Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

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  • Tuesday Morning Links

    I’m amazed at the speed involved in hockey now.  Yeah, they’ve watered down some of the physicality, but I’m starting to think that might have actually been for the better.  Watching (most of) the playoff games last night made me realize how much fun it is watching this style of hockey.  Tampa Bay took care of Boston, with the help of a couple horrible missed calls and evened that series 1-1.  And Vegas just cranked it up in the second period and took what I assumed was total control of the game so I turned it off…only to find out San Jose had a hell of a third period and forced overtime, where they were then beaten anyway.  The other two series play tonight, and I can only assume the games will be entertaining as hell.

    In baseball, the Astros cooled off the Yankees. The D-backs dumped the hapless Dodgers. The Rex Sox topped Kansas City. The Cubs and Nationals won. And the Twins fell again.

    On the hardcourt, Boston dumped Philly in game 1 of their Conference semifinals. Cleveland-Toronto and Nawlins-Golden State start their series tonight.

    And lastly, the UCS semifinal second leg games start today, when Bayern Munich travel to The Bernabeu to take on Real Madrid. The first match was 1-1 in Munich, so the Krauts will need to come out firing.  Liverpool-Roma tomorrow after the Reds cruised at home, until the last 10 minutes, and won 5-2. But they will keep in mind that Roma overcame a 3-goal deficit in the quarterfinals.

    Yay sports!!!!

    Today we celebrate the birthday of King Kamehameha. Let’s all celebrate by wearing Hawaiian shirts, to the dismay of assholes on Twitter. Also born on this date were sharpshooter Calamity Jane, director John Woo, who subjected the world to Broken Arrow and Face/Off. May God have mercy on his soul.

    Thanks John Woo…you bastard!

    I could go into the fact that its Global Commie Day but I won’t.  I will instead note the Cy Young pitched the first game in Cleveland’s stadium. Babe Ruth hit his first Home Run for the Yankees, as did Mickey Mantle.  Take that, communism!

    OK, now that the juices are flowing, I think its time to transition to…the links!

    You want to know the difference in how the Kings Men are treated relative to real people? I just so happen to have a link at the ready that shows one of the more egregious examples. I mean, is there any possible way to square this with the equal protection clause?

    Whether you’re pro-abortion or pro-life, you gotta admit that this is one seriously cold-blooded zinger. And from a Catholic, no less!  I thought Commiepope Francis had declared comedy unseemly.

    Israel burns every intel asset it has in Iran and dumps a trove of information outlining their nuclear plans. I cannot help but think this is genuine. No way would they publicize this and essentially out every intel officer involved unless they believed it to be genuine and its release necessary.  I just hope we don’t get sucked into the ensuing shitshow.

    San Francisco: Come for the great food, stay for the bums shitting on the sidewalk!

    San Francisco finds the end of their tolerance for something.

    In the last few weeks, Mayor Mark Farrell has promised $750,000 to hire more people just to pick up discarded needles and $13 million over the next two years for more heavy duty steam cleaners and pit stop toilets. He also had workers dismantle sprawling homeless tent camps in the city’s Mission District.

    The city famed for its picture-perfect views of the San Francisco Bay has long tolerated overflowing trash bins and homeless people camped out on sidewalks. Commuters routinely walk past people slumped over in transit stations, sometimes shooting up in public.

    But Farrell and others say the squalor has gotten out of control, and that everyone should feel safe using city sidewalks. It is not humane to let the mentally ill or houseless fester outdoors, he said.
    At least they’re throwing more money at it. That should do the trick!

     

     This is what happens when you let public sector unions establish their own separate justice system: You get cops who are above the law and innocent people in jail for decades.  Fuck you, Chicago for allowing this. And fuck you, Rey Guevara for being a piece of human garbage that’s inexplicably not been thrown in jail or been the “victim” of some vigilante justice being carried out. Well, one can hope that one of those statuses changes.

    I no ronery anymore!

     

    This whole Korean thing is starting to look like it may be real. Nobel Peace Prizes all around!  But seriously, this is another positive development as peace keeps gaining momentum.

     

    I know its commie day. So I’ll play a song from the best commie band ever. What a shame their politics sucked, but they were still phenomenal.

     

    That’s it for me.  Have a great day, comrades.

  • Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Yuman Trafficking

    Cha too ma laya conky, ya neema loka nyan.

    During a press conference held earlier today, Donald Trump made the claim that thanks to the Internet “there’s more yuman[sic] trafficking, and slavery, than at any time in the history of this world.” Of course, Trump provided no citation for this remarkable claim, because citations are for losers. Nevertheless, I was curious as to the truth of this claim.

    A cursory internet search revealed many articles that put forward this claim, the earliest, being from an Alternet post in 2009. Indeed, this claim was repeated as gospel by several outlets across the ideological spectrum, including The Atlantic, World News Daily, and various newspapers. When authors of these articles deigned to provide a source for this claim, they usually pointed to various think-tank reports, including an Obama-era report by the Department of State, all of which place the total number of those enslaved around the world from 20 to 40 million.

    When one considers that on the eve of the American Civil War, there were almost 4 million slaves, this number may seem shocking. Well, it may seem that way if you are a drooling microcephalic. People who possess an intelligence quotient of 80 or higher (Stanford-Binet or WAIS, take your pick) are cognizant of another absolutely shocking fact: there are more people alive now than at any time in the history of this world!

    If, for the sake of argument, we take the highest estimate for the current number of slaves in the world, it represents a mere 0.5263% of a total global population of 7.6 billion individuals. Are Trump et al. truly claiming that in the past the total number of slaves had never represented more than half a percent of the world’s population? In 1860, slaves represented 12.57% of the total population of the United States alone!

    Comparing total number of slaves across time periods without accounting for the increase in total world population is a statistical trick even worse than the “1 in 5 women are raped at university” claim. Whereas the latter myth relies on cooking the books with both an extremely expansive and idiosyncratic definition of sexual assault that utterly destroys its construct validity and a piss-poor sample size that provides nowhere near the statistical power needed for the inferences made by the report, the former merely pins its hopes on the fact that you are innumerate.

    Now, all of this may just be merely risible fodder for the world-famous Glibertarians.com sneer take if it weren’t for the fact that these factoids are used as rhetorical lubricant for advancing public policy. The 2012 Department of State report used this claim to advocate for less restrictive requirements for victims of human trafficking seeking asylum, the 2016 WND op-ed uses the same claim to advocate for immigration restrictions from countries that follow sharia law, and today, Trump squarely placed blame on the Internet for this supposedly unprecedented number of slaves around the world.

    It is this mythology that is used as a screen for the power-grabs the Federal government has made through the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which Trump signed into law on April 11th. FOSTA-SESTA remarkably passed the House of Representatives with a 388-25 margin, and the Senate 97-2, with only Ron Wyden and Rand Paul voting against. Truly, it seems the naked ambition to control one’s fellow man is the only thing that enjoys broad bipartisan support these days. Well, that and the erroneous belief that there is more human trafficking and slavery than any other time in world history.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Monday Afternoon Links

    It’s really great having Sloopy back. I guess I have to find something besides SPORTZBALL to banter about now at the top. I did find out that the Florida opossum does not swim well. I looked out my window and saw something floating in the pool. Poor little guy. I fished him out set him in the dirt in case he was just playing ‘possum, but I think I’ll be bagging him up and tossing him in the trash later. There’s no direct overhang of limbs to the pool, so I can only guess that he overextended going for a drink of water and his mama never taught him to swim.

    sourdough Texas waffle by SP

    In DFW is the worst Texas metroplex news (Houston raised me sez), patrons show up 10 hours early to see Stormy Daniels strip. Now I don’t have much experience in the strip clubs of DFW, but I’ve been to some nice ones and some trashy ones in Houston and Austin, and the only way I’d show up 10 hours early to see that is if my wife was so MAGA she let me take $1000 cash to the strip club and go 10 hours early. Even then, you can only hold your buzz so long if you chug a flask in the parking lot. I hear.

    I didn’t know there were gay porn moguls, but is it stereotyping to say I’m not surprised one is Jewish?

    Hey guys, I’ll bet you’ll be surprised to find out that the sex-trafficking panic is based on a (false) myth! TW: Buzzfeed, so there are some weasel words and cultural reassurances that the researchers are still woke.

    I’m sure you’re as shocked as I am to find that a common pesticide, known to be safe to humans by everyone who bothers to study it, is in our agricultural food supply!

    Your afternoon song is so old it laments $5 beers in strip clubs.

  • The Hat and The Hair – Animated Episode 3: Land of Confusion

    By CPRM

     

  • Monday Morning Links

    What a long few weeks.  Four to be exact that I’ve been away from the links, with the exception of a single day.  If anything went awry during that time, its most likely my fault. And heartfelt thanks for those who picked up the slack in my extended absence.  Sometimes work just takes it all out of you…and this was such a time.  But I have to say, it was profitable.  So I am not gonna complain about it at all.  But I am happy to be home for what should be, with the exception of a couple days next week, an extended period of time.

    I see the Capitals and Penguins are facing off in the second round again.  Series 1-1, with the Capitals looking a lot fresher. But we all know how this series turns out… Nashville blew three leads last night but managed to keep their composure and win in OT to even the series with Winnipeg.  And I have to say, that is some fun hockey to watch.  The Vegas Black Knights are likewise knotted up 1-1 with San Jose after thumping them in game 1 and dropping game 2 in OT.  I can’t see San Jose hanging in though. Vegas has so much speed its ridiculous.  And in the final series, Boston took Game 1 against Tampa Bay, who will look to even the series tonight.

    Sorry, soccer fans. You’ll have to wait until Wednesday to see this again.

    On the hardcourt, Lebron did what Lebron does in the early rounds: put his team on his back and win. Which means we can eventually see Lebron do what Lebron does in later rounds: ch- ch- ch- choke.  Actually, he won’t get the chance. Toronto will run them out in 5.  Elsewhere, Boston and Philly get started tonight in what could be an entertaining series (by NBA standards).  I see Philly advancing.  Out west, the Rockets are up 1-0 against the Jazz and should win that series. Golden State is likewise up 1-0 and should also best the Pelicans. Why? Because the NBA’s Western Conference is more predictable than a Hulk Hogan wrestling match.  No other sports updates, really. Soccer is boring until tomorrow and Wednesday’s UCL games. So I won’t bother.

    Today’s birthdays: Carl Gauss, Cloris Leachman, hockey’s STEVE SMITH, Kirsten Dunst, and Gal Gadot. Its also the day in 311 that the Romans formally began to tolerate Christianity, the Moors landed in Europe (the first time), George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States, James Monroe signed the Louisiana Purchase, Hitler killed himself, Willie Mays hit four homers in a game and the North Vietnamese army captured Saigon.

    Is that a lot to take in?  Well if it is, be sure to forget some of it because you need to make room for…the links!

    The head of the White House Correspondents’ Association has learned nothing from the Trump presidency.  Never apologize, never back down and never compromise.  Was the “speech” a little over the top?  Yeah, maybe. But that doesn’t matter. And besides, the bigger issue is that Trump is the first President since Reagan to not attend the ass-kissing nerd prom, and people act like that’s a bad thing.  Protip: if you want to be taken seriously by the American people, stop cozying up for photo ops with the people you’re supposed to be critically covering and treating yourselves like you’re celebrities. And politicians should stop attending since it gives the appearance that there’s no difference in the media and politicians/officials when it comes to there DC insider network.

    “If I only had a brain”

    We may have heard the last from John McCain. But I bet he manages to channel some bullshit from beyond the grave that will urge his former colleagues to do something that robs us of our liberty.

    The schools we hired you to clean are disgusting, unsanitary and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Because of that, we’ve decided to give you more money.  Meh, what’s an extra $259 million to Chicago Public Schools?  Its not like they’re ever gonna be able to pay those bonds back anyway.

    Remember the sad tale of the loving women who adopted all those kids and their accidental death when their SUV slid off a cliff on PCH?  Well it actually turns out that they were horrible, abusive people. And the child welfare officers in three different states did little to stop it.  Nice job, government bureaucrats.

    Just in case any of you had forgotten why we should pull out of that entire region.  I assume that number will rise as the day goes by.

    That would make some nice boots.

    Just a reminder that Houston probably has more in common with the coonasses from Louisiana than it does with those people from Dallas-Ft Worth. Jeez, that’s a big boy there too.

    This is how I felt doing the links today.

    Have a wonderful day and a great start to the week, friends!

  • Sunday Evening Links of Avenging

    Mr. Riven and I just finished watching Infinity War. If you’ve seen and enjoyed the movies leading up to this, you’ll probably enjoy this one well enough, too. If you haven’t, well…

    Oh, yeah, I promised y’all links. Almost got dragged into a Twitter-hole, there.

  • Tricks of the Trade: The Horoscope for the Week of April 29th

    So you want to be a fortuneteller.  Congratulations!  You’re a moron!

    There are a very few limited instances when putting up a crystal ball shingle is a good less than catastrophically bad idea:

    1.  It’s a front for your illegal business
    2.  It’s a money-laundering operation
    3. You are otherwise unemployed, and/or bored AND you have no expenses involved with obtaining your venue.

    In the same vein as giving a junkie some chlorox with which to sterilize their shared needles, here’s a little advice about succeeding in the X-mancy business.

    "Cleo" was already taken, obviously
    This is the look you’re going for

    First off, be a woman.  You might get away with being an astrologer with a Y chromosome, but for palmisty, cartomancy, scrying or psychic reading ain’t nobody gonna pay you for your opinion.  Once you are a woman, invest in chunky jewelry and scarves.  Consider dying your hair, but for the love of Gaia, do not have it professionally done.  You need to do it yourself.  The look you are cultivating is “sketchy.”  Respectable people make crappy fortunetellers.  There needs to be something… off about your appearance — the difference between “underbridge dweller” and “reclusive gypsy” is in the attitude and how you set up your surroundings.

    Good luck with that
    Nice try

    Do you think you’re psychic?  Great!  This is going to help lot.  It’s like they say, “sincerity is important, once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”  The most successful psychic I know acts exactly as if they believe their own bullshit completely.  She has never dropped the facade in front of me.  Remember, you’re mostly a salesperson at this point, so have confidence in your product!  What if you can’t actually believe that you have the power to foretell the future?  Well, there is a solution to that.

    Drugs.

    Remember the oracle at Delphi?  Paint huffer.  Not from a spray can, but all natural organic hydrocarbons straight from Mother Earth’s crack.   If you want to go with the classics, you can choose ether, but what with the usual accouterments of candles and incense, I wouldn’t recommend it if you don’t want to go all Richard Prior.  But be careful that you don’t overdo it.  “Not entirely safe, not entirely sane” will draw the attention of the mark; “Crackhead” will have them scurrying for the door without paying.  The point of the drugs is to take the edge off your internal censor and *ahem* “open your mind to” the possible connections between the real world and your divinatory tools.  The only difference between “psychic” and “psychotic” is “cot,” which is what you’re probably going to be sleeping on if you choose to ply this trade.

    There is one skill that is pretty much mandatory if you’re going to make this business a sole/unaugmented source of income:  cold reading. This is a skill that can be learned, so do it.  Prestidigitation is also extremely useful, both for forcing cards and well… we’ll get to that

    Ideally, they should be less physically imposing, as well
    Notice that the mark must ALWAYS be wealthier than you

    Last thing:  if you want to make real money, you’re going to need a permanent premises so that you can build a clientele of suckers.  And if you want to really take them for what you can get, you’re going to need to commit some felony-level fraud.  This is going to end badly, if for no other reason that former marks, even ones that you that you didn’t even rip off will eventually be upset with your advice and having a fixed place of business means they know where to find you to make their displeasure known, or to send the local constabulary.  If you are satisfied by the rewards of one-off clients and the occasional petty larceny (this is where prestidigitation comes in:  if you keep your workspace cluttered, claustophobic, and filled with garish colors and patterns, this can make the mark more distracted and less likely to remember that he set down something small and salable, particularly if he didn’t notice you palming it.) then it’s safer to adopt the M.O. of grifters everywhere and keep mobile.  Carney life here we come!  Actually, renaissance fairs are a pretty good deal for an aspiring fortuneteller: the one-person tent is the cheapest premises you can have and is perfect for the kind of work you need to do, you have a constant flow of new clients pushed right in front of your flap, and those clients are in a pretty good mood and won’t actually take your advice too seriously.  Plus lots of them are drunk.  Blessings to Eris and Dionysus for drunken marks!

    I should probably also mention that dial-a-psychic is a thing that exists and my closest fortuneteller friend makes her living doing this, but I’ve never seen it in operation first-hand.  so not only do I not know anything about it, I don’t even know enough to be entertainingly ignorant about it.

    Also the marijuana is usually ass.
    Renfair. Pros: lots of one-off clients, steady income. Cons: herpes.

     

    Now, on to this week’s chart!

    This week has a couple of strong markers, and an oddly large number of tension/uncertainty indicators.  The more definite signs are for good fishing, and an extraordinary alignment (Sol-Mercury-Venus-Saturn retrograde) for relationships.  This is an excellent week to meet new partners, but a terrible week for breakups.  If the squeeze hasn’t gotten his crap out of the house KK, maybe it would be better to put it off until next week.  On the tension front, we have TWO different cross-alignments of opposition influencts;  we have change and stability signs on top of each other (Mercury in Capricorn) as well as balance/flux juxtaposition (Luna in Libra). If you are having difficulty figuring out WTF is going on in your life, this probably is why.*  The positioning last week that encourages sports betting  (Mars-Saturn retrograde in Capricorn) and masturbation  (Jupiter retrograde in Scorpio) remain this week, so have fun with that .

    *no, this is not why at all.

  • Sunday Morning Why Am I Awake Links

    I badly wanted to see the documentary, The Rainbow Man, which covered the life of Rollen Stewart, a fascinatingly obsessed character. But that was not to be, it seems to be unavailable for streaming. Ditto one of my favorite movies ever, Dadetown, which doesn’t seem to be available any more in any format. But nonetheless, SP and I persisted, and we saw two movies this weekend which were individually and in aggregate MUCH better than Jaws. Both were black-ish comedies, a genre we love, being dark-hearted cynics. Quick Change was a Bill Murray vehicle that somehow we had missed before. Totally non-profound, just light and well-crafted entertainment. And young Geena Davis. Like Adam Sandler, I always find Randy Quaid annoying and not at all funny or likeable, but I was mostly able to ignore that and enjoy the rest. You’ve seen it all before, but its rehashed well. And we had both seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels before, but in the deep, deep past, so we gave it a re-watch. And it was even better the second time around. It’s apparently difficult for Michael Caine to make a bad movie. Liberal application of a pretty awesome bottle of wine did not hurt the humor for us.

    But you didn’t come here to survey what light entertainment we’ve been viewing, you want NEWS, you want LINKS.

    Today is the birthday of Henri Poincare (who anticipated chaos theory by nearly a century and relativity by a few decades, oh, and did I mention group theory in physics? Smartest person in modern history? Very likely.), Duke Ellington (arguably the greatest American composer), and Luis Aparacio, the slickest-fielding shortstop I ever saw.

    The annual White House Press Corps Circle Jerk went as expected, and managed to confirm every stereotype of the media. When you’ve lost NPR, you know you’ve succeeded.

    In the meantime, the reduction in tensions in Korea seems to be going far better than anyone expected. I’m sure there’s a dark cloud somewhere in the silver lining because Trump.

    Privacy? PRIVACY? Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!

    This story has STEVE SMITH written all over it. But the question unanswered in the story was, “What ever happened to the potato chips?”

    As year 20 of Abbas’s four year term as head of the PA kleptocracy rolls around, Palestinian Arabs get to have a say over which of his closest associates gets to grab the graft when Mo finally snuffs it. And the American news media seems to think that shooting violent attackers in the legs is far worse than shoot-to-kill.

    An example of the headline writers’ art. Yes, we’re all going to die in a huge astronomical fireball. Those wacky scientists!

    Well, fuck.

    And in Old Guy Music, another tune my band used to cover from a band that is not well-remembered these days. Pity, they should be. Enjoy the delightful guitar playing, we sure as hell did.

  • SEA SMITH’S SATURDAY NIGHT LINKS OF BLOOP

    SEA SMITH FRIEND NINGEN WANT TO HELP WITH LINKS. NINGEN GOOD FRIEND. SEA SMITH OBLIGE. SEA SMITH BUSY THANKS TO NICE WEATHER AGAIN. NINGEN PROBABLY NOT RAPE. PROBABLY.

  • Happy Independent Bookstore Day!

    Just a quick heads-up for anyone here who listens to audiobooks.

    Libro.fm is giving away free audiobooks TODAY ONLY.

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