
Is that the morning guy from the Park Rapids station? 97.5 ? I hear him on occasion, don’t always agree, too Republican for me.
No idea. A link to his podcast page. If it is the same guy, you will recognize his voice right away.
Bob was probably a little bit harder on the GOP, but it seemed to me that he was willing to call out the culture war BS (and lack of fiscal restraint) of the GOP.
Different guy. The Park Rapids guy is local, though like most jocks been everywhere. Kind of sounds like Don Imus in voice. Pure right side of the spectrum. The station has good old guy music later in the day, 4-5 uninterrupted songs mixed, 40s/50s/ to the 80s, country/rock/easy listening. KDKK 97.5.
If you’re gonna get fired for something, that’s how you go out with a bang.
I LOL’d.
Heiress charged with aiding alleged cult, free on $100M bond
That whole story is bizarre. I guess what was is being alleged is they were running a stable of whores (unbeknownst to the whores themselves who thought they were just in a sex cult) and had a client list of people who had signed to get life advice for at least 5000.00 a pop. The reporting has been terrible and I ultimately think everyone walks.
I had to read six different stories on it to just to kind of maybe get a handle on what the prosecution was alleging. The stories would say what they were charged with (racketeering, human trafficking and forced labor) and than would proceeded to state the facts and nothing they were stating was illegal, having a sex cult isn’t illegal, selling scam self help isn’t illegal and branding people who want to be branded also isn’t illegal.
It sure as hell is illegal that these people were banging and the losers didn’t get a piece of the action!
Yeah I am still trying to figure out what law has supposedly been broken here.
The sex slaves weren’t even being paid so they can’t get them for prostitution.
I mean yeah creepy, likely immoral, and possibly unethical but I can’t see anything illegal in what has been alleged
Hey if you have a family fortune that you have inherited and you can’t use it to become Batman what better use of it is there than financing a sex cult?
The Ocasio-Cortez Highlight Reel
She will of course be seated in the next congress, since her district always votes heavily Dem, no matter how crazy she is. So she will be providing fodder for Republican ads for at least a couple of years.
Musicians slam Austrian festival over sex abuse claims
I acknowledge only one Austrian musician.
Hint: it’s not Hitler.
Because he was a visual artist, not a musician. Duh.
YES!
“between 1998 and 2017.”
They kept participating year after year for 20 years? Why?
You expect them to risk their lucrative careers?
Exhibit ∞+1 of media passing along worthless press releases and passing them off as “news”.
So, none of the water exceeds govt guidelines that err on the conservative side. But this is a story worth telling why? Did you ask them what studies they can cite to support their contention that any TCE in the water is dangerous?
It is bad enough that they hacks are so lazy they just run PR’s. What is even worse, is if some free market group sent them a PR, you know they wouldn’t run it. They’d probably try to excuse themselves by saying they were too busy setting up a blue ribbon commission to figure out why the public doesn’t trust the media to vet the story.
“So, none of the water exceeds govt guidelines that err on the conservative side”
The conservative side is really underselling it.
It’s like those ZOMG THE GROUNDWATER IS POISONED BY THESE CHEMICALS articles you see on the news and then you actually read into the study, and there is some insanely tiny trace amount of some chemical which is diluted to the point that only very sensitive instrumentation can detect it.
Like take arsenic for example. Lethal dose of arsenic is 1 milligram per kilogram of body weight per day. So let’s take an edge case, a 10 kg child. Lethal dose of arsenic would be 10 milligrams in a day.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2011/5059/pdf/sir2011-5059_report-covers_508.pdf
See Page 32 for the table. Let’s take the worst case scenario. The government sampled some groundwater somewhere that had 550 micrograms of arsenic per liter of water, and that was the highest they found. That’s .55 miligrams per liter. So, if there happens to be a child drinking that groundwater straight up, without any kind of filtering or treating, then somewhere in the 18th liter of water in a day, they will have consumed a lethal dose of arsenic. So basically, if a 10kg child somehow wiggles to an open irrigation well in this place where the groundwater has an extremely high level of arsenic and drinks 18 liters of the groundwater without urinating or sweating, and they do all that in a single day, then there’s your arsenic fatality. The median level was .79 micrograms per liter, which is .00079 miligrams per liter. That’s over 12000 gallons of pure unfiltered groundwater to get the lethal dose of arsenic.
BUT ZOMG THERES CHEMICALS IN THE GROUNDWATER.
When you’re more likely to die from water toxicity then the chemicals in the water…
Water’s unsafe at any volume. That’s why you add the ethanol.
Trichlor was in heavy usage in the military electronics industry for decades as a cleaning solvent. I guarantee that if 5 ppb were dangerous, every single person that worked in that industry, myself included, would be long dead.
My daughter was born via IVF. I miss the term “test tube baby”.
I thought they used petri dishes so they could, you know, gain access to the eggs more readily.
They never used test tubes, IIRC, it was a petri dish for Louise Brown too.
I know, my point was that the term ‘test tube baby’ was never accurate.
The Petri dish identified as a test tube. You need to respect this.
I didn’t say it was accurate, I said I liked the term.
I think its much cooler sounding than IVF.
“IVF” is too hard to pronounce. Is it “iffvv” or “eyeffvv?”
Neither, the V comes before the F.
Swedish plane protester Elin Ersson: ‘I knew I couldn’t back down – I had to do what I could’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/25/swedish-plane-protester-elin-ersson-interview-afghanistan
“My ultimate goal is to end deportations to Afghanistan.”
This sounds like a solid plan.
I wasn’t asleep, I qas writing documentation.
It’s… technically work.
Nevermind the fact that it won’t be needed for another two eyars and by then the underlying platform will have undergond a complete overhaul, so no one will ever actually need to reference anything I wrote. It’s still work…
dig a hole, level off a hill…
The woman was arrested on suspicion of willful reckless driving and taken to the Lincoln County Jail. Later, deputies conducting an inventory in her car found what they suspected was marijuana
Its pretty easy to tell if it’s marijuana. So I am going to assume it is not. And I am pretty sure high drivers don’t speed.
From the sidebar of that story:
No, Britney Spears’ boyfriend didn’t play Husker football
So close, Husker fans. So close.
Its pretty easy to tell if it’s marijuana.
Right, you bring the dog within 50 yards of the car and say he lifted his tail. Bam, it’s marijuana.
Man with no penis pretended to have sex and used ‘unknown implement’ instead
Ms. Cockburn? What are the odds?
Must be one charming guy
Fiscale Depute Ms Cockburn
Heh.
He’s charged for NOT sticking his dick in a woman?
SHE stuck a strap-on in and gave them yeast infections.
Eeeew. I’m a Pronoun casualty.
Get used to it.
I won’t enjoy being hoisted on that chick’s retard.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Could have been worse, he could have used that contraption from Se7en.
Supervisors move to ban workplace cafeterias
http://www.sfexaminer.com/supervisors-move-ban-workplace-cafeterias/
Two city legislators on Tuesday are expected to announce legislation banning on-site workplace cafeterias in an effort to promote and support local restaurants.
Also ban packed lunches… I mean … I can’t even as the kids say these days
We closed our workplace cafeteria because no one was using it. People actually prefer to eat at their desk, or get away from the office while on lunch. Whowuddathunk?
I’m guessing not everyone who works for those big tech firms is making massive bank. I’m sure they have custodians and office managers and receptionists just like everywhere else, and I’m sure those people will just love having an employer-provided lunch taken away from them.
Well that’s a bunch of bullshit
Interesting story. If it’s true, I’d probably vote to acquit if I were on a jury considering charges against Page for killing Yates, Comey, Steele and Rosenstein.
““Hopefully this will start to fix the damage done to other people and it will all flush out in due course,” Page told me.”
That guy still has hope. Impressive.
DMV officials told state auditors that they did not pursue disciplinary action against the worker because her behavior had not been properly documented.
Incompetence within incompetence. It’s incompetence inception.
Incompeception!
If True, Woot
Err… my link is missing it was here a moment ago, I swear it.
Is Trump impeached yet? I assume the Cohen tapes are the final piece that they needed!
Any day now… any day… echo echo
Any Day Now!
Nice break time music for my morning
I’m still not sure why anyone is supposed to care about Trump paying off some side piece. This whole Mueller business was supposed to be about Trump nefariously plotting with the Russians to cheat in the election. While none of it appears to be true at this point, I can at least understand why it would be a big deal if it were true. This, though? Who cares?
It was in cash and only criminals use cash.
Or Bitcoin.
Trump’s using the dark web to buy sex and sell his soul to Russia.
BREAKING NEWS – Thrice married rich guy has been unfaithful to wife!!
Wealthy man knows businessmen from foreign countries!1!!
It’s not I believe Mueller raided his office than handed the case off to the local DOJ Attorneys. I honestly think the raiding of Cohens office the sitting presidents attorney might be the most nuts aspect of this whole investigation.
Everyone involved in that story, including Mueller should be disbarred.
Two can paly the “taped conversation” game.
Doesn’t Trump, (through the CIA, NSA, and FBI) as President have access to all “taped conversations” in the USA?
Cohen tapes
I thought we learned in the 90s that the president’s former (and current) flings are private affairs that do not affect his ability to govern.
Oh, no, that rule only applies to Bubba
/DNC
And JFK
And LBJ, who once privately bitched about how he got much more tail than JFK but Jack was the one considered the stylin’ ladies man.
And Obama on the down-low.
+ 1 Reggie Love
#moveon
Love. I saw the Pixies a few weeks ago. Even without Kim Deal, they were amazing. Also, Pixies/Love & Rockets was the first concert I ever went to.
Kim Deal wasn’t exactly a virtuoso bassist (if such a thing even exists), and all she did besides Gigantic was harmonies on a few songs that any woman or guy with a decent falsetto could match. Not a huge loss IMO. I saw them in 2014 on the Indie Cindy/reunion tour. Very fun show. Mercifully they mostly played their back catalog. Greens and Blues was actually pretty great live though. Too bad they flattened all of the dynamics in mastering, since that’s, you know, the entire fucking shtick of the Pixies sound.
UVM nurses is all anyone can seem to talk about. They went on strike a week ago or so. Bernie’s involved, screaming about the CEO making so much more. It’s been hard to stay out of it.
Hospital people, 1% of total employment being open is normal right? They keep saying that having 170 openings is proof of low staffing. It seems like that’s been the number forever though.
In nursing? It will always be that number. I’d be less surprised if it wasn’t 3-5%, although nurses may have limited options up there. There’s literally always someone who doesn’t want to work 12 hour shifts anymore, or child care changed and can’t, or fuck that bitch the shift leader, I’ll go to a different hospital rather than work with her.
Well, I had to kind of guess. The nurses claim they need “safe staffing levels” and cited that the hospital has 170 openings right now for various nurses. It’s a teaching hospital. I assume they have decent turnover. To get the 1% I had to look at the number of registered nurses in the county. Not exactly the same. But there’s only this hospital, one just over an hour south in Middlebury and one over in new York.
It well could be 3-5% open. I just don’t think that’s a good basis for their argument. Nurses/patient ratio or #patients/year per nurse or something.
My mom had to have a minor surgery a couple of years ago. When I took her to the hospital to check her in there was a gigantic wall-length SEIU corkboard in the lobby with all of their propaganda on it. That was a new one for me.
1% of total employment being open is normal right
Maybe on the high side of normal, but not a frikkin’ disaster. We usually run around 50 open positions per thousand employees (note: it makes a difference if you use headcount or FTEs, there’s a lot of per diem and part-time positions in hospitals). Nursing often has a higher rate of open positions. Turnover for nursing generally runs a little higher, and depending on the unit, can be very hard to fill – different units need nurses with different skillsets.
The nurses claim they need “safe staffing levels” and cited that the hospital has 170 openings right now for various nurses.
Nurses, like everybody else, constantly cry about being understaffed. Tell me the ratios in your units, and I’ll tell if you’re understaffed. Ratios vary quite a bit by unit, and that’s about the only way to know if staffing levels are right.
The Team Blue 2020 field is shaping up.
Democratic New Jersey Senator Cory Booker called millions of Americans “complicit in evil” on Tuesday while speaking about President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Booker began by saying that the decision to oppose Kavanaugh’s confirmation has “nothing to do with politics” and then quickly added that anyone who opposes his view is “complicit in the evil.”
“I’m here to call on folk to understand that in the moral moment there is no, there is no neutral,” said Booker, who is a documented liar. “In a moral moment there is no bystanders. You are either complicit in the evil, you are either contributing to the wrong or you are fighting against it.”
Except for all of the politics and grandstanding. Such a nasty man.
Also, I believe in constitutionally limited gov’t. I suppose I am “complicit in evil.”
Admitting it is the first step
Booker is the most buffoonish, transparently phony congresscritter I’ve ever seen, and god knows that’s saying something.
please, it’s going to be Hillary.
I just look forward to a day when we can get back to blindly following CIA and FBI propaganda.
Booker began by saying that the decision to oppose Kavanaugh’s confirmation has “nothing to do with politics”
Horse. Shit. It has everything to do with politics.
If you want to see precisely why I say that, consider two skeptics of Kavanaugh’s nomination: Booker and Rand Paul. Paul has cited specific concerns regarding Kavanaugh’s record on Fourth Amendment issues. Paul can cite precise concerns with Kavanaugh. I have yet to hear a peep out of Booker other than repeating tired cliches attacking the same old straw men. Why wouldn’t Booker mention Fourth Amendment issues? Oh, yeah, he was too busy spending the prior eight years fellating the previous administration while they used the Fourth and a list of other Amendments as spooge rags.
For you or against you? OK. Have it your way, you lying sack of garbage. I’m against you.
Just what is so immoral about Kavanaugh, again?
He supported warrantless wiretapping and the ‘third-party’ doctrine when it was before him as an appeals court judge. His main argument was that terrorism was such a huge danger that tromping on the 4th amendment was OK.
There’s some other stuff along those lines.
Personally, I am not a fan. Strikes me as a Scalia type (starts with feels and then comes up with a rationale to justify the feels).
And yes… that’s not immoral so much as a disagreement about legal philosophy.
+1 Panty Advil
As I say above, though, Booker doesn’t really cite any of these things. He can’t because he didn’t bat an eye while the Obama administration was doing the full-court press in doing those things.
I haven’t been on much, don’t post much here or at TOS when I was there. I just want to thank everyone here for keeping my spirits up. Mom died March 22 in pain (fuck the “opioid crisis” and how she had to suffer her final years), so I drank a bottle of Maker’s Mark something select barrel something, jumped on the first plane out the next morning. Paid her local parish for a private Mass which was beautiful. Dealt with starting the process of selling the 160 acres of farmland in Arkansas since her trust dissolved leaving it to me and my sister.
Got my Johnny Cash ’68 Plymouth Satellite (440 6bbl from a ’71 Roadrunner) convertible ready for the trip back which included new factory front suspension and tuning the carbs. It took 3 extra weeks to find a suitable drag link.
While I was there (Pinehurst NC) Mrs Bum had a melanoma recurrence which had to be removed from her trap, which made her less functional in her lab. Got home to Austin and had the ortho doc say he’s really really serious about me being in a knee cage.
Then the Mrs tripped over the dog with an armful of laundry, and popped a rib out of place.
So I wake up, grind myself some coffee, and while it brews, I sit on our back porch watching the sun rise, enjoy my time here and tell myself that life is good because I woke up alive, I’m not in Iraq, and I have the best wife in the world.
I’m sorry for your loss. Glad you’ve got some good coffee. I hope your wife feels better. Rib injuries suck.
Thank you! We gave her a lot of rum and stretched her touch pop it back in. I normally break mine on a body board, except the one time I broke a rib sneezing…
To pop it back in. I really need my orphan, er, granddaughter back here to correct autocorrect.
When it rains, it pours. Keep on keeping on, amigo!
Thank you. Been wrapping my head around the 1957 Fender Tweed Twin circuit so I can start that project once I track down a few parts. Gives the brain something to obsess over.
Condolences on the loss of your mother and congrats on taking the positive outlook.
Thank you! Life is life, and one has to be able to see the humor of it all.
I think you left out the part about the monkey’s paw, buddy. At least the rapesquatch hasn’t come to “check on you” yet. And by check on, mean….
Ha! He’s just embarrassed that he ended up bound in 100 MPH tape and 550 cord with a sore ass. Airborne!
Brett, it was a gypsy woman who grabbed my shoulder and whispered “clumsier”.
Dammit, now I have this stuck in my head.
Sorry for your troubles, but you seem to be rolling with the punches.
Your welcome and thank you! I have a…different outlook on life. I’d been expecting it for a few years now, and I miss her, but I got to talk to her the night before when she was coherent, then the morning she died, and one last time a couple of hours before when she was slipping away. I had finished the booze by then but wasn’t drunk. Life goes on, and you just have to say fuck off to the shitty parts as obstacles to overcome.
I was waiting to see if we, indeed, had a Tulpa on our hands. I’m guessing, NO. Tough times, man. Hang in there.
We are all Tulpa
Sorry about all of that, seriously.
Now fuck off Tulpa
You’re a Tulpa! And thank you.
We are All Tulpa Here so,
YOU’RE A TOWEL!
Hope everything works out well
Thanks Yusef
I bet she thinks she has the best husband in the world. 🙂
Well, she is blind and deaf… she puts up with my shenanigans and still loves me
I used to hang out at the Texas School for the Blind hoping to meet a girl when I lived in Austin, too.
She is a pinball aficionado
Condolences. Hang in there, come back more often!
Thank you! I’m here every day, I just don’t post very often.
Also digging that car.
Me too! Should have bought it in high school. The local Dodge dealership here works on several muscle/pony cars, so I took it there and got a decent alignment. It was a scary 1265 mile drive aligned to factory bias-ply tire specs at highway speed.
Good to see you back, Bum. Even under the circumstances. My gramps always told me every day above ground is a pretty damn good day. He was right.
Now go take the Satellite for a spin!
Got the helper grandkids coming up for a week, so the girls get to learn about sparkplug changes, distributor cap and rotor change, setting timing, andinstalling a front sway bar. Then the booster seats go in and they get to experience 100 mph with the top down on the toll.
^^^awesome granddad
I’m sorry for your situation. It sounds like you life the last couple of months has been something out of a country music song. Joking aside, I’ve had similar runs before. They suck. I hope things turn around for you soon.
Thank you. Things are always good even when events suck. Throw in the age 50 colonoscopy at the VA that I successfully avoided for 2 years lol! Had a Vietnam vet in the next slot over. We had the staff and our wives cracking up. I wanted dinner and flowers before, he wanted them to teach his wife how to do the procedure so he didn’t have to come back in…
“Vertical and ventilating, I’m good to go”
Sorry about your loss and keep up the good attitude.
I have a fun story about a ’68 Road Runner with a 6-pack carb that I’ll pass along sometime.
… Hobbit
Thanks Hobbit, and can’t wait to hear that story.
Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
There is insane and then there is jailing-people-for-handing-out-straws-insane.
This is the same state handing out needles to drug addicts.
It’s just a matter of time until someone gets choked out for selling loosie straws.
+1 but the officers made it home safely
Old Gawker continues to mourn the NYDN:
For a long time, I thought bloggers and journalists were rivals. Then I thought that rivalry was just growing pains of a changing media landscape. Some bloggers would end up practicing actual journalism, and some journalists would end up blogging. The print culture and the digital cultures would merge, and we’d all sort it out.
Instead, EVERYONE is getting crushed. A bunch of greedy shits have discovered that facts do not work in their favor, and so they have conspired to impose their Reality Distortion Field on the rest of us. They are drowning facts any way they can: by suing the media out of existence; by buying the media outright and shaping its message to suit their own ends; by replacing the media altogether with Navy SEAL memes posted by your racist neighbor. So much awful shit is going to go unreported now, even more than before, because you can’t get outraged by evildoers if you don’t know who they are or what they’re up to. The joke is on me. I am the concerned old fart now. I am the easily rattled one. I am the one bemoaning the way things are now versus the way they used to be. Save for Conlin, I got the bad guys all wrong. They were lurking in the shadows this whole time, and those shadows are growing.
Christ, what an asshole.
It’s _my_ ox being gored! Calamity!
Been posted before, but worth posting again:
That guy deserves a medal.
Give me a fucking break. Gawker and it’s retarded offspring didn’t care one whit about truth and the NYDN only cared about truth when it suited their politics.
A bunch of greedy shits have discovered that facts do not work in their favor, and so they have conspired to impose their Reality Distortion Field on the rest of us.
But enough about leftists.
The fucking newspaper was failing. It had to be sold to Tronc for $1. If your business model doesn’t work, you go out of business. It’s that simple. The “greedy shits” are the guys trying to salvage your steaming pile of shit into a viable business. Get over your self.
This is as crazy as anything ever said by Alex Jones.
Opportunity zones are all well and good, in theory…
The answer to whether the Opportunity Zone designation might help places like Fresno might indeed be yes: Mayors and economic-development officials are enthusiastic about the initiative and scrambling to figure out how to capitalize on it, as are real-estate investors and developers. But economists argue that it looks unlikely to help revitalize the country’s most distressed communities—Flint and Detroit, the Mississippi Delta and Appalachia, Toledo and Youngstown—and that it looks likely to supercharge investment in places that were already growing. That means the provision might intensify the very regional inequality it seeks to remedy.
This is the dilemma posed by pursuing public policy with private capital. Leveraging the efficiency of markets will undoubtedly help many places on the margin. But it might take far more creative investment to truly solve the country’s worst-off communities and fix its growing problem of place.
———–
But if private businesses and private jobs are an end, private investment might not be the best means. The lack of public control has raised the prospect that investors will finance projects with little spillover benefit. “What does a community need? You should think about that, and then match investment with that need,” Gonzalez told me. “That is not how this program is structured at all. It’s structured around incentivizing private equity to come in with investment, assuming that the investment is going to somehow benefit communities without any analysis around what the needs are.”
A provision in Trump’s Tax Giveaway Bill for tax incentives for investment in designated target areas. I’m dubious about the success of programs like this, but not because it takes away the power of Top Men. It never ceases to astound me when somebody proposes a means to “permit” private investors to obtain a return, and people whine about it because it diminishes the power and control of local bureaucrats.
Who the fuck is going to put something like a paint manufacturing company in Fresno California, and expose themselves to CARB, and the California Board of Equalization (Save me, Orwell!) and the rest of the La Brea Tarpit which is the California regulatory state, just for a tax break?
I’m dubious about the success of programs like this, but not because it takes away the power of Top Men.
It really makes you wonder how these retards think communities formed originally in the first place. As if HUD just whimsically sprinkled prosperous urban centers randomly throughout the country one day a century ago. We certainly wouldn’t want a filthy thing like commerce to determine where people locate themselves. The
Dammit, accidentally hit the button. I was going to continue: The only reason why East Bumblefuck Missouri doesn’t have Fortune 500 companies scrambling to headquarter there is just bad luck.
There could be other reasons they named their state Misery besides bad luck.
I figure anyone investing in a blue state for the tax breaks has a ripcord ready the moment nominal rates resume.
Brooks, in last night’s links, you mentioned your tabletop mill. What did you get?
my Johnny Cash ’68 Plymouth Satellite (440 6bbl from a ’71 Roadrunner) convertible
Holy fuck. SWEET!
Or Mom’s Basement…………………….
Nope. We kept her in the loft with the drums and amps
Mom that is. The car is here in my garage.
There are more than a few of those lying around Here, Eric, LH, OMWC, Myself and the list goes on……………………..
/Fender Teles
All of you have moms in your loft?
Hyperion, you don’t? Yusef, I did a frankenstrat interpretation of David Gilmour’s black strat, getting ready to start a tele this winter. Still looking at options for a Les Paul and an SG
No, my wife said I had to get rid of my collection of moms. She’s the only mom left and she refuses to go to the loft.
See? Where else do I get my unfortunate timing of reading this and ending up with a coffee sinus douche?
HUMP DAY!
http://archive.is/2fyyg
I’m not greedy; just #2 in various configurations.
The local Dodge dealership here works on several muscle/pony cars, so I took it there and got a decent alignment. It was a scary 1265 mile drive aligned to factory bias-ply tire specs at highway speed.
I had a ’69 AMX, long ago. The thing was all over the place. If you took your hands off the wheel, it would immediately make a dive for the ditch. It took it to the alignment shop (they actually still had those, back then) and if anything, it was worse. I asked the guy what the numbers were, and he said “the book” called for something like a degree of negative caster. Following the “Are you fucking shitting me?” part of the conversation, I told him to throw that goddam book away and put about a degree and a half of positive caster in it. It completely transformed the way it drove. It still had diabolical handling, but at least you could sneeze without fearing for your life.
—–
Grummun-
I got a little Sherline lathe/mill combo. A friend had it sitting on the shelf in his workshop. I had to replace the speed control for the motor with a generic one, so I’m not sure how well it’s going to work. I’m still getting it set up. I guess I’ll have to keep an eye out for a bigger mill table.
“muscle/pony”
Muscle pony? There’s a new one for me.
Muscle cars and pony cars.
I don’t even know what a pony car is.
The Ford Mustang was the original “Pony car”, so it generically refers to cars of the same vintage that fit those aesthetics and features. Mass produced 2 door coupes that go vroom basically.
There’s just something about ‘pony’ that doesn’t go with muscle car or even sports car.
Have you ever been to a pony pull?
How hard can it be to pull a pony?
Here. Let me rubesplain.
“Pony” as a measure of horsepower.
We need to empower ponies?
Oh, you went there.
Sack! Can’t unsee,need brain bleach. *goes back and looks again*
It’s like a train wreck.
*Aack!
I sooo DID NOT got there!
I’m not clicking that link. I’m wise to the ways of this site.
I hate engagement pictures.
I legit LOLd.
Muscle car was any mid-sized car with the biggest motor you could fit. Pony cars were, like Pat said, smaller unibody cars like the Mustang, Camaro, ‘Cuda and Challenger, mostly v6 and small-block v8s, though you could order them with a big block.
Yeah, now hitting a paint line no longer yanks the car unpredictably. Still a 3600 lbs beast, but acts weightless if you open up all 3 carbs.
Been looking at a Little Machine Shop mill for fabbing small stuff and doing 80% lowers.
Thanks for the info. My concern with the benchtop mills/lathes is accuracy and power. Seems like someone making a “hobby” mill would be tempted to think that accuracy down to ten-thousandths is optional, what you need is professional mill, just smaller. Power you probably can’t do anything about, there’s only so much motor you can put on a small frame, you just have to accept you’re going to be turning small cutters and taking light cuts. Be interested in hearing how your project works out for you.
Does anyone here work?
You can be damn sure Rufus is!
I honestly didn’t know people work in Canada. I thought they only play hockey and grumble about Muricans.
That’s what Rufus considers work.
Sortof. It mostly consists of panning, zooming, clicking, typing and saving. And trying to fix corrupt drawing files.
Dad closed on a new house last week. He started moving furniture over today and found an extension cord draped over the fence and plugged into one of his outlets. Neighbor kid says they had the electricity shut off, “But we’re getting it turned back on today.” That bodes well.
Tall fences and padlocks.
It sucks you can’t spend a week or so living in a place to see what kind of shitheads you’re going to be living with before you move in.
Let me guess, one of the cheap thin extension cords being used to run the refrigerator, A/C unit, television, and a phone charger?
I imagine yes. And dad was gracious enough to plug it back in for them rather than make a stink about it. The house has solar panels and he’s not ready to move in full-time, so I suppose it’s not a lot of skin off his back.
That said, one hopes utility cutoffs are a sign of impending eviction…
I suppose it’s not a lot of skin off his back.
Beg to differ. He has now consented to what sounds like an apparently unsafe condition. When the neighbor’s house catches fire because of what he has knowingly allowed them to do (hell, he even plugged it in for them), I think he is exposed to a lawsuit and maybe even liability.
That’s revolting.
Unplug the cord and then cut it at the fence line.
cut the plug, rewire to 220V dryer plug, plug in 220V socket
Cut the plug, slowly wind it through the guy’s gastrointestinal system until the cut side comes out his mouth, rewire to 220V, plug in 220v socket.
Wow, that’s… dark.
Not after you plug it in
From Wikipedia on that guy that got hit by the Warren Supporter”
In August 2017 he spoke at the Boston Free Speech rally, a gathering which drew large counter-protests and whose speaker line-up included right-wing extremists.[34][35]
What kind of odds will you give me that citations 34 and 35 lead to a SPLC press release disguised as a news item?
Holly crap, this the EMAIL guy??! I had no idea that was who was running against Warren. That’s insane.
Politics is like crack to frauds.
The dood was married to Fran Drescher?!
Lord I hope he wins just for the LULZ.
Email guy?
Hit the link – he claims to have invented something called ‘EMAIL’ in high-school in the late 70’s, therefore he invented e-mail (hint: no, he didn’t). He seems like a kook. A smart kook, but a kook.
He claims that he invented email…..when he was 14 years old….almost a decade after the first email was sent.
Oh, OK, thanks.
So he’s looking to court Al Gore voters?
He must have been a close associate of Al Gore’s.
“Ayyadurai said that Warren was at the top of a U.S. “neo-caste system” composed of “academics, career politicians and lawyer/lobbyists”, a “spineless clan” who never expect to be challenged”
He’s not wrong…
zoning code violation if he did not remove a banner on his campaign bus.
The zoning code in Cambridge applies to signs on vehicles?
It really makes you wonder how these retards think communities formed originally in the first place.
It amuses, by which I mean infuriates, me to see people frantically trying to “preserve” neighborhoods which developed organically over time with no zoning or regulation by imposing rigid zoning and historical preservation restrictions. Change is bad.
It’s the same cargo cult mentality they have about immigration. Past waves of immigrants adapted to local customs and thrived, therefore a wholly artificial process whereby bootstrapping is replaced with welfare and little ethnic pockets adorning the broader American landscape are replaced with Section 8 buildings is exactly the same thing.
“Change is bad”
See my article on forest mortality.
https://glibertarians.com/2018/07/lessons-from-a-ghost-forest-aka-finding-beauty-among-death/
/shameless self promotion
It dawned on me that Cohen’s lawyer’s comment about only drug dealers and mobsters using cash should have pretty much cemented Trump’s reelection among the independent contractor constituency. JFC, how fucking boneheaded is the #RESISTANCE going to get?
Has Cohen been doing crack with Tom Arnold? Seriously, the guy has the air of someone about to royally fuck his self beyond fucked.
Trump really has proven himself to possess an uncanny ability to divine insanity among certain groups. So many people that I previously though to be at least reasonably stable have revealed themselves as blathering lunatics, and some that I would have thought were kinda nuts now seem downright rational.
comment about only drug dealers and mobsters using cash
I heard this on the way to work. Tons of people use cash (I only do occasionally, myself). Ironically, the people I see using cash the most are Hispanic immigrants. But I’m sure he didn’t mean to call all immigrants criminals.
Please do continue to demonize the deplorable masses.
Here we go again…
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/24/senate-government-shutdown-spending-bill-708451
Democrats: We want
those sweeties!this spending bill! Now let us have it or we will throw a tantrum and shut down government and it will be Trump’s fault!GOP: OK, just this one more time though!
Democrats: We just increased the deficit, Trump’s fault!
Been looking at a Little Machine Shop mill for fabbing small stuff and doing 80% lowers.
Same here. I *think* it has enough travel to cut the slide rails on a 1911.
I thought their largest CNC unit has enough travel.
Tell us something we don’t know.
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11152
I’m not sure defunding them is the solution; they seem to be doing a pretty good job collapsing all on their own.
I thought for a moment that was ZARDOZ.
Also, it sounds like Jason Hill needs to find a little patch of turf outside the mainstream universities where his ideas will get a fair hearing. Somewhere he can be a voice in the wilderness, a sort of prairie preacher. He could call it his dale. Hill’s dale.
guys like this empower them.
and what he describes as ‘conservative principles’ are actually ‘enlightenment liberalism’.
screeching about how cultural marxists are destroying the young is a sure way to attract young people to them. its more effective to take their arguments and mock them/expose them as vacuous, shitty-scholars, etc.
Just remove the perverse incentives (federally guaranteed loans) and the majority of the problems will sort themselves out.
The beauty of that is that it’s not only the moral thing to do, it’s hugely helpful to students. No Federal money flooding into higher ed, no more enormous amounts of non-dischargeable debt hobbling students for decades. I realize that 18-year olds are adults, however they are also incredibly stupid and unrealistic. The FedGov is (I hate this term) a “predatory lender” for naïve barely-adults enabling their stupid decisions about what to study.
The banks would insist on some collateral for the loans, If the universities had to cosign for half of the value in order to get the loans thru, it would make them more responsible for their product. It would also put pressure on the universities to lower the cost of their product, something they currently have zero incentive to do.
Has anyone tried the new Shin Megumi Tensi for moble? I really like that series, but I’m not sure I’m up for another mobile game with predatory economics after playing Warframe for so long (a F2P game with 0 deceptive or manipulative economics.)
“Beauty is misogyny”
https://twitter.com/Utopiana/status/1021946465424302080
Let them eat their own
You know, that makes me wonder. Now that the Miss America contest has banned the swimwear competition, how popular will it remain? And if that doesn’t do the job, how long before they ban anyone who can even be deemed slightly attractive?
“how popular will it remain?”
Get woke, go broke.
“Aboriginal women everywhere are outraged”
I question the accuracy of that statement.
Hah! That “Lady Juanita” character from yesterday’s afternoon links would be so pissed about this person calling herself “black”.
Identity wars episode 3,253.
Man, that series is SO overdue for cancelling.
It’s going to self cancel, that’s the best part.
Serious question: You don’t think it’ll ramp up after 2020’s re-election of Trump? I thought they’d realize what they’d done and simmer down, reconnoiter for round 2, but they went into overdrive.
I’m ok with them continuing to self-destruct until they reorganize into a non-Eurosocialist party. Until then, the more they freak out and marginalize themselves, the better.
And then… the Libertarian Moment!
I thought their largest CNC unit has enough travel.
I was referring to this little Sherline I just got. I’m not cool enough for that CNC stuff.
They have the same base unit without the CNC part. I’m just lazy enough to be all over learning to do the CNC stuff. I need to win the lottery, but I don’t play so that will never happen. There is a Baptist orphan facility a few miles from here though… not sure if they sell direct to the public though.
The 5550 HiTorque Bench Mill, long table, deluxe
“The European Union is coming to Washington tomorrow to negotiate a deal on Trade. I have an idea for them. Both the U.S. and the E.U. drop all Tariffs, Barriers and Subsidies! That would finally be called Free Market and Fair Trade! Hope they do it, we are ready – but they won’t!”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1021909900941815809
Isn’t that what the great orange one was calling for? If so, it must be bad and the world will end.
The people who are confused that yesterday he tweeted how great tariffs are and today tweeted that we need to get rid of all tariffs obviously don’t know the first was a Hat tweet and the second was a Hair tweet.
Have you ever been to a pony pull?
I’ve seen a few dog-and-pony shows. Does that count?
*NOT the ones in Tijuana
I suppose it depends on how much moonshine you’ve been drinking.
Pass in review!
“EXCLUSIVE: ‘I had everything anyone could want.’ Suburban housewife who went on a spree stealing packages from neighbors breaks her silence, claiming she had PTSD caused by a string of sex assaults in the Army
The ‘bored suburban housewife’ jailed following a bizarre two-day crime spree during which she stole 28 packages from neighbors’ doorsteps has spoken for the first time since starting her prison sentence to reveal that her marriage is over and the real reason behind her actions.
Last month mother-of-two, Melissa Bergman, 30, was convicted on 12 out of 28 counts of theft committed onJuly 27 and 28 of 2017.
She was sentenced to 180 days in jail and began a 30-day stint in Warren County Jail, Ohio in June, with the remainder of her sentence suspended. She will remain on probation for three years following her release.
In an apology posted on Facebook – a condition of her suspended sentence – Bergman said she did not know why she had done what she did but pointed to a cocktail of psychiatric drugs she had been prescribed following a suicide attempt that landed her in a psych ward just days earlier.
Now, in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, army veteran Bergman said, ‘I had everything anyone could want. I had money, I had a husband, I had kids, I had a nice house but my husband was very controlling.””
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5972439/Ohio-mom-stole-packages-neighbors-speaks-time.html
“I’m a victim, you can’t judge me.”
So I hear you’re running for Congress as a Dem?
She needs to sue Trump and get the Ninth Circus to issue a decree ordering Trump to pardon her.
As Krusty the Clown said, “It wasn’t me – it was those damned percocets!!”
So that’s why he would say ‘would!’ even if you posted a fat blob pic link to try to get a kick from the guys clicking on it. Got it.
That’s a lot of crazy right there.
What’s the phrase? Oh, yeah: “Ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag.”
An unexpected twist in the Flint, MI water utility fiasco: no statistically (or physiologically) significant lead contamination occurred.
Oh, no! What will they blame the children’s behavioral deficiencies on now? Poor diets, fatherless households and trash culture? That’s preposterous!
Also, check out the comments if you’ve ever wondered how mathematically illiterate the average NYT reader is.
Gah! The only honest commenters are those complaining about the “tone deafness” of the article. At least they come out and admit their complaint has no basis in numeracy or evidence or any of that silly empirical trivia. Facts are secondary, it’s the tone set by harping on those facts that matters. When you prize facts over tone you invalidate the lived experience of people who read the hysterical coverage (coverage that got the effects just as wrong as they got the cause), and emoted their empathy. See, emoting hysterical overreaction and castigating people well outside the decision process that caused the problem sets the proper tone. Anything else is “tone deaf.”
As I told someone this morning:
“Facts don’t care about your feelings.”
“Furious Trump exploded when he saw Melania’s Air Force One television tuned to CNN instead of Fox – and officials ordered new TVs for their SEPARATE hotel rooms on trips”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5991317/Furious-Trump-exploded-saw-Melanias-Air-Force-One-television-tuned-CNN-instead-Fox.html
“The incident reveals the isolated world President Trump lives in”
Hating CNN is living in an isolated world? Not in my world it isn’t.
Disloyal bitch. Deport her ass.
An email obtained by The Times shows a conversation between officials in the White House Military Office and the White House Communications Agency last Thursday that described the president’s fury and the orders for new TVs for the first couple.
Locate that email, go through the list of people who are on it, and fire whoever you think sent it to the Times.
I have an idea for them. Both the U.S. and the E.U. drop all Tariffs, Barriers and Subsidies!
That will cause enough hyperventilating among the Top Men and their cheerleaders in the press to affect the weather.
“When we say ‘free trade’ that’s not what we mean. Managed trade is what we want. Managed by us, naturally.”
I thought that had to be fake. No way Trump said that. It’s probably the single most libertarian/pro free market thing anyone has said in the White House in a generation if not ever.
I breathlessly await Robby’s take on it at Reason.
“To be sure, Trump’s statement sends a tingle up some ‘libertarian’ legs, but it’s clear that his actual intent is to punish our allies in Europe”
^ nailed it.
“Aboriginal women everywhere are outraged”
How many divisions do they have?
I bet the ones living in the outback with no TV or communication devices are especially outraged. But I bet she believes that everyone who she chooses to identity with is a perfect clone of her, sitting around eating twinkies and posting outrage on the intertoobz.
“Portland protest leader Micah Rhodes is arrested, again
Portland protest leader Micah Rhodes is back in jail on allegations that he violated terms of his probation by having contact with minors.
Rhodes, 24, was ordered to stay away from anyone under 18 years old after he was convicted this year on three counts of second-degree sexual abuse for having illicit sexual contact with a 17-year-old girl in Washington County and a 17-year-old boy in Multnomah County. The sexual abuse occurred in 2014 and 2015, and Rhodes was 20 and 21 years old at the time.
The circumstances of Rhodes’ alleged contact with children are unclear. Court papers don’t offer details. But a YouTube video posted by blogger Robert West on June 22 shows a man who appears to be Rhodes at a protest outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Southwest Portland. He is standing on top of a canopy next to the trolley tracks, with dozens of protesters nearby on the ground.
The title of West’s video states that there are children at the protest.”
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2018/07/portland_protest_leader_micah_1.html
On the one hand, this guy is a leftist asshole. On the other hand, having sex with a 17-year-old shouldn’t be a crime.
Rhodes, 24, was ordered to stay away from anyone under 18 years old
How is that even possible, unless you never leave your house?
I am so very glad that Chemjeff didn’t hang around here for very long.
NOT TRUE COMMUNISM!!!!!
He’s presuming they started with good intentions.
Communism did eventually dissolve itself… into a kleptocratic gangsterocracy headed by its former secret police cabal.
I see no reason to think planned dissolution would work out any better.
“This time will be different,” says mustachioed, epauletted strongman.
I… don’t think that’s that bad, actually. It’s a reasonable argument, at least shorn of its context (which, I assume, started with something about Gillespie’s inane comment). However, if one then extends that argument to the notion that yet another attempt at “true communism” may work this time, then it crosses into communist apologetics. Recognizing either that “true communism” is unattainable or that a totalitarian state is never going to magnimously evaporate itself, both of which he seems to do (or at least imply), is far more important IMO than not engaging in pedantry over socialism vs. communism vs. Stalinism. Although, I will caveat my statement by noting that very few if any of the people who do engage in such pendantry are similarly inclined to tease out the same sort of differences in fascism (Falangists, Falange post Franco, Strasserists, Nazis post Hitler, etc.), which has at least as much complexity and depth* in this regard as the various leftist/internationalist flavors of socialism.
* = One can recognize that something has complexity and depth without endorsing it. Indeed, fascism and Marxist socialism are both quite evil in application (and the non-Marxist variety of socialism has its moments too, see e.g. the cases of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans). However, reducing things you don’t like to absurdly simplistic caricatures is not intellectual.
Yes, it started with Nick’s mental drooling. And no, absolutely no one ever parses the nuances of various forms of fascism as they do Marxism.
There may be a technical distinction to be made, but one of little relevance or significance.
they TRIED to get to communism, and in so doing, had to empower the state with so much power that the leaders of the state never saw fit to divest themselves of the power, dissolve itself, and create the promised worker’s paradise that they claimed to want.
Interesting. It’s almost like communism is inherently against human nature such that it does take totalitarianism to attempt to implement because not everyone will voluntarily go along with it. This means it can only ever become communism by dictatorship. IOW communism does not even work on paper, let alone in practice.
This is, in fact, a foundation truth of the soviet. The New Soviet Man is a man with a different nature that would be brought about by growing up in the Soviet Union’s environment. They would lose their nationalism and instead be devoted to the soviet or communist political form. They would treat public property the same way that capitalists would treat their own private property.
The fact that a new soviet man is needed is proof that the leaders knew that the soviet organization wasn’t comparable with human nature. People will always act in rational ways that cause the tragedy of the commons and will never treat public property like private property. Russia and China maintained populations with incredibly strong nationalistic streaks all through their experience with sovietism (to say nothing of the satellite countries).
Honestly, I’m not convinced that the knowledge problem is what doomed communism. I think it was the immutability of human nature.
Why can’t it be both?
And yes, Marx was very vocal about man being a product of his environment. Which is part of why he saw the need for violence in order to bring about utopia. Many weren’t going to come willingly.
Why can’t it be both? Because humans are incredible hedonic adapters. Seemingly, especially the Russians have a culture that makes them able to adjust to brutally oppressive conditions (not just government oppression. Like half of Russian military tradition is an accurate faith that Russians can survive General Frost better than any invading army).
So while they won’t have the blue jeans and choice of more than one or two food staples, a communist economy doesn’t really need to compete with a capitalist one because it can make people used to cold grey apartments with only bread and beets. It just needs to be able to generate a competent military without killing off rest of the population. Given that most of the capitalist militarizes are all command and control too, the capitalists can’t leverage free market to generate a superior military. In principal, this means that the communist society could keep parity on the battlefield.
The problem is that the old non-communist men see the blue jeans and incredible variety of food-stuffs in a supermarket and they realize that the soviet model is what is keeping them poor and miserable. A new communist man wouldn’t be phased by that, but an old non-com who knows they’ve been hedonically adapted (or who realizes that he’s responsible for a nation of hedonically adapted people, if the trip to the supermarket is what really changed Yeltsin’s mind) is what leads to overthrow of the party.
“it was the immutability of human nature”
YES. Humans are capable of acting outside their own best interests in discrete time periods and for the sake of close friends or relatives (situational altruism). There is NO evidence to support ANY mammal, human or otherwise, being capable of permanently acting outside their own best interest for the sake of “society” (read: strangers). The only animals capable of such behavior are eusocial insects (eg: ants) in which reproductive power for the colony is vested in a very small minority of the population.
Every communist argument in history:
1) Revolution
2) Total State Control
3) ????
4) UTOPIA!
What happens in step 3 is always what gets written off as “NOT REEL COMYOONIZM”.
“IMO, the main argument against socialism & communism, when invoking the Soviet Union, isn’t that the Soviet Union was a disastrously communist state. It was a disaster, of course, but not a communist state.”
IMO, the main argument against a perpetual motion machine when invoking the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, isn’t that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics makes perpetual motion machines impossible, but that it wasn’t a perpetual motion machine.
Circular. Reasoning. STFU Tankie scum and Commie apologists.
Stalin, Lenin, etc. were absolutely following Communism, which posited a totalitarian state as a necessary stage to strip all property ownership and engineer the New Man who would live in the stateless utopia. It was absolutely “real” Communism.
The argument is that they TRIED to get to communism,
Yes.
and in so doing, had to empower the state with so much power
As per Communist doctrine, yes.
that the leaders of the state never saw fit to divest themselves of the power, dissolve itself, and create the promised worker’s paradise that they claimed to want.
And that, my friends, is the obvious and fatal flaw of “true” Communism. It does create a state that no sane person would ever expect to dissolve itself. That is and always will be the endpoint of Communism – a massive state. The fact that Communist doctrine posits a magical utopia afterwards is irrelevant.
It is a bit difficult at times to make sense of what they actually want. Marx considered the stage where the state assumed greater powers in the name of the proletariat socialism rather than communism. In other words, all the bad parts of communism are manifested as, well, socialism. Yet somehow socialism is the fluffy bunny system where everybody is just getting along and having all their “basic needs” provided for, magically without any of the oppression and death always associated with that interminable stage of development on the road from capitalism to communism.
“I just got back from the “abolish ICE” Portland camp. It’s become a sprawling parallel fortress society. The smell is memorable. Many rules (eg photography not allowed inside).”
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1021614630777442304
They built a wall to keep others out.
That whole thing was a shitshow. And the spineless Mayor Wheeler wants to protect his liberal bona fides instead of cleaning those assholes up. That they let them linger for a month is a tragedy. I’m working on plans to get the fuck out of Oregon.
Works for me. I know you’re trapped behind enemy lines so you have my sympathy, but I’d prefer Portland continue to act as a cautionary tale to the non-insane parts of the country. The more these clowns can self-destruct and make absolute fools out of themselves, the better.
Also, come to Colorado. We need good people.
It’s gotten incredibly worse in the last 5 years and the next 5 look even worse. I don’t think it’s salvageable at this point so the best bet is get out and let it serve as an example. The ones that stay will get what they have coming.
It is interesting though. Without Nike and Intel, Oregon is probably Louisiana and Portland is a white New Orleans. Periodically, some local socialist gets the idea to go after Nike or Intel and then rapidly gets put in their place, but sooner or later, they are going to overstep and one or the other or both are going to leave, and then it’s going to make California look stable and secure.
Colorado, Texas, and Florida are my 3 states to look into as well as maybe heading back home.
I feel ya. I’ve been getting the feeling that it’s going to be time to flee Virginia in the next few years. It sucks, because my family is here – I live not a half mile from my sister and 4 miles or so from my parents – but I see the writing on the wall.
haha, there is a Tesla sign in their hobo camp. Pure gold!
Not only a wall, but guard towers! How hilarious is that?
Walls are bad, this is a fence.
While I can understand and even to a large degree support the notion that small groups of people within the country can do things that the central government of the country, for various reasons, should not be allowed to do, they need to apply that reasoning a bit more rigorously. If you can put up a wall, then so can people you don’t like (see: Branch Davidians, “militia” movements, etc.). If you can exercise “control” over the membership of your communities (see: gentrification, white flight, etc.) then so can people you don’t like (see: racist covenants, opposition to eruvs, etc.).
“Many rules (eg photography not allowed inside).”
They set up a city on public property, and created their own municipal code. I wonder if their police force is robust.
“Parasite in cat poop could be reducing our fear of failure, study finds
Toxoplasma, found in cat feces, makes mice unafraid of cats, and it could give people the courage to start their own businesses.
A mind-controlling parasite found in cat feces may give people the courage they need to become entrepreneurs, researchers reported Tuesday.
They found that people who have been infected with the Toxoplasma gondii parasite are more likely to major in business and to have started their own businesses than non-infected people.
The parasite, which makes rodents unafraid of cats, may be reducing the fear of failure in people, Stefanie Johnson of the University of Colorado and colleagues said.
They haven’t actually shown that. But toxoplasma does get into the brain, and it’s been linked to a variety of mental effects in mice and people alike. And fear of failure could be a good thing, Johnson said.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/parasite-cat-poop-could-be-reducing-our-fear-failure-study-n894221
Should I start my own business seminar where I charge people $1000 to eat cat shit?
That would be about the tenth craziest business seminar.
One of the things about the left is the absolute fear that drives their lives. Fear of being victimized, fear of Nazis, fear of success, fear of almost every damn thing. And what they aren’t afraid of, they are envious of. It’s sad.
Or business majors are more likely to own cats.
“The parasite, which makes rodents unafraid of cats, may be reducing the fear of failure in people…”
These newly emboldened entrepreneurs might want to reflect on what happens to rodents that are unafraid of cats.
It was a disaster, of course, but not a communist state. The argument is that they TRIED to get to communism
And they would have done it, too, if not for those meddling
kidsKulaks.“SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) —
San Francisco’s board of supervisors voted unanimously to join cities such as Vancouver, Berkeley and Seattle in banning plastic straws.
The legislation proposed by Supervisor Katy Tang not only includes the elimination of plastic straws, but many non-recyclable plastic items like coffee stirrers. It also includes language that would make San Francisco the first city in the country to ban fluorinated chemicals in food containers. Because San Francisco uses 1-million plastic straws a day, the issue took center stage.
“I wanted to start with legislation to change containers like coffee cups which we use every single day, but wanted to then start a bit smaller for now and then move on the other items in the future.” says Tang.”
http://abc7news.com/politics/san-francisco-leaders-vote-to-ban-plastic-straws-utensils/3818238/
So everything is covered in shit and you have to eat with your hands?
Because San Francisco uses 1-million plastic straws a day
The best numbers are bullshit numbers.
San Fran has a population of under 900K. Are we seriously expected to believe that every single person in San Fran uses at least one straw a day?
Yes, peasant, you are expected to accept the pronouncements of your betters and know your place.
Meh, it could be about 1/3 of the population using 3 straws a day. It is unlikely although not implausible. The problem I have with it is that the number has absolutely no validity behind it. It could be under, over, or roughly accurate but there is no attempt whatsoever to find out. If the number is so important, then shouldn’t it be, you know, the product of actual research?
Note thought that if it is the case that about 1/3 of the population is using roughly 3 straws a day, it doesn’t take a friggin genius to figure out these are people living off cheap fast food. In other words, this is yet another white gentry progressive-led war on the poor.
And ice in cold drinks tends to dam up and spill over when
Isome poor slob goes to take a drink, resulting in diet coke spilling all overmethat person. Why do rich progs hatemepoor slobs?Because San Francisco uses 1-million plastic straws a day
Let me guess – this is more elementary school research?
Almost certainly. It’s pretty close to 500 million × (pop of San Fran) / (pop of the U.S.).
The population of San Francisco is 884K. Every resident of the city uses a straw at least once per day, and some do so multiple times.
“I wanted to start with legislation to change containers like coffee cups which we use every single day, but wanted to then start a bit smaller for now and then move on the other items in the future.” says Tang.
“There’s no such thing as the slippery slope”, says person who wants to slide down it.
I can see why the primary tool in the Marxist arsenal is demoralization. Every day it’s something new, some new hole in the dyke to plug, and there are only so many fingers at hand but so many holes to plug.
Meh, it could be about 1/3 of the population using 3 straws a day.
Does that number include cocktail straws? I’d have to do some heavy drinking if I lived in San Fran.
Hey you Hoopleheads and Cocksuckahs!
Woot! But years late.