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March 31, 2017

Dominatrix Unchained: "That picture of Hillary is so freaky. Is that real? Where'd you get it?"

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Angry woman with green hair! Angry woman with green hair!

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

Talk about Trypophobia. There is one too many holes on that stage.

I can't believe she's wearing naugahyde. taken right off the sofa that was in the rec room of my house in the 1950s

This is what happens in Planet of the Apes. No naughas were harmed in the filming of the altered timeline paradox thingy.

What's next?.....pierced nipples, and fart splitter underpants? It's so awkward to watch her maintain her relevance. - - -Althouse

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:37 PM | Your Say (14)

What might Russia realistically get from the USA if Vladimir Putin was the master hypnotist that Democrats make him out to be?

Do we suppose Putin wants more living space for Russia’s people?
Hmmmm. Russia’s population these days, around 145 million, is less than half the USA’s and it’s rattling around in the geographically largest nation in the world. Do they want our oil? Maybe, but Russia being the world’s top oil producer suggests they’ve already got their hands full with their own operations? Do they want Hollywood? The video game industry? The US porn empire? Do they covet our Chick-fil-A chains and Waffle Houses? Our tattoo artists? Would they like to induce the Kardashians to live in Moscow? Is it Nascar they’re really after? The Curse of the Thinking Class - KUNSTLER

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:44 PM | Your Say (3)

I know this shows I no longer have a soul, and yes,

I acknowledge there were definitely some non-leftist victims in these attacks, but again my point is not one of morality or ethics.
My point is one of acceptance, numbers, and reality. It's hard to attack and kill conservatives in large numbers because those ignorant hick bastards are spread out over rural and suburbanite areas. They don't congregate in downtown areas to "party." And the major metro centers with the richest targets for terrorists tend to have heavily dense populations of leftists.

And while on a human side I do mourn the innocent worker in Mumbai, or the innocent tourist in the twin towers, on the whole I just can't give a fuck when the majority of people who are dying in these attacks are the ones who voted it in. And I REALLY can't give a fuck when for the past 30 years of my life these people are the ones who call me racist, sexist, evil, fascist and "privileged," blame me for all their problems, and likely hate me more than the terrorists themselves do. - - Why I Just Don't Care About the London Attack

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:37 PM | Your Say (1)

The Japanese: Nuked too much or not enough?

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Jesus Christ's grave in Shingo, Japan:
When He was 21 years old, Jesus Christ (イエスキリスト) came to Japan and studied theology for 12 years. He came back to Judea at the age of 33 in order to preach, but people there rejected His teachings and arrested Him to crucify Him. However, it was His little brother Jsus Chri (イスキリ) who took His place and ended his life on the cross. Jesus Christ, having escaped crucifixion, resumed His travels and finally came back to Japan, where He settled in this village, Herai, and lived till the age of 106 (other versions mention the age of 118 and the name of His wife, Miyu). In this holy place, the tomb on the right is dedicated to Jesus Christ, while the tomb on the left commemorates His brother, Jsus Chri. All of this is written in Jesus Christ's testament.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:31 PM | Your Say (0)

A MAN IN THE WOMEN'S RESTROOM AT DISNEYLAND

If this had been 5 years ago, you bet your ass every woman in there would’ve been like, “Ummm what are you doing in here?”, but in 2017?

The mood has shifted. We had been culturally bullied into silenced. Women were mid-changing their baby’s diapers on the changing tables and I could see them shifting to block his view. But they remained silent. I stayed silent. We all did. Every woman who exited a stall and immediately zeroed right in on him...said nothing. And why? B/c I and I’m sure all the others were scared of that “what if”. What if I say something and he says he "identifies as a woman" and then I come off as the intolerant asshole at the happiest place on earth? So we all stood there, shifting in our uncomfortableness…trading looks. I saw two women leave the line with their children. Still nothing was said. An older lady said to me out loud, “What is he doing in here?” I’m ashamed to admit I silently shrugged and mouthed, “I don’t know." She immediately walked out, from a bathroom she had every right to use without fear. - - The Get Real Mom

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (8)

Ridicule, Realtalk, and Rejection are the Three Rs of successfully neutering leftoids.

Cut them quick. Cut them up. Cut them off.
- - Chateau Heartiste

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 AM | Your Say (1)

“Lord watch over her.”

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I was just looking at a photograph of one such, whom I’d describe as “agelessly young.”
It was taken recently; it is the daughter of someone I know, in a rural community in midwestern USA. She is at work outdoors. Everything about her posture conveys what is dutiful, humble, kindly. She is in the near background, wearing a sunhat that shadows her face. Her coarse work-dress goes almost shapelessly down to her ankles. She is carrying a bucket that must be full of water: its weight is apparent. I think: there are girls like that, there always were. From all this paucity of information, I can see that she is very beautiful, and the old male instinct of protection is stirred: “Lord watch over her.” On beautiful women : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:22 AM | Your Say (2)

B.O.L.O.

They're looking for a sex offender in Sweden. The newspaper helpfully published this photo of the suspect. - - Ace
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 AM | Your Say (6)

March 30, 2017

"Quia parvus error in principio magnus est in fine"

1. A small mistake in the beginning is a big one in the end, according to the Philosopher in the first book of On the Heavens and the Earth.
And as Ibn-Sînâ says in the beginning of his Metaphysics, being and essence are what is first conceived by the intellect. 2. Thus, to avoid making mistakes out of ignorance of them, and to become familiar with the difficulties they entail, we must point out what is signified by the words "being" and "essence" and how they are found in diverse things, and how they are related to the logical intentions, genus, species, and difference. 3. Since we ought to acquire knowledge of what is simple from what is composed, and come to what is prior from what is posterior, so that, beginning with what is easier, we may progress more suitably in learning; we ought proceed from the meaning of the word "being" to that of the word "essence."
Thomas Aquinas: De ente et essentia: English

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:27 PM | Your Say (4)

The Null Culture

One of the remarkable things about the Cloud People is they have a non-linear timeline that has more holes than the fossil record.

For most of them. the world started in the 1960’s. That’s because the Cloud is dominated by Boomers, but it is also when the Cloud started to form up as a social force. The result is they have two versions of the past. Their past, the 60’s and 70’s, and the long ago past, when Lincoln defeated Hitler. | The Z Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (1)

The Internet of Things' Dangerous Future

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Last year, on October 21, your digital video recorder — or at least a DVR like yours — knocked Twitter off the internet. Someone used your DVR, along with millions of insecure webcams, routers, and other connected devices, to launch an attack that started a chain reaction, resulting in Twitter, Reddit, Netflix, and many sites going off the internet. You probably didn’t realize that your DVR had that kind of power. But it does. - - : Bruce Schneier


Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (2)

Perhaps one reason for the current revolt against giant institutions like the EU, the UN and the Federal government

is a subconscious realization among Western voters that technological and social change has gotten inside the loop of bureaucratic response;
that whatever is pounding on the door will prove too fast for the sclerotic central planning bureaucracies to handle. There is no longer much confidence in the capacity of legacy institutions to identify problems at long range and to intercept them before it's too late. Perhaps the most frightening thing about the Obama years was how he laughed at "Governor Romney" for warning Russia might be a problem. -- - -Time

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (1)

March 29, 2017

"The truth is too holy, too sacred for words."

Former Marine and author Steven Pressfield put it this way in Gates of Fire:
What can be more noble than to slay oneself? Not literally. ... But to extinguish the selfish self within, that part which looks only to its own preservation, to save its own skin. ... When a warrior fights not for himself, but for his brothers, when his most passionately sought goal is neither glory nor his own life’s preservation, but to spend his substance for them, his comrades, not to abandon them, not to prove unworthy of them, then his heart truly has achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime. That is why the true warrior cannot speak of battle save to his brothers who have been there with him. The truth is too holy, too sacred for words. Posted by: Donald Sensing

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:45 PM | Your Say (4)

“The issue is now quite clear,”

said G.K. Chesterton on his deathbed. “It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.” -- The Rolling Road of Wonder
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:32 PM | Your Say (0)

"The infantryman hates shells more than anything else," Bill Mauldin wrote about the front lines in Italy.

His phrasing makes it sound like the men were expressing an aesthetic preference, like a choice among distasteful rations.
But "shells" weren't a few rounds of artillery floating in at odd intervals. They were deafening, unrelenting, maddening, terrifying. One fortified American position in the Pacific recorded being hit in a single day by 16,000 shells. In the middle of an artillery barrage hardened veterans would hug each other and sob helplessly. Men caught in a direct hit were unraveled by the blast, blown apart into shards of flying skeleton that would maim or kill anyone nearby. Afterward the survivors would sometimes discover one of their buddies so badly mangled they couldn't understand how he could still be breathing; all they could do was give him the largest dose of morphine they dared and write an "M" for "morphine" on his forehead in his own blood, so that nobody else who found him would give him a second, fatal dose. (One soldier marked with that "M" was Bob Dole, wounded in Italy in 1945; he wasn't released from the hospital until 1948.) Commanders came to prefer leading green troops into combat, because the veterans were far more scared. They knew what was coming. Losing the War - by Lee Sandlin

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:47 AM | Your Say (11)

CONSUMER ALERT: 'CAN YOU HEAR ME' SCAMS

The scam begins when a consumer answers a call and the person at the end of the line asks, “Can you hear me?” The caller then records the consumer's "Yes" response and thus obtains a voice signature.

This signature can later be used by the scammers to pretend to be the consumer and authorize fraudulent charges via telephone. If you receive this type of call, immediately hang up. If you have already responded to this type of call, review all of your statements such as those from your bank, credit card lender, or telephone company for unauthorized charges. If you notice unauthorized charges on these and other types of statements, you have likely been a victim of “cramming,” the practice of placing unauthorized charges on a telecommunication subscriber's home or mobile telephone bill. - City of Palo Alto [HT: Dog @ Maggies]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 AM | Your Say (7)

C'est tout. Finis.End of show.

"Effective as of Dec. 31, 2017, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted." Is Mo Brooks Our Lord Brougham? | Roger’s Rules

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 AM | Your Say (0)

An item published in The Lebanon Express, in 1893, describes state legislation introduced to combat “fake news.”

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 AM | Your Say (2)

March 28, 2017

Elvis: The (Very) Early Years

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:51 PM | Your Say (8)

Academic “scientists” are required to pledge allegiance to groupthink dogmas and political correctness

— things which should not be a part of a professional “scientists'” portfolio.
Modern educational systems have become an integral part of decadent mainstream culture, drawn to the celebrity mainstream. Such a “status culture” leads its adherents to cut corners in the quest for celebrity status. Woodpile Report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 AM | Your Say (0)

The absolute-zero cold statistical truth is the majority of terrorist attacks kill a majority of people in western civilization who voted this stuff in. Namely leftists.

It's hard to attack and kill conservatives in large numbers because those ignorant hick bastards are spread out over rural and suburbanite areas.
They don't congregate in downtown areas to "party." And the major metro centers with the richest targets for terrorists tend to have heavily dense populations of leftists. And while on a human side I do mourn the innocent worker in Mumbai, or the innocent tourist in the twin towers, on the whole I just can't give a fuck when the majority of people who are dying in these attacks are the ones who voted it in. And I REALLY can't give a fuck when for the past 30 years of my life these people are the ones who call me racist, sexist, evil, fascist and "privileged," blame me for all their problems, and likely hate me more than the terrorists themselves do. Captain Capitalism: Why I Just Don't Care About the London Attack

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (3)

Clickbait: The Early Years

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:38 AM | Your Say (4)

“Socialism or Death”. Turns out Venezuela got both.

Venezuela After the Politics | Joel D. Hirst's Blog The politics has become for Venezuelans like an albatross; and folks are looking back to remember what it was like before with lamentations.
Days at the beach. Parties in their humble homes – to be sure they might not have had black label whiskey, but they did have beer. They might not have had imported salmon but they did have pernil and cachitos and arepas. But more than that they remember when their nation still had a soul – brotherly love to a measure – the pride in a beautiful country that didn’t come from its political prominence but from good baseball and beautiful Miss Universe contestants and lovely scenery; from the freedom of life lived for family and get-togethers and religious festivals that existed independent of the politics of the season. That’s the reason that we fight the socialism so much – that political ideology demands a monopoly on national life. It is in the shower with you, in your cereal in the morning and in your soup at night. It demands subservience; it demands thought and focus and action; it demands attention – even when your intention is to fight it. Venezuela learned this – and deconstructing the mess is proving to be hard. Totalitarian regimes have a reach that is not only broad but deep.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (1)

Customizing Grandma's Remote

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:40 AM | Your Say (7)

March 27, 2017

Another bright soul notices how awful The Big Bang Theory Has Become

This blog post is brought to you by a recent bad experience I had watching a 5-minute clip from Big Bang Theory on the recommendation of a friend who thought I might find it amusing.
Bleagh. This is supposed to be a show about geniuses? It’s not. It’s a show about a dimwit’s idea of what bright people are like. The slowest person in my peer group could out-think and out-create any of these sad-sack imitations of “smart” on any day of the week. These actors are not bright, and don’t know how to fake it on screen. How to act like you’re bright | Armed and Dangerous

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:49 PM | Your Say (16)

And so say we all....

Did anybody else not pay any attention to what happened over the weekend?
I found myself uninterested in March Madness, couldn’t summon the energy required to watch the Sunday Showboats spout off on why RyanCare was a disaster for whoever they were opposed to, not in the mood for Donald J.Trump’s tweets and couldn’t even manage to get appropriately agitated about the black-hooded New World Order Obots who showed up at the Trump rally to pepper spray the attendees. MOTUS A.D.: Guaranteed 100% Gender-Fluid

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:47 AM | Your Say (3)

A new category of cloud called the “undulatus asperatus.”

Earth’s newest cloud is terrifying - - Yesterday, on World Meteorological Day — nine years after the classification was first submitted — the World Meteorological Organization finally recognized Pretor-Pinney’s clouds in the updated version of the International Cloud Atlas, though the name has been tweaked to “asperitas.” They’re the first new addition to the Atlas in over half a century.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 AM | Your Say (1)

Is this an alien?

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Tardigrade in Moss
Probably not, but of all the animals on Earth, the tardigrade might be the best candidate. That's because tardigrades are known to be able to go for decades without food or water, to survive temperatures from near absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, to survive pressures from near zero to well above that on ocean floors, and to survive direct exposure to dangerous radiations.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (5)

You remember the Democrats, don’t you?

They were the party who for decades would gaslight anyone concerned about Soviet communism
as being some paranoid dupe of propaganda, sneering at them coastal-elite-style as some low-info true believer in the “Red Scare.” Mind you, this was when Russians actually were infiltrating US government and media. It’s also when they were slaughtering millions of their own citizens and injecting psychiatric medication into anyone whose brain even dared to burp up the mildest “reactionary” thought. The Russian Deflection - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (0)

Because diversity is our strength.

On Wednesday, Khalid Masood, a Muslim convert,
rents a car in a town near Birmingham from an Enterprise rent-a-car shop sandwiched between a Staples and a beauty salon offering walk-in eyebrow waxing. Over a fifth of Birmingham is Muslim and by the time the bloodshed was over and Masood was in the hospital, police raided a flat over a restaurant advertising “A Taste of Persia”. Sultan Knish: A Week of Diversity and Terror

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (1)

Lessons From Fahrenheit 451 for the Modern Day

“Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”| The Art of Manliness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (0)

“No, you cannot have it”

This is an iron law of economics. All goods and services are rationed. This is true for health care too. There are no exceptions to this law. Thus, the First Truth of Health Care: No health care plan or system can ever be taken seriously unless it addresses, up front, how it will say “No, you cannot have it” to people who want it. At some point, someone has to tell the patient they cannot have whatever it is they want or need. The Truth About Health Care

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:14 AM | Your Say (1)

March 26, 2017

Black like... er, white like.... er, black like.... oh to hell with it crank that tanning bed up to 11! [Bumped]

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The story of Rachel Dolezal gets even more bizarre
“I’d stir the water from the hose into the earth … and make thin, soupy mud, which I would then rub on my hands, arms, feet, and legs,” Dolezal writes. “I would pretend to be a dark-skinned princess in the Sahara Desert or one of the Bantu women living in the Congo … imagining I was a different person living in a different place was one of the few ways … that I could escape the oppressive environment I was raised in.”

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:33 PM | Your Say (16)

As I sit in my study and write this by the light of an incandescent bulb

I'm very appreciative of electric lighting. My father grew up before rural electric coops brought light into farm homes.
The marvel of lighting a room with the flip of a switch wasn't lost on him. Nor on me. I hadn't heard of this Earth Hour thing before. Too bad it takes something as contrived as this seems to be to remind us of the pleasure and mystery of darkness at night.

I live in rural Minnesota, about three miles from the nearest town. The ambient glow of lighting is dim but ever present. But I am fortunate that the starry welken isn't overpowered by it. On a clear night the sky here is astounding. I'm truly sorry for those of you who don't get it. Darkness and silence are two of the scarcest commodities on earth.

The problem is not that we are able to have lighting where and when we want it. The problem is the wretched excess of lighting where and when we don't need it. Look out the window the next time you fly at night. Almost everywhere, even in the middle of the night, our world is glowing. You will see acres of empty parking lots lit up brighter than a high school football field on Friday night.

Where I live even abandoned farms have multiple security lights burning from dusk to dawn, a vestigial carry-over from when gypsies and hobos might steal a chicken or a fresh pie of the window sill. How thoughtlessly stupid.

I'm not going to get into climate change, global warming or energy consumption. I have opinions but no expertise, specialized knowledge or insights. What I do know is the pleasure of stepping outside in the middle of a July night and listening to the pulse a world that I can't see. The magic of sitting in a canoe in the Boundary Waters wilderness listening to the cries of loons announcing their presence on a moonlit lake The atavistic sensation of letting my feet find a path in the night woods.

If you don't know and don't care then its going to take more than an Earth Hour to enlighten you. Posted by: Snowgoose Earth Hour: Click to Fade @ AMERICAN DIGEST

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:54 PM | Your Say (4)

Antonello da Messina: Portrait of a Man (detail), 1472-76

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:40 PM | Your Say (1)

The Cullinan Diamond:

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The nine largest stones after the rough Cullinan diamond was split

The largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found was cut into many pieces and dispersed, but all are now in possession of Queen Elizabeth II
The Great Star of Africa diamond is mounted on the Sovereign’s Scepter with Cross, and the Second Star of Africa, cut from the same rough diamond, is mounted on the Imperial State Crown. Both of these diamonds are part of the British Crown Jewels. Seven more major diamonds and ninety-six minor stones were also cut from the original rough diamond. All are owned by Queen Elizabeth II, who inherited them from her grandmother, Queen Mary.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 AM | Your Say (3)

“Billy, come now – his breathing has changed.”

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It has slowed to just three or four breaths per minute – long silences in between. He is no longer conscious. He is stretched out on his bed diagonally and looks comfortable.
Maurine, who has been at the side of many patients as they die, tells us this is the last phase, but that it could go on for many hours, days maybe. A little while ago, I looked around the room, crowded with bedsheets, towels, pads, medications, an oxygen tank and other medical equipment, and I began clearing it out, all of it. First, I brought in stacks of all of O’s books, cleared a bedside table, and put them there. I brought in a cycad plant and a fern. Kate joined me, and we cleared more space, making room on another table for some of O’s beloved minerals and elements, his fountain pens, a ginkgo fossil, his pocket watch. Elsewhere, a few books by his heroes – Darwin, Freud, Luria, Edelman, Thom Gunn – and photos – his father, Auden, his mother as a girl with her 17 siblings, his aunts and uncles, his brothers. We brought in flowers, candles. I am heartbroken but at peace. Last night, before getting some sleep, I came in to see if he needed anything. “Do you know how much I love you?” I said. “No.” His eyes were closed. He was smiling, as if seeing beautiful things. My life with Oliver Sacks: ‘He was the most unusual person I had ever known’ | Books | The Guardian

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:21 AM | Your Say (0)

Joking or not, he isn’t wrong…

A gentleman at work, from Pakistan, was bewildered by the events reported from “Day Without a Woman.”
Taking a broader view of the protests leading up to it, and likely sputtering along afterward, he asked in a jocular sort of way if the United States is heading toward a new reality in which every single day is a “day of” something, with constant protesting by someone or another. Now I have to wonder, what am I supposed to say to that? House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:18 AM | Your Say (1)

March 25, 2017

When Earth's Last Selfie is Taken...

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:28 AM | Your Say (1)

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (4)

15 Mid-Century Modern Dream Homes that will Kill Your Children

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Someone needs to call protective services on this place, because this stylish modern mother is too absorbed in her reading to notice that all her children have fallen into the living room garden. - - | projectophile

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (2)

Coyote Gravity

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The spate of silly comparisons between Trump and the Mule from Asimov’s Foundation series are right in one respect.
Trump is an element that our social planners did not foresee. Not because of mutant mind-powers, but because of an intellectual blindspot on the part of those who thought they were charting the destiny of the nation. He couldn’t possibly win, they thought. Our media propaganda machine is just too strong, they thought. Now they’re scrambling to figure out how they got it so completely wrong. Or they should be. Instead, too many on the Left are doubling-down on the same kind of clueless snobbery and basket-full-of-deplorables rhetoric that cost them the election to begin with. The problem can’t be with them, oh no. It must The People who let them down. Instead of behaving like the good little Marxist automatons that they’re supposed to, they went and elected the Worst Candidate Ever, seeming embodiment of everything the Left despises capped off with an obvious toupee. Now after eight years of Hope and Change and post-racial utopias, it’s back to Amerikkka being the source of all evil in the world, with rich white male Christian Republicans at the root of it all. - - Christopher M. Chupik | According To Hoyt

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:56 AM | Your Say (4)

Not a dog? Nothing to see here. Move on.

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:38 AM | Your Say (7)

March 24, 2017

We were raised to not be afraid,

to be responsible, and have the ability to handle our own problems.
We learned that the society we lived in had laws and we were taught to adhere to those laws or face the consequences. There were also the unspoken rules, respect your elders, hold a door open for the ladies, don’t hit girls, and don’t swear in front of Mom.

We lived by the rules, didn’t seem that difficult. Crossing Guards

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:36 PM | Your Say (2)

There's a Wire Above Manhattan That You've Probably Never Noticed

It's hard to imagine that anything literally hanging from utility poles across Manhattan could be considered "hidden," but throughout the borough, about 18 miles of translucent wire stretches around the skyline, and most people have likely never noticed. It's called an eruv (plural eruvin), and its existence is thanks to the Jewish Sabbath.

On the Sabbath, which is viewed as a day of rest, observant Jewish people aren't allowed to carry anything—books, groceries, even children—in public places (doing so is considered "work"). The eruv encircles much of Manhattan, acting as a symbolic boundary that turns the very public streets of the city into a private space, much like one's own home. This allows people to freely communicate and socialize on the Sabbath—and carry whatever they please—without having to worry about breaking Jewish law. | Mental Floss

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:36 PM | Your Say (4)

Lucky is better than smart. Luck is a kind of smart.

Then there was the neighbor kid that stuck all his ships in the middle of the board, all touching each other.
He didn’t have any strategy, and didn’t care what yours was. He’d just guess, and his guessing was better than your strategy. Once he had you, you were done, because subterfuge doesn’t work on people that don’t use it on their end. Pointing and Laughing at Your Defeated Opponent. It’s the American Way – BSBFB

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:17 PM | Your Say (2)

We shall pile wood upon our living room bonfire and line the walls with asbestos!

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Because lighting domestic demographic fires is a religious form of noblesse oblige
and every Western leader keeps striking the match while making sure it’s some other poor fuck who ends up in a hearse. And that’s not cheap. A massive security apparatus must be erected and maintained as a prophylactic to prevent important people from being burned and unimportant people from complaining about it. The Virtue Inferno | The Kakistocracy

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:52 PM | Your Say (1)

Such events have by this point almost become unworthy of the 12 hours media organs now allocate to them.

The blood of invasion victims striking the pavement is starting to take on the narcoleptic patter of rainfall.
That it is a thing of gruesome regularity makes it no less regular. And eventually muslim violence in Europe will attract as much publicity as black violence does in America–which is to say two sentences on page 12.

The logic isn’t entirely unsound. The news is for things that are actually news. And Europeans being slaughtered in their own capital cities by foreign infantry is not at all novel, in this age or those prior. The fact that this time they’ve voluntarily imported (and resolutely continue to import) their antagonists is the noteworthy aspect. Though not so much as to warrant the public’s input. - - The Virtue Inferno | The Kakistocracy

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:43 PM | Your Say (6)

The Useful and the Useless

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Among the analyses of the election, few noted an obvious dividing line.
Trump’s supporters by and large do useful things, or are angry because they’re prevented from doing useful things. They build, engineer, manufacture, plant, grow, operate, maintain, repair, transport, and sell the things we find useful or essential.

When we ram the iceberg, their skills, brains, and adaptability will be sorely needed. Politicians and bureaucrats and the millions dependent on them for their fake jobs, income, food, shelter, transportation, and medical care will find little demand for their skills, such as they are.

The useful may well conclude that keeping them alive is more trouble than it’s worth.

There will be those who are too young, old, or infirm to produce, but whom the useful will support out of friendship or kinship. However, it would be surprising if they felt anything but contempt for the faceless hordes demanding that someone, anyone, take care of them.

Take away the undeserved from the undeserving and you get a tantrum. Steal the earned from those who earned it and you get righteous rage. One’s a firecracker, the other a volcano. by Robert Gore @ STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:58 PM | Your Say (1)

Attacked Again

For some reason, there is a great reluctance to discuss the link between terrorism and immigration.
Instead, we get appeals not to blame Muslims for a few bad or mentally ill people in their midst.

So much mental illness these days.

Next will come candles, a hashtag, someone will pull off a girl’s headscarf and Islamophobia will become the story.

You can make planes secure, but not the queues to go through security.

You can bring in laws to restrict gun ownership, but terrorists use cars or lorries as weapons.

You can surround Parliament with armed policemen, but you can’t prevent people from using nearby streets or bridges. Or if you do so you just move the security barrier farther away. Eventually you have to make national borders a tight security barrier. Unless you are part of Schengen or believe, as Hillary and Bill Clinton do, in a borderless world. - - Paul Wood

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:01 PM | Your Say (2)

The questions for South Africa are a) How long before the blacks decide it is time to kill all the whites,

b) How many blacks will the whites be willing to kill in order to survive? and c) How will the West respond?
The most likely answer to the first question is soon. Zuma will follow the Mugabe formula and keep ratcheting up the violence incrementally. Given that he is the moderate at the moment, he will play the triangulation game where he will promise to hold off the more insane elements of the black leadership, in order to get concessions from the white population. This will roll along until Zuma is killed, or decides he has to go for it in order to maintain his position. South Africa | The Z Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:10 AM | Your Say (0)

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 AM | Your Say (4)

March 23, 2017

The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak. - - Lichtenberg

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:39 PM | Your Say (1)

Pray for Sanity: "Because they can’t run you over, if you don’t let them in."

Pray that your government doesn’t decide to open the borders to as many migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and any other terror state as can make their way over.
Pray that the next government doesn’t do it either. And pray that if it does, they don’t move in near you. Because they can’t run you over, if you don’t let them in. They can’t stab you while shouting, “Allahu Akbar” if they never get a visa. They can’t shove you into the water, if they get deported. They can’t blow you up if they can’t get in. Pray that the local diplomats actually do some basic checks of the visa application for the next terrorist showing up at the local consulate. Pray that they do a better job than they did before September 11. - - Sultan Knish

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:44 PM | Your Say (3)

The Haunting Face of a Man Who Lived 700 Years Ago

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He was just slightly over 40 years old when he died.
His skeleton showed signs of considerable wear-and-tear, so he likely lead a tough and hard working life. His tooth enamel stopped growing during two occasions in his youth, suggesting he likely lived through bouts of famine or sickness when he was young. The archaeologists found traces of blunt force trauma inflicted to the back of his head, which healed over before he died. The researchers aren’t sure what he did for a living, but they think he was a working-class person who specialized in some kind of trade. - - Gizmodo

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:20 PM | Your Say (4)

The Obama people started spying on Trump once he had the nomination or perhaps even earlier.

They may have started earlier with an eye on helping the Republicans knock him off in the primary, but that’s not clear.
They figured that Clinton was a lock so they were not careful about covering their tracks. The Clinton people are as dirty as it gets so they were not going to be ratting on anyone over it. If anything, they would expand on it. This is where the Russian hacking story comes into the picture. Once disaster struck and Team Obama realized they had a problem, they needed cover, so they started with the Russian hacking nonsense. They would then claim that it was all an accident and they were just trying to prevent Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale from attacking our democracy! It’s also why Obama signed a retroactive Executive Order giving cover to the intel agencies for their domestic spying activities. They were creating a cover story. The Political Class Murders Itself | The Z Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (2)

Implement the nuclear option and completely eliminate the filibuster immediately.

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The filibuster only works if you have the balls to make it benefit your side and it seems that only Democrats and Newt possess such a pair.
Once it’s gone we can “Repeal and Replace” Obamacare and confirm Neil Gorsuch to SCOTUS within a week. Then we can move on to pass tax reform, build the border wall, actually reform immigration (I’m not talking amnesty or any of the amnesty-light plans), fix our bad trade deals and Make America Great Again! All this year! MOTUS A.D.: What’s So Hard About Repeal and Replace

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (4)

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 by William Wordsworth

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Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:57 AM | Your Say (2)

Coming Soon to a City Near You, YES YOU:

French Muslim tries to drive a car into a crowd in Antwerp |
A French -Tunisian has been arrested after trying to drive a car loaded with liquid gas, assault rifles and knives into a crowd of shoppers in Antwerp in an attempted terror attack. Belgian police, who confirmed the bomb squad had been sent to the area, said the car was being driven at high speed and that pedestrians had to jump out of the way to avoid being injured.Authorities found knives, a shotgun and a gas can with an unknown liquid in the car prompting officers who usually deal with extremist attacks to take over the case.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (0)

March 22, 2017

From time to time I'm called simple minded.

I take it as a compliment and thank my accuser for noticing.
Few things are as complicated as they're made out to be. Examples: before ObamaCare there was no ObamaCare. Duh. It made things worse. Repeal it and make things better instantly.

Nullify and denounce every federal, state and municipal gun control act, law and regulation ever passed, including the commerce clause stuff. The Constitution prohibits government from interfering, in any way, with our right to keep and bear arms. So stop doing it.

And illegal aliens. They have to go. It's the law. Don't like it? Change the law. Until then it's the will of the people, duly enacted. Either enforce it or stop saying 'representative democracy' and 'rule of law'. => Insert "it's not that simple" and pictures of baby seals here <=. Woodpile Report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 PM | Your Say (1)

The world has lost a truly great entomologist, perhaps its greatest collector of beetles, with the death of David A. Rockefeller

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on Monday at the age of one hundred and one, among the cabinets of his specimens at Pocantico Hills: each impeccably labelled and mounted.
Rockefeller’s dwarfed the collections of Darwin and Wallace, the accumulated stores in Oxford University, the holdings of natural history museums in many sizeable European countries. At the age of seven, this young David discovered his calling — or was called, by an elegant, an elongate Parandra, glittering dark caramel, the full inch long, with its formidable pinching mandibles. It was trespassing in the foliage on his father’s estate. Veritably, a Parandra brunneus. Bravely lifting it by its sides, the lad dropped it into a bottle, the first of his hundred thousand catches, by one means or another. The rest is silence : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:14 PM | Your Say (5)

How America’s Obsession With Hula Girls Almost Wrecked Hawai’i

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In ancient hula, the movements were secondary to the poetry or songs being chanted, which were known as mele.
“Hula was the history book, children’s literature, and sacred text of a people with no written language,” Hale writes in The Natives Are Restless. “It maintained the relationship between gods and mortals. It preserved the greatness of the chiefly lines. It honored the race and encouraged procreation, and it traced the subtleties of the natural world: the rolling of waves onshore; the tumbling of waterfalls; the distinctions between tropical mists, showers, and rains.” According to Hale, the hula “is said to have originated with the goddess Laka, who is identified with hula, fertility, the forest, and various blossoms and ferns.” Before performing their ritual, the dancers would build an altar to Laka in the sacred space known as a hālau, a long meeting house where Hawaiians would also study canoe-making, featherwork, and other traditional arts. | Collectors Weekly

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:04 PM | Your Say (0)

Facebook and Google, so the saying goes, make their users into their products

—the real customer is the advertiser or data speculator preying on the information generated by the companies’ free services.
But things are bound to get even weirder than that. When automobiles drive themselves, for example, their human passengers will not become masters of a new form of urban freedom, but rather a fuel to drive the expansion of connected cities, in order to spread further the gospel of computerized automation. If artificial intelligence ends up running the news, it will not do so in order to improve citizen’s access to information necessary to make choices in a democracy, but to further cement the supremacy of machine automation over human editorial in establishing what is relevant. Why Nothing Works Anymore - The Atlantic

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:33 PM | Your Say (2)

Testicle Festival

American Legion's Testicle Festival urges you to 'come have a ball' | Rau said the Legion will start serving dinner around noon "until they run out of nuts." Beer and mixed drinks are $2 a pop and there is no cover charge. "You get baked beans, coleslaw and a roll with dinner, plus the nuts and the gizzards," Rau said. "They taste like chicken."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:25 PM | Your Say (4)

There’s also something called The Sapien Paradox, which means, why did humans become smart so late?

We know that the human brain evolved to its current state about 60,000 years ago.

It took 50,000 years for humans to figure out agriculture. Over the last 10,000 years, humans developed symbolic concepts like notions of value, number and measure. Abstract social concepts like status and power, along with the symbols associated with them are, relatively speaking, very recent developments.Space Aliens & Talking Monkeys | The Z Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:03 AM | Your Say (9)

If you want to know how successful something will be on the internet, judge it solely on how creepy it is.

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The creepier and more degenerate it is, the more likely it is to prosper....
Twitter is really, really creepy. Uber was creepy long before you found out exactly how it was creepy. The only human thing about anyone who worked there was their hamhanded attempts to grope the help, now that I think of it. When that's the top of your interpersonal heap, Dante Alighieri should write your yearly reports. Facebook, and the avaricious little twerp that runs it, is the creepiest thing I've ever encountered on this world, and I've renovated apartments that had a dead body in them. Google is creepy turtles, all the way down.Sippican Cottage: Chef, Or The Greater Creep Theory of Internet Success

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (4)

March 21, 2017

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:13 PM | Your Say (4)

Cooking for Him [Bumped]

What interests me more is that its men who seem to be doing most of the cooking.
Recent research actually showed that men like cooking more than women; probably because it appeals to the male tendency to like goal-oriented tasks and building. But its also possible that a generation of women raised to think any traditionally female role is demeaning, oppressive, and inferior have been trained to think of cooking as bad. Word Around the Net: Food in the New Century

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:15 PM | Your Say (15)

Got a Tumblr Takedown Lawyer's Letter on This KA-CHING item

Dear Tom Hanks, It must be nice to be able to afford a $26 Million shack and a lawyer to scour the Internet to hide your extravagance.

KA-CHING! • The Green Mile of Green Bullshit: Environmentally The Green Mile of Green Bullshit: Environmentally Conscious Actor Buys $26 Million, 14,500 Square Foot, 5 Bathroom House : The Powers That Be In yet another story trying to pin down the biggest home sale of 2009, the LA Times reports that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson (no, that headline is not a Cast Away joke) have set an early benchmark in the 2010 contest. Last month they bought New York-based Gwathmey Siegel & Associates’ San Onofre Residence in Pacific Palisades, from producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, for more than $26 million.

Fuck you. Go bother somebody with money.
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:17 PM | Your Say (7)

Overthinking Eternity

“I fear that eventually throughout eternity
I will eventually reach a point where I have experienced everything, learned everything, done everything, met everyone, and eventually I am gonna be stuck being bored of being in existence, but I’m gonna have no way out no matter how much I want it to be so,” apeirophobia sufferer Paul wrote. Apeirophobia - The Fear of Eternal Life and Infinity

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:16 PM | Your Say (4)

They'd prefer the exact kind of bad they're sure to receive to an outside chance of better.

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Why do people eat at McDonald's?
It's because they know exactly what they're going to get, and what it's going to cost. There are no surprises. Well-to-do people sneer at McDonald's because they don't understand the concept of no do-overs. Their budgets allow them to experiment. Regular people know they have one shot, so they take no chances. They'd prefer the exact kind of bad they're sure to receive to an outside chance of better. This explains second presidential terms as well. Sippican Cottage: Getting Fresh and Familiar

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:36 PM | Your Say (10)

There is the world dimensional

for those untwisted by the love of things irreconcilable...- - Hart Crane

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:23 PM | Your Say (1)

Hix Nix Starbuckx Pix

Hire 10,000 Refugees? Americans BFYTW.
The Backlash Against Starbucks Is Real, And It Isn't Going Away For comparison, McDonald’s customer happiness has averaged around 67-69% consistently. This means Starbucks went from 4-5 points better than McDonald’s to 3 points worse, which means poor comparisons for the company. Even worse, it’s the kind of data we see when consumers are in the process of making behavioral shifts that could have lasting impact on same store sales and revenue reports into the future.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:13 AM | Your Say (3)

New 'Safe Space' Guidelines at University of Arizona Treat Students Like Preschoolers

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"If a student feels hurt or offended by another student's comment, the hurt student can say ‘ouch,'" the university said. "In acknowledgment, the student who made the hurtful comment says ‘oops.'" - Washington Free Beacon [HT– Knowledge is Power]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:11 AM | Your Say (5)

Tales from the Steroid Bunker

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The Power and the Gory Bronx Banter“Once I was on Hempstead Turnpike, on my way to the gym, when some guy in a pickup gave me the finger.
That’s it, lights out. I chased him doing ninety in my new Corvette, and did a three-sixty in heavy traffic right in front of him. I jumped out, ripped the door off his truck, and caved in his face with one punch. The other guy in the cab, who had done nothing to me, jumps out and starts running down the divider to get away from me. I chased him on foot and was pounding the shit out of him on the side of the road when the cops pulled up in two cruisers. ‘Michalik, get outta here, ya crazy fuck,’ they go, ‘this is the last goddamn time we’re lettin’ you slide.’” .... The bad news, said the surgeon after a battery of X-rays, was that Michalik would never walk again. The good news was that with a couple of operations, the pain could be substantially mitigated. Michalik told him to get the fuck out of his room. For months he lay in traction, refusing medication, and with his free arm went on injecting himself with testosterone, which had with him in a black bag at the time of the accident, and which the hospital had so thoughtfully put on his bedside table.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:47 AM | Your Say (3)

So just what does “failed” billionaire mean? And how do I become one?

Some of their words make sense but simply don't compute, as when the Liberals describe President Trump as a “failed billionaire.” The man flew everywhere in his own 757, he owned golf courses and hotels all over the world and before he moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, lived in in a gold-encrusted four-story penthouse atop the gleaming skyscraper he owned overlooking Central Park. Articles: Shrugging Off the Liberal 'Resistance'

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:18 AM | Your Say (1)

Malibu sure loves them some slaves

Malibu becomes a sanctuary city — in solidarity with its gardeners, cooks and others in the U.S. illegally Malibu is about 92% white and one of L.A. County’s wealthiest cities. Everyone agrees the city has workers who are not authorized to be in the United States, and they tend to serve the food at upscale eateries, clean the beachside mansions, look after children and keep the landscaping looking lush.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:13 AM | Your Say (0)

Dinner consisted in a succession of complicated small things,

with microscopic ingredients and contrasting tastes that forced you to concentrate as if you were taking some type of exam.
You were not eating, rather visiting some type of museum with an affected English major lecturing you on some artistic dimension you would have never considered on your own. There was so little that was familiar and so little that fit my taste buds: once something on the occasion tasted like something real, there was no chance to have more as we moved on to the next dish. Trudging through the dishes and listening to some b***t by the sommelier about the paired wine, I was afraid of losing concentration. I costs a lot of energy to fake that I was not bored. In fact I discovered an optimization in the wrong place: the only thing I cared about, bread, was not warm. It appears that this is not a Michelin requirement. Only The Rich Are Poisoned: The Preference of Others – INCERTO – Medium

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (1)

The environmentalist utopia, in which by 2030 or 2050 or 2100 all or most energy comes from solar power and wind power?

If leftists were serious about reducing CO2 emissions without inflicting energy poverty on the developed and developing world alike,
they would favor temporarily switching from coal to lower-carbon natural gas, while rapidly building zero-carbon-emission nuclear power plants, whose limited risks would surely be tolerable if the alternative is catastrophic global warming.But no, natural gas is evil and nuclear energy is evil. Solar power and wind power are good, even though realistically they cannot be scaled up to meet present and future global energy demands. Most environmentalists are not open to debate on energy. They are crusaders who view hydrocarbons and nuclear power the way the old Prohibitionists viewed alcohol. There can be no compromise with sin. The Fantasy Worlds of Politics | The Smart Set

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:51 AM | Your Say (0)

I’m Not Stuck in a Liberal Bubble Anymore Because I Just Watched All Five Seasons of Friday Night Lights

They’re not all that different from us.
They like football like we like Hamilton. They eat barbecue while we eat artisanal bagel hybrids. They revere Panthers’ players the way we revere Elizabeth Warren. They keep indoor furniture on the lawn and patio furniture in the living room, while we tend to do the opposite. No one lifestyle is better than the other; they’re simply different. - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 AM | Your Say (1)

March 20, 2017

One More Reason We Should Carpet-Bomb American Colleges & Universities

"It may be objected that parents' desire to have their own biological children is so strong that they would be blind to the public good, that they would have babies and bring them up in secret.
But those babies would not have birth certificates, they would not be citizens, they could not vote, serve in public office and so forth. If discovered, the children might be taken away after the strong bonds of psychological (as opposed to biological) parenthood had been formed. Few Americans would risk these penalties." Never Yet Melted »

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:43 PM | Your Say (3)

Nota Bene:

Don’t Forget Free Cone Day At Dairy Queen Today – Monday

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:29 PM | Your Say (2)

The word to mint here is “TRUMPANOIA.”

I picked up the dead tree version of ye olde Times book review section, something I hadn’t done for ages.

I saw that a certain obsession/compulsion seems to have crept into the prose of the reviews. Every single one that I read—and I got to around to about fie or six of them before I stopped reading—made some reference, oblique or direct, to these harsh Trumpian times in which we live. This was true whatever the subject matter of the book might have been. And these weren’t just references to the discord of the American people about the Trump presidency, either. Each reference seemed to come with a set of assumptions that implied agreement among the Times’ readers on the following:
(1) we all detest Trump
(2) Trump is a totalitarian about to take our rights away any moment
(3) these things don’t need much demonstration at this point; they are a given and we all understand what we’re referring toThe book review section: fanning anti-Trump paranoia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:10 PM | Your Say (0)

Muscle, Smoke, Mirrors:

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The Atlas myth is a critical part of bodybuilding lore, an eternally recurring ur-story.
From the famed Greek wrestler Milo of Croton, who allegedly invented resistance training by toting a calf on his back and increasing the load as it gained weight, down to the tales of men like Lou Ferrigno, who fashioned weights out of milk jugs and sand, bodybuilding stories are, at base, creation myths. Something muscular is forged from frail nothingness, and the creator lives happily ever after. (Milo, the story goes, was eaten by wolves or lions after getting stuck in thetree he was attempting to split with his bare hands, but at least he perished doing what he loved.) The Literature of Bodybuilding

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:42 PM | Your Say (1)

Who won, and with what poem?

I don’t know. I have a hunch that it will be someone from a protected class – person of color, etc – who wrote a poem about oppression or THE ELECTION.

In a way I hope I’m right. I’ll have a clear understanding of why it beat me out, instead of worrying that someone might have actually written a better poem. Which of course is as likely as anything else, but I’m too fragile and petty to handle that. Publication, Compensation – New West Havens

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:36 PM | Your Say (1)

As long as you don't have to buy it dinner

Engineer Creates Sex Robot That Needs To Be Romanced First “Basically she likes to be touched. She has different modes of interaction ― she has romantic, she has family and she has also sexy modes,” Santos told Ruptly TV.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:22 PM | Your Say (3)

Confirming that one does not really "buy" beer, one just rents it.

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San Diego brewery creates beer from 'toilet to tap' recycled water
The pure water program, which locals have nicknamed "toilet to tap," is a system that, once completed, will put recycled wastewater back into the fresh water system instead of into the ocean. The system is expected to provide one-third of the city's freshwater supply by 2035. Steve Gonzalez, Stone's senior manager of brewing and innovation, said the recycled water is in some ways superior to the brewery's current water supply, needing only the addition of some salts to be ideal for beer making. --- United Press

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:18 PM | Your Say (2)

Do Republicans really think that fewer than 5,000 appointees can win against 2.8 million federal employees who have a vested interest in absolutely nothing changing?

If Trump wants to devolve power out of DC, he has to shut departments down.
Take the Department of Energy and put the nuclear weapons management under Department of Defense (or even Commerce, as Reagan wanted, to keep nuclear protection in civilian hands), split energy issues between Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Interior, then shut its doors. Roll any necessary parts of Department of Education into Labor and send other responsibilities back to the states, then shut its doors. Once departments are shut down, bulldoze the buildings to the ground. Shatter them, plow them under, then build beautiful parks, Liberty Parks, over where the departments used to stand. Trump should also then consider “farming” some departments out to states, further breaking the leviathan apart. To Beat The Bureaucrats, Trump Needs To Shut Their Agencies Down

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:08 PM | Your Say (3)

The open-borders left is perhaps the most deranged of today’s crackpot political sects.

The latest fad on the left is cosmopolitanism.
Open borders — a crackpot idea once associated with the libertarian right — is now being embraced by the lunatic left. The nation-state, we are supposed to believe, is a kind of inherently racist gated community, illegitimate because it distinguishes between citizens and foreigners and limits welfare benefits and voting rights to the former. Limiting welfare programs to citizen-taxpayers is “welfare chauvinism.” All laws regulating immigration, all border controls, are the moral equivalents of Jim Crow in the segregated South. The Fantasy Worlds of Politics | The Smart Set

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:48 AM | Your Say (0)

A Real Life Ghost Story

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“Mr. H and I had not been in the house more than a couple of days when we felt very depressed,” she wrote.
The floors were covered with thick carpets that absorbed all sound of the family’s servants going about their tasks, and Mrs. H found the quiet a little overpowering. But even more disturbing than the silent footsteps of the people who were in the house were the noisy footsteps of people who weren’t there…or at least could not be seen with the naked eye. - - TIFO

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (1)

But junking Obamacare is only the beginning.

The biggest story is that about $2 trillion will be repatriated and invested in the United States next year when President Trump holds a tax amnesty (dropping the corporate tax rate on overseas profits to 10 percent temporarily).

What a big deal it was when Ford announced after Trump won that it was investing a billion bucks in American plants.

That $2 trillion is like 2,000 Ford Motor Companies. That is almost three times as large as Obama's first stimulus, and instead of failing, it will work because companies will decide where to invest, not politicians. And instead of costing taxpayers $787 billion, the Treasury will add $200 billion from the amnesty tax on the repatriated money. Don Surber: Media misses story of its lifetime

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (0)

Even fake news needs content, which is where fake science comes in.

There’s nothing better for a fake news story than a quote from a fake scientist, especially when the topic is human health.
Turn on the local fake newscast and there’s always at least one fake story on health or diet. Many of these shows now have a recurring health segment where one of the bubble heads puts on their serious face and talks into the camera about some new threat to your health, usually your diet. It’s all fake. Fake Science | The Z Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (0)

March 19, 2017

Stop whining. Stop crying. Stop complaining.

Stop prophesying inevitable doom.
Stop cowering and stop cucking. The constant defeatism among the civic nationalist Right is remarkable, especially when compared to the growing confidence of the Alt Right. Spanish Christians were conquered and ruled by Muslims for centuries and yet they still didn't give up hope, much less prophesy doom and defeat when they were still the overwhelming majority. The problem is not women, or immigrants, or the government, or the electorate, or anything else. The problem is you. - - Vox Popoli: The sin of Denethor

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:21 PM | Your Say (3)

The civil war of the 1860s was geographically defined,

its manifestos canonical, the armies Napoleonic, the front was bounded and orderly, gallantry and honor were valued if not always practiced.
All in all, a classy affair as wars go. Contemporary civil wars are multi-cornered murderous brawls between partisan militias. Added to this are armed opportunists and the outright deranged. Front lines appear and disappear like summer squalls, alliances shift by the day, high-minded principles devolve into homicidal savagery while everyday life drifts into destitution and universal hunger. Woodpile Report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:54 PM | Your Say (2)

David Strickler was just a 23-year-old pharmacist’s apprentice in 1904 when he invented the world’s most beloved sundae: the banana split.

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The young pharmacist-in-training at Tassel Pharmacy enjoyed inventing new sundaes, which were popular among the young people from nearby St. Vincent College.
His pièce de résistance was three scoops of ice cream (vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate) nestled between a banana sliced lengthwise and topped with pineapple, chocolate and strawberry sauces, whipped cream, chopped nuts, and a maraschino cherry. The banana split, as it came to be known, cost 10 cents - double as much as the pharmacy's other sundaes.  Birthplace of the Banana Split- Latrobe, Pennsylvania | Atlas Obscura

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:45 PM | Your Say (3)

Trump Is Making America Ballsy Again

the Trump Effect. It’s real.
Trump is raising American T levels again. Cucks are uncucking. Manginas are manning up. Libertardians are embracing nationalist populism. Mewling pissant black pillers are quaffing megadoses of BLINDINGLY WHITE PILLS and jamming the rhetorical shiv up the cavernous assholes of the degenerate freak poz dealers. Bear witness, brothers, to the Trump Effect in your lives. | Chateau Heartiste

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:34 PM | Your Say (2)

Parents’ Manhattan Kindergarten Application Essay

Every day with Toile is full of a thousand questions:
“What’s the difference between Parma ham and prosciutto?” “Can I have a Hamilton birthday party?” “Mom, why did you go to PureBarre and Physique 57 today?” During her child-led, unstructured playtime on our drives to the Hamptons, she loves to ask our driver Hasaan all about how he rides his camels. He always tells her that not all people from Egypt ride camels and that he has lived in the United States for 27 years. It’s become a sweet little inside joke between them. - - McSweeney

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:29 PM | Your Say (0)

Now THIS is a makeover.

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With the help of some scissors, hair dye, and a spiffy new outfit, Jose Antonio went from scruffy street dweller to classy hipster, and could hardly recognise himself afterwards. - - Bored Panda
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:25 AM | Your Say (3)

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is easily the manliest broadcaster currently on television,

with her free testosterone levels at any given moment measuring roughly 400% those of her lesbian coworker Chris Hayes. Maddow has a perma-smirk welded onto her face that is only slightly less annoying than the smarmy mug of world powerlifting champion and radical circumcision victim Sally Kohn. The Week That Perished

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (4)

"The repeal of Obamacare sets the table for tax reform. The schedule is roughly Obamacare gone by the end of July, and tax reform in place by October 1st."

Grover Norquist: Here's what happened this week that guaranteed Trump's re-election and Republican gains in 2018 and 2020 Trump and Paul Ryan's plan to repeal Obamacare and begin to reform our healthcare system. It had many numbers. Only two mattered: taxes and spending.
CBO announced that the repeal bill reduces taxes by almost $900 billion and reduces federal spending by $1.2 trillion over the next decade. This reduces deficit spending by $300 billion over the next 10 years. Thus the CBO, as official umpire, announced that the GOP Obamacare repeal plan may be enacted through "reconciliation," the process that requires a simple majority in the House and only 51 votes in the Senate. No filibuster allowed.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 AM | Your Say (2)

There are many aspects of this truck gun debate. [Bumped]

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Yes, there could possibly be a time when you could leave a mass shooting,
sprint your 300 lb. body 150 yards to the back of the parking lot of the movie theater, fighting the hundreds of hysterical people trying to escape, unchain your AK74 shorty after fumbling with your key for the lock from under your back seat which is filled with 4 bug out bags, a kids car seat and 14 McDonalds bags of trash, put on your plate carrier and chest rig, then sprint 150 yards back in, fighting the flow of the crowd, manage to not alarm them being kitted up like a SWAT member with your rifle at high port, smoke check the shooter, and manage not to be shot by responding Law Enforcement. But just exactly how likely is that? Defeating Doomsday Derp: Redemption in the 3rd Act by John Meyers | ZeroGov

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:11 AM | Your Say (39)

March 18, 2017

A raise of hands who didn't see this one coming.

Colin Kaepernick update: some teams 'genuinely hate him' Re-signing Colin Kaepernick is a long shot now that the 49ers have acquired free agents Brian Hoyer and Matt Barkley, general manager John Lynch confirmed Friday.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:17 PM | Your Say (4)

The Japanese [Strawberry]: Nuked too much or not enough?

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A butterfly? Is it a fairy? Found in strange strawberry tourism farm, to exhibit at reception
In strawberry tourism farm of Okai-machi Fukui Prefecture Ogi-machi Tourism farm "Strawberry Tour", it was found that a strawberry shaped like a butterfly spreading feathers was produced. A farmers official said, "For the first time to see such a thing, it looks like a fairy" and narrows his eyes."I knew that there were three protrusions like chicken embroidery when there were many fertilizers, but it seems to be that this shape would be because the roots of the seedlings were tight and the nutrients were taken a lot" I guessed. [HT: Bill Stanley]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (1)

March 17, 2017

There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself. = = Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 PM | Your Say (0)

Cursive Writing Is Making a Much-Needed Comeback in Schools

Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina distributed a handbook on teaching cursive writing in September and is encouraging principals to use it.

It cites research suggesting that fluent cursive helps students master writing tasks such as spelling and sentence construction because they don't have to think as much about forming letters. Malliotakis also noted that students who can't read cursive will never be able to read historical documents. "If an American student cannot read the Declaration of Independence, that is sad." -- Town and Country

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:55 PM | Your Say (4)

The Japanese: Nuked too much or not .... or not.... On second thought can we put in an order?

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VR Schoolgirl Turned Into Life-Sized $23,000 Figure [But is it anatomically correct?]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:59 AM | Your Say (2)

March 16, 2017

Down at the MediaMat

Pound the Russia drum.

When that fails, pound the tax drum.

When that fails, pound the Russia drum.

Occasionally mix in a Pussy March and then repeat.

- - - - Ace

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:48 PM | Your Say (1)

Not-So-Good Vibrations

'Smart-vibrator' firm tracked users' sexual activity without their knowledge The firm, it was discovered, had been collecting data via the app, recording when customers had been using the sex toys, as well as information about the intensity of the vibration settings used. The data was collected without customers having been notified.
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:41 PM | Your Say (5)

National Propaganda Radio: " Until recently, one could tune in to most any program,

and expect to hear a professional host, well-trained by a speech coach, who is skilled at communicating an idea auditorially. However, as the skin color, age, and sexual preference of the speaker became more important than their skills, standards have been thrown out the window and we have seen not only breaking of speech rules, but outright acceptance of poor speech patterns. The Decline Of National Public Radio (NPR)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:20 PM | Your Say (8)

Lynch Mobs of the Left

What the United States is witnessing today is a leftist lynch mob seeking innocent victims.
The other day, Rick Santorum was targeted by a Twitter mob. Today it may be you. They will use anything:The oligopoly media, Pravda on the Hudson (The New York Times), the Washington Post, and "professors" who live off taxpayers, to agitate the innocent and the ignorant. You can watch it happen. When you see it, please keep track of who, when, how, why. If you don't see the string-pullers behind the scenes now, you will soon, because the playbook is always the same. - - American Thinker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (1)

Who Says There's No Good News?

Trump Budget Proposes Killing All Funding for PBS, NPR and National Endowment for the Arts

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (12)

Fake Americans

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So I am talking with one of my cuck friends that is a Facebook shill reposting a bunch of Huffington articles.
I was talking to him about his kids and school and which school they are going to attend because they go to private schools. He starts talking shit about Trump and Betsy DeVos and how they are going to ruin the school systems. And I say, "well you made your decision to go to private schools long before Trump and DeVos had any influence." He chuckles sheepishly and says the public schools in his area suck. So I give him a little shit and say, "Oh yeah, so you are all about open borders as long as those kids don't go to the same schools as your kids." AND THEN I SAY THE MAGIC WORDS:

"Fake American"
And this guy that I knew and loved absolutely loses his shit on me. I am talking epic meltdown. I thought at one point he was literally going to attack me. - - The_Donald

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:13 AM | Your Say (3)

The people who find their way onto the college campus, or the government campus, are not there to confront life. They are there to escape it.

Spend any time at a government facility and you quickly see, if you are the noticing sort, that it is a different world. The Department of Nice is pretty much an adult daycare center, like everycollege campus. Except it is not a college campus. It is a government facility allegedly doing necessary work. Trying to findanyone who can tell you what it is they do and why it is necessary is not recommended. It's not that anyone will get upset at your questions. It's that no one in government land is defined by what they do. They are defined by their credentials. The Department of Nice | The Z Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:49 AM | Your Say (0)

March 15, 2017

Ideological conservatives have spent the past several decades pretending they didn’t need Muscle.

That’s how I used to think: the cogency, the elegance of my Ideas will carry the day! Not true.
No amount of argumentation or even data will convince a liberal that all children are not equally educable. No parade of historical, real world-failures will convince a Marxist that the labor theory of value does not describe reality. So if you want a country where you can politely debate Enlightenment concepts like inalienable rights, then you need (1) a territory, (2) a people with the IQ and time preference necessary for abstract ideas and a temperamental aversion to violence, and (3) lots of razor wire and machine gun emplacements to keep out all the people who can out-thug, out-breed and out-vote you. The Anti-Gnostic: Why I don't feel bad for Charles Murray

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:49 PM | Your Say (4)

Numero Uno: Apple I personal computer

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Steve Wozniak (1950 -), a computer hobbyist, was dabbling in computer design from high school.
While working for Hewlett-Packard in the mid-1970s he built himself a computer using the new MOS technology 8-bit 6502 microprocessor and an old design for a video terminal for mainframe remote access. (8) Pinterest • The world’s catalog of ideas

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:21 PM | Your Say (1)

Don't book seats on the Jefferson Starship just yet.

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Astronomers aren't sure if TRAPPIST-1's planets are habitable after all - ScienceAlert
Of course, we should have prepared for broken hearts. The signs were all there. Orbiting so close to their parent, the planets are more than likely tidally locked, meaning one hemisphere constantly faces their sun while the other side is in perpetual darkness.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:10 PM | Your Say (1)

This is the age of miracles and wonders.

German Scientists Grow Tomatoes in Urine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (5)

Artist Shows How To Repackage Junk Food So That Hipsters Would Buy It


You'll never find a box of Cap'n Crunch or a pack of Slim Jims in a hipster's house. Why? Well, aside from the fact that neither are organic, the colors of the packaging would simply clash too much with all of the other artfully designed products in their food cupboard.
But what would such products look like if they too had the hipster makeover? | Bored Panda

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:10 AM | Your Say (2)

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older. - - Lichtenberg

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (4)

Venezuela’s government is becoming increasingly Khmer ‘Rouge’.

As the great thinkers flee the world their misbegotten ideas created, and former allies fall away or turn their backs on the grotesqueness, the nouveau leadership falls back desperately on arguments of self-sufficiency, spawning forced-labor laws, rationing, and a more sinister discrimination, based on identity. Starvation again. Extreme nationalism has replaced Hugo Chavez’s ill-fated pan-Latin Americanism. Disappearances. Expulsions. Silence. As Venezuela Goes ‘Rouge’ | Joel D. Hirst's Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:01 AM | Your Say (0)

"The temptation, when among contemporaries, is to lapse into what I call crank, in which everything in the past turns out to have been superior to anything in the present. " - - Joseph Epstein, Hitting Eighty

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:12 AM | Your Say (0)

“A sense of security born of a long peace has diverted mankind partly to the enjoyment of private leisure, partly to civilian careers. Thus attention to military training obviously was at first discharged rather neglectfully, then omitted, until finally cosigned long since to oblivion.” - - Vegetius Renatus

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (2)

“Unless we keep the barbarian virtues, gaining the civilized ones will be of little avail.” - - Theodore Roosevelt

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (0)

“Intersectionality”

It is operating, in Orwell’s words, as a “smelly little orthodoxy,” and it manifests itself, it seems to me, almost as a religion.
It posits a classic orthodoxy through which all of human experience is explained — and through which all speech must be filtered. Its version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others. To overcome this sin, you need first to confess, i.e., “check your privilege,” and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay. The sin goes so deep into your psyche, especially if you are white or male or straight, that a profound conversion is required. - - Is Intersectionality a Religion?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:29 AM | Your Say (1)

March 14, 2017

Whether you were a never-Trump person or not, the bear was poked squarely in the eye.

The bear is not dead and we should be cognizant of the fact that it now is extremely angry.
Either we accept the fact and behave accordingly or we get blindsided in a couple years when all of a sudden there are people standing on TV saying that Trump voters aren’t just profoundly evil, but they are inhuman and for the good of America need to be dealt with as such. If this seems insane and a little on the late night radio side of sanity, I understand. The Coming Retribution – The Virginia Freeman's Society

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:33 PM | Your Say (1)

All Things Must Pass.... Gas

Goodyear Officially Retiring Its Last Real Blimp In Favor Of Zeppelins

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:16 PM | Your Say (1)

The innovative photos that proved no two snowflakes are alike

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He photographed over 5,000 more snowflakes over the following decades, capturing each crystal on a microscope slide backed by black velvet, working quickly to capture a photo before it disappeared. - - - Retronaut

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:48 PM | Your Say (1)

"They Call Me Mellow Yellow"

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Wherever the hoax originally started,
it was a short piece in a March 1967 issue of the counterculture magazine Berkeley Barb that seems to have kicked off the wider craze. In his column “Folk Scene,” the writer Ed Denson presented a “Recipe of the week,” where he described a method of preparing banana peels for smoking by scraping out the white pith and drying it out in an oven before rolling it up in a joint. Densen reported that he’d heard about the recipe from members of the band Country Joe and the Fish, which he also managed. The lead singer of the band also claims to have been a father of the banana-smoking craze, having passed out 500 banana joints at one of their concerts.Smoking Banana Peels Is the Greatest Drug Hoax of All Time | Atlas Obscura

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:40 PM | Your Say (2)

‘The Church of England is dying', warns former Queen’s Chaplain

How do you see your future in the Church of England and the future of the Church of England?
Gavin: It isn’t a matter of how I see it. Demographically and financially it is dying. Spiritually it appears to be on its last legs too. I’m not sure I see much point in a church that just wants to be accepted as a sort of not too irritating chaplain to a secular and hedonistic culture, which is what it seems to be becoming. I want to remain a faithful Anglican, but increasingly it looks like that is only possible outside the C of E. It has opted for a kind of spiritualised socialism and feminism in opposition to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. You get new life when you repent. But there is no sign that it is ready to take that path. - The Conservative Woman

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:10 PM | Your Say (4)

10 Things I Like About White Guys

(6) WE HAVE SIMPLE TASTES
I’ll never forget the time my dad said, “I could be happy in an abyss. Now…if there was a chair there that would be good, and if there was a six-pack that would be okay, too, but I don’t need those things.” I told him that an abyss is death and he shrugged and said, “You need to release yourself from the fear of it. It’s cathartic.” This is probably why we do so badly in divorces. We can be happy in a studio apartment with a cot and a hot plate. If we can’t have that, drop us off at the edge of the forest with a tent and some hot dogs. - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (0)

One topic thread was entitled “What do you view as disgusting about modern America?”

The thread was begun in 2002. Almost eight thousand posts later, the thread was still going strong in June, 2014.

Those posting messages in this left-wing forumpublicly announced that they did what they did every day, from voting to attending a rally to planning a life, because they wanted to destroy something, and because they hated someone, rather than because they wanted to build something, or because they loved someone. You went to an anti-war rally because you hated Bush, not because you loved peace. Thus, when Obama bombed, you didn’t hold any anti-war rally, because you didn’t hate Obama. American Thinker: Top Ten Reasons I Am No Longer A Leftist

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (2)

Awkward Metal Band Photos

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Rock stars are supposed to be charismatic.
The gig requires being able to a) get up in front of people and perform convincingly, b) create compelling songs that evoke emotions, c) have a sense of style your fans would want to emulate, and, of course, d) be sexy. That’s a lot of requirements, and some bands understandably fall a bit short. -- More at DYT
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (2)

We are now seven weeks into the Trump presidency and it seems like seven years

with amount of incidents that have occurred before and since his inauguration.
When in doubt, Trump’s brain dead, hyperventilating with hate, opponents either blame the Russians or declare him Hitler. The histrionics displayed by the low IQ hypocritical Hollywood elite, corrupt Democratic politicians, fake news liberal media and Soros paid left wing radical terrorists over the last two months has been disgraceful, revolting, childish, and dangerous. - – The Burning Platform

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:02 AM | Your Say (0)

March 13, 2017

Here's what a $600 meal for 1 looks like at America's second most expensive restaurant.

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This was, hands down, my favourite course.
Fresh sea urchin (uni) on grilled bread that was basted in a sauce made of the offcuts of the bread. Like a bread confit.. Idk - it was awesome. I've never had sea urchin before, it was SUPER creamy.. like the butter of the sea. So amazingly fresh and the sauce in the bread was incredible. Definitely my favourite. - Album on Imgur

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:14 PM | Your Say (7)

Cannonballs

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:45 PM | Your Say (12)

Free your consciousness, and shine its light on what remains of the left's moral authority.

Join the president and shine your light of consciousness on the left's mental prison, and watch it dissolve under your gaze.

America stands at a great spiritual crossroads, where we must choose either to remain imprisoned by the left's dehumanizing materialism – a politics focused on the "right" to abortion, racial reparations, unlimited benefits, and transgender bathrooms – or to rise and realize our great potential as free and enlightened human beings inhabited by divinity.Articles: The End of the World...for Liberals

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:43 PM | Your Say (2)

How Trump Can Gut Obamacare Without Congress

Most don’t remember how “the Secretary” is sprinkled generously throughout the Affordable Care Act.

Dormant cancer cells waiting to be activated. For a good summary, read Philip Klein’s excellent piece from 2010 in The American Spectator. When the bill was signed into law, Kathleen Sebelius was “the Secretary” of Health and Human Services. Not so today. Now it’s Dr. Price. Within the bill there are 2,500 references to “the Secretary”. 700 times the Secretary “shall” do something, 200 times the Secretary “may” do something, and 139 occasions when the “Secretary determines” what should be done. - - American Thinker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (2)

Toto's REALLY not in Kansas any longer

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (1)

Unsung Heroes of Humanity

Why Coffee Makes You Poop
In the end (pun intended), given the extremely complex nature of the human digestive system and the multitude of compounds found in coffee, it will take a significant amount of additional research to nail down all the contributing factors in coffee making some people defecate. But as I finish my morning cup of Joe, I would like to thank all those brave individuals to date who have voluntarily had an anal probe inserted FOR SCIENCE!!! to give us an idea of some of the mechanisms involved here, as well as safely rule out others we previously hypothesized might be contributors.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 AM | Your Say (2)

“Our spacecraft, Cyclops I, will soar into deep abysmal space beyond the epicycles of the seventh heaven,”

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it proclaimed, before gesturing toward how much the space race was about race. “Our posterity, the Black scientists, will continue to explore the celestial infinity until we control the whole of outer space.” Nkoloso was also happy to demonstrate his D.I.Y. space technology and training. He rolled his cadets down a hill in a forty-gallon oil drum to simulate the weightless conditions of the moon. “I also make them swing from the end of a long rope,” he told a reporter. “When they reach the highest point, I cut the rope. This produces the feeling of freefall.” The mulolo (swinging) system, he hinted, was itself a potential means of space travel. “We have tied ropes to tall trees and then swung our astronauts slowly out into space.” Nkoloso had considered launching the shuttle with a catapult system that turned out to be “much too primitive,” and referred to “turbulent propulsion” as an area for future investigation. The Zambian "Afronaut" Who Wanted to Join the Space Race - The New Yorker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (4)

Much of the rhetoric advertising the event was the same nonsensical KultMarx jibber-jabber

that currently infects hundreds of millions of tiny brains across the West.
There was much solemn blather about the “spirit of love and liberation,” about “the economic injustices women and gender nonconforming people continue to face,” about the “violence” of the free market and alleged “economic attacks” on Muslims, about “gender justice,” and generally about a cruel, psychotic, relentless, and soul-crushingly violent world that doesn’t exist but that these wound-collecting psychopaths can’t seem to live without constantly imagining. Women’s Strike a Huge Bust - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:33 AM | Your Say (2)

It's probably nothing.

Found: An Increasing Number of Great White Sharks Off Cape Cod

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:08 AM | Your Say (3)

March 12, 2017

Mordechai had seen more than the nakedness of Haman, the crawling, insecure lackey, filled with hatred for the Persian ruler, flattering him and craving the ultimate power he could not have.

He had seen the nakedness of the empire and the age.

His eyes had seen past the horses and palaces, the ranks of scribes penning decrees, the harems, bureaucracies and armies. Mordechai knew that all this would pass away. He had seen through the illusion that every age brings with it the end of history, a new age whose achievements break with the past and usher in a boundless future. The shadow crosses the sundial, the walls come crashing down and the new era of history ends up buried under the rubble of time. Sultan Knish: The Endless Ages of Purim

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:02 PM | Your Say (4)

How 4Chan's Worst Trolls Pulled Off the Heist of the Century

The trolls using only the live stream of the flag, started, I shit you not, studying the flight patterns and contrails of the airplanes passing overhead.
They mapped out what they saw and took their findings to flight radars to try and pinpoint a general area. Using the knowledge gleaned from the flight patterns they found that the location was near Greeneville, Tennessee.

The obsessed basement dwellers turned to studying the star patterns and their movements and with that, plus a tweet that Labeouf sent out in a Tennessee diner, the trolls were able to narrow the area even further—to a small patch of land between a house and a river.

This is when their man on the ground came into play. The channers were able to enlist a local troll to drive around the area and repeatedly honk his horn. I would like you, my fair reader, to imagine a man driving around a small Tennessee town in, what I assume to be, a 1994 Toyota Tercel just blaring the horn repeatedly while rocking a, again I assume, soundtrack from a Metal Gear Solid game, all in an attempt to fuck with Shia Lebeouf—this is a thing that actually happened this week.

But then, the trolly magic happened, in the dead of night the horn was picked up on the live stream and the troll posted his location to 4Chan. - VICE

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:18 PM | Your Say (7)

Marooned Among the Polar Bears

Now, stranded and shivering, he allows a few minutes to beat himself up for his mistakes.
If only he had dived down into the freezing water once more and retrieved one of the GPS trackers or the distress beacon! If only he had managed to land on the ice floe in the first place! He could somehow have hailed a mechanic to fix the R22 and still captured the record! But none of this matters now. It is wasted energy to even think these thoughts. And so he gets to work. -- Popular Mechanics

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 AM | Your Say (0)

File under: "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:45 AM | Your Say (1)

Today

is the day all my clocks display the correct time again.
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 AM | Your Say (0)

Regimes of virtue tend to eat their children.

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Think of Salem. They tend to turn upon themselves, since everybody wants to be the holiest.
Think of the French Revolution. The ante is forever being upped. The PC commissariat reminds me of the NRA. Everyone is terrified of challenging the NRA (everyone in a position to stop it, at least), so it gets whatever it demands. But then, because it can, it thinks up new demands. Guns in playgrounds, guns in bars. So it is with political correctness. There is always something new, as my students understood, that you aren’t supposed to say. And worst of all, you often don’t find out about it until after you have said it. - - The American Scholar: On Political Correctness - William Deresiewicz

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (2)

The Rise of Un-Ideas

It must be sad to be denied the awesome works of the mind – Tocqueville and Melville and Augustine and St. Bede – because for one or another reason, their race or their opinions or their beliefs or their faith, they didn’t pass the filter test. It must be a dark world where nothing makes sense and everything is askew; it must be scary. - - | Joel D. Hirst

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:26 AM | Your Say (1)

"The American people and Members have a right to know the full impact of this legislation before any vote in Committee or by the whole House."

IRONY ALERT: Pelosi Says American People 'Have A Right To Know' What's In Trumpcare Before It Passes | Daily Wire

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:15 AM | Your Say (6)

RussiaGate: Six Months. No Evidence -- It's Time for the Media to Put Up or Shut Up

After six months of what we used to call McCarthyism
-- public trial by innuendo, smears, outright lies, and CNN's creepy Fake News fetish -- all the national media has found is EXACTLY ZERO. After a half-year of 24/7 delirium, all they have to show for their fever dream is two guys named Jack and Squat sitting in the Zilch Café eating a Nothingburger with a side-order of Shutout that was overcooked by a fella named Bupkis and served by a waitress named Zilch. | Daily Wire

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:12 AM | Your Say (0)

The twilight of Saudi oil dominance has arrived

a point underscored by the announcement of a giant onshore oil find in Alaska.
"Some 1.2 billion barrels of oil have been discovered in Alaska, marking the biggest onshore discovery in the U.S. in three decades. The massive find of conventional oil on state land could bring relief to budget pains in Alaska brought on by slumping production in the state and the crash in oil prices." But the impact of that change has not yetbeen assimilated in public perception. - - Twilight

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:59 AM | Your Say (2)

March 11, 2017

"All the News That's Shit"

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:44 PM | Your Say (5)

House Republicans Repeat an Obama Error

We are in the midst of the kind of crises that can do nations in.
It is pleasant to chirp, as Speaker Paul Ryan does, of “choice” and “competition” and an end to “paternalistic” thinking on health care. Is it responsive to the moment? Or does it sound like old lyrics from an old hymnal? - WSJ

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:43 PM | Your Say (1)

Unclear on the Concept

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:44 PM | Your Say (5)

No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence.

It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people.
We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped. Calvin Coolidge: Address at the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, Pa.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:27 AM | Your Say (2)

March 10, 2017

No, you aren’t a resistance, and you don’t get to have that word. For those who have fought and suffered for their liberties, it is far too sacred to let it – too – be defiled.

No, sorry, you aren’t a resistance, because USA is not a dictatorship.
Nobody is persecuting you; none of your rights are being violated; no illegal purges enacted; no tortures and disappearances. You didn’t like the results of an election – and want to pretend it is illegitimate, because you don’t want to do the hard work of rebuilding a constituency alienated, “Because you thought correcting people’s attitudes was more important than finding them jobs. Because you turned ‘white man’ from a description into an insult (…) Because you cried when someone mocked the Koran but laughed when they mocked the Bible. (…) Because you kept telling people, ‘You can’t think that, you can’t say that, you can’t do that’,” as Brendan O’Neill has said. Sorry, You’re Not a #Resistance | Joel D. Hirst's Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:37 PM | Your Say (3)

Lying is what they do because that’s all they have left on the left.

They have no foundational principles except power.

Their entire ideology is transactional – it’s not based on ideas but on payoffs to Democrat sub-sets. Here’s some dough for the baby crunching industry! We’ll hassle some Christian bakers for the SJWs! Let’s put a bunch of cis-het males of pallor who don’t even listen to NPR out of work in West Tennetucky, or wherever they grow coal, to delight our global warming cultist pals! You Can Tell What Leftists Are Doing By What They Accuse Conservatives Of Doing - Kurt Schlichter

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:18 PM | Your Say (0)

The Decline Of London

As the natives decay, so does the city it seems, and make no mistake the people are decaying.
It’s often hidden behind heavy makeup, but some don’t even try to hide it, as demonstrated by the delightful woman who joined protests against an edgy art gallery in Dalston last week, declaring “I don’t care what you believe, I believe no Nazis.” I’d say these creeps crawl up from the sewer, but as I alluded to before, the sewer in London is overground. I struggle to imagine what it might have been like before the rot set in, and the same goes for all of the major cities of the UK from Birmingham to Manchester. I can see why every metropolis needs a Lee Kuan Yew to cane the feet of gum-chewers and hang the dealers in the underpass, because the very nature of a city is to incubate within its urban sprawl the worst excesses of society. - Social Matter

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:20 AM | Your Say (1)

Colonel Mustard's Revenge: What Was Done to Undermine Trump

So, let's get something straight: no one with half a lick of sense thinks Obama himself went out,
like Barney in Mission Impossible, with a portable handset and wires on alligator clips, to listen in on phone conversations that Trump or Trump insiders were having. In fact, the phrase "wire tapping" is an archaism -- phones don't work that way any more. The use of "Obama" here is a pretty obvious -- and extremely common -- synecdoche where the president's name is used to refer to the executive branch, which includes both the FBI and the intelligence agencies. | Trending

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:55 AM | Your Say (2)

Is GOP Health Care Bill a Disaster? No

In particular, a full repeal of Obamacare must get through the Senate, which means it must get 60 votes. There are only 52 Republican senators.
Therefore, the first bill that has been unveiled is intended to be passed under the reconciliation process, which requires only a bare majority. Only Obamacare provisions that have a budgetary impact can be repealed in the reconciliation bill. - - | Power Line

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (8)

The Day Without Women Amongst the Liberal Elite

MICHAEL: Last week I read an article, maybe in Mother Jones? Anyway, it said that evolved intersectional feminists are using the term “womanists” now.

ALEXANDRA: I’m pretty sure no feminist nor womanist worth her salt has to rely on her husbands to remind her of the correct empowerment terminology. I’ve failed. I might as well go ahead and take your last name at this rate.

MICHAEL: You don’t have to get nasty.

ALEXANDRA: Yes, Michael. Yes, I do. I HAVE THE FUCKING T-SHIRT. Amongst the Liberal Elite: - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (0)

God gives us children to remember what is good and perfect and pure;

what we are fighting for, and how.
I’m reminded of the Michael Card song, “When we in our foolishness thought we were wise, He played the fool and He opened our eyes; when we in our weakness believed we were strong, He became helpless to show we were wrong.” To remind us that the games that we play with each other are the real foolishness – that worldly power is passing, so why fight for it? And that the strength that we vindictively inflict upon each other is in fact weakness. Perspective | Joel D. Hirst's Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 AM | Your Say (1)

Dig It: Statue of Pharaoh Ramses II is found in a Cairo slum

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Archaeologists from Egypt and Germany have found a massive 26ft (8 metre) statue submerged in ground water in a Cairo slum.
Researchers say it probably depicts revered Pharaoh Ramses II, who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago. The discovery, hailed by the Antiquities Ministry as one of the most important ever, was made near the ruins of Ramses II's temple in the ancient city of Heliopolis, located in the eastern part of modern-day Cairo. | Daily Mail Online

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:50 AM | Your Say (1)

March 9, 2017

All illegals must be given amnesty — citizenship would be most ideal

— and as many immigrants from any country on Earth must be permitted to come to America.
That is the Leftist frame. All that is open for discussion is how we can give them more money, more benefits, and how we can best elevate their lives. The lives of the existing citizenry are irrelevant. Nothing is allowed to be discussed, except how America can best give up its wealth to everyone else. Stones are Hard, Water is Wet. Truisms are True. | Declination

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:14 PM | Your Say (2)

This "resistance" is getting all the respect it deserves: roughly the same as trial lawyers and undertakers

I'd like to suggest a resistance is already underway in America, and has been for quite some time now.
The resistance is not to "anyone who isn't sufficiently leftist" as guys like Moore say. Its people sick of the system and demanding things be different. For the most part, Americans want to be left alone, and they want their representative to listen to what they say. Not what lobbyists say, not what fat cats say, not what big money says, not what the news media and the entertainment community says, but what they want. There are three boxes of resistance to tyranny and abuse of power. The ballot box, the jury box, and the ammo box. Keep refusing to listen and people move on to the next box. Word Around the Net: THE REAL RESISTANCE

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:01 AM | Your Say (0)

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:37 AM | Your Say (2)

Must Love Cats

Divorced Freelancer Seeks Man with Corporate Health Insurance -
My love for your corporate healthcare plan pre-exists our relationship. Though your Health Savings Account is a plus, it’s simply no substitute for comprehensive healthcare coverage, especially considering my odds of developing secondary cancers from the $250,000 in lymphoma treatments that had saved my life back when my ex’s health insurance covered me. Neither is a Facebook link to a Go Fund Me page or selling my house and living in my car or on a cot in my son’s dorm.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 AM | Your Say (4)

Forging an amalgam of biblical verse,

François Villon, Arthur Rimbaud, T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Woody Guthrie, Chuck Berry, and others,

Dylan pushed Tin Pan Alley off the cliff while creating one unlikely masterpiece after another. “Masters of War,” “Gates of Eden,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Visions of Johanna,” “Desolation Row,” “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” and “Idiot Wind” are just a few examples of an evolving body of work that has challenged every other songwriter to think more deeply about a wider range of subjects that you could write about, what sort of language you could use to embody those subjects, and just how long your songs could take their time doing so. And none of this happened by accident. The Millions : Stuck Inside of Stockholm with the Nobel Blues Again - The Millions

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:28 AM | Your Say (1)

"Second-Hand" Smoke: You knew it was a lie at the time but it is now an even bigger lie.

Secondhand smoke isn’t as bad as we thought. The relevant question, however, should not be merely whether there are any dangers from secondhand smoke but also how big they are.

If the alarmist claims made by anti-smoking groups were true, we’d be justified in avoiding secondhand smoke as if it were the plague. But we know now that those claims were exaggerated, so it’s worth asking whether contemporary bans have gone too far.... Now that’s not nothing, but other recent research may be even more surprising. “No clear link between passive smoking and lung cancer,” read a 2013 headline in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, hardly a pro-tobacco publication. That was a report on a cohort study tracking 76,000 women that failed to detect a link between the disease and secondhand smoke. The finding comports with existing literature suggesting that the effect is borderline and concentrated on long-term, high levels of exposure.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (8)

Dear Leader, who is a perfect incarnation of the appearance that a leader should have

List of Kim Jong-il's titles 혁명적 동지애의 최고화신 (革命的 同志愛의 最高化身) Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradeship

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:06 AM | Your Say (1)

Of Course They Did

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Lawyer's pants erupt in flames during Miami arson trial
A Miami defense lawyer’s pants burst into flames Wednesday afternoon as he began his closing arguments in front of a jury — in an arson case. Stephen Gutierrez, who was arguing that his client’s car spontaneously combusted and was not intentionally set on fire, had been fiddling in his pocket as he was about to address jurors when smoke began billowing out his right pocket, witnesses told the Miami Herald.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:48 AM | Your Say (2)

Best Shot With a 1911. Ever.

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The Zero pilot circled back to strafe the parachuting crewmen,
killing two and lightly wounding Baggett, who played dead in his harness, hoping the Japanese would leave him alone. Though playing dead, Baggett still drew his .45 and hid it alongside his leg…just in case. A Zero approached within a few feet of Baggett at near stall speeds. The pilot opened the canopy for a better look at his victim. Baggett raised his pistol and fired four shots into the cockpit. The Zero spun out of sight.Never Yet Melted サ

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:34 AM | Your Say (4)

Key result: 5% of black people (compared to 4% of white people) say they “often” face discrimination; 29.8% of black people (compared to 30.3% of white people) say they “never” face discrimination.

OSF | The Experience of Discrimination in Contemporary America: Results from a Nationally Representative Sample of Adults

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:31 AM | Your Say (1)

March 8, 2017

The inconvenient truth about the automated public restroom is that nothing works worth a crap.

Whatever it is that has been automated here bears no resemblance to even the most rudimentary of human skills.

The automated toilet flushes prematurely, often repeatedly, while we are still seated upon it, and then, once we’ve reassumed an erect posture and want nothing more than to exit the stall, it refuses to flush at all. The automated soap dispenser either doesn’t work or spits soap on our trousers. The automated faucet either doesn’t work or sprays out such a gusher that the water bounces off the sink and soaks our shirt. The automated towel dispenser hands us a strip of ugly brown paper that would be too small to dry the hands of a hamster.Whose self does the self-flushing toilet flush? | ROUGH TYPE

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:14 PM | Your Say (8)

Think about what these four seemingly unrelated items tell you.

First, the hard Left wants to silence you completely, second, the hard Left is crazy, as in completely mental.

Third, there is no position too insane, no stance too loony, to stop them. And lastly, America is rapidly fracturing along its demographic cracks, as all factions within it grow increasingly desperate, seeing this as a battle not of ideological preference, but of survival. This is a recipe for Civil War, folks. Tread lightly. Monday Morning Miscellany | Declination

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:13 PM | Your Say (5)

"Well, let me tell you, bread is not natural."

Bread is what I call a technique-driven food.
So it's become popular to use the word "natural" sort of as a synonym for "good," like, "Oh yes, it's natural." Well, let me tell you, bread is not natural. Bread looks nothing like grain — just compare the two — in the same way that cheese is really not just old milk, and wine is not just spoiled grapes. In all three cases, humans over a period of at least 10,000 years, maybe 100,000 years, carefully figured out all these techniques to utterly transform the grain into this amazing thing we love to eat. Can Nathan Myhrvold Change How the World Eats Bread? - Eater

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:56 AM | Your Say (7)

This "resistance" is getting all the respect it deserves: roughly the same as trial lawyers and undertakers

The federal government has been pushing one gigantic spending bill after another obnoxious law for decades, even as the public continues to complain and tell them to stop.
Every regulation that limits freedom, every penny-ante law banning incandescent lightbulbs and restricting flow on your shower, every stupid little infringement on our liberty is met with increasing grumpiness and annoyance by the public.Like a fog pouring in under the door, the government is spreading through all our lives, covering more and more and while people aren't reaching for their rifles, they are pretty well annoyed.And its not a right vs left thing. Word Around the Net: THE REAL RESISTANCE

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (2)

The Extraordinary Movie Posters of Bill Gold

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Mr. Gold’s first assignment in 1942 after being hired by the Warner Brothers art department in New York was “Casablanca.”
"I thought all the characters in this film were very important, so I wanted them in the poster,” he said. “I put them in the background and put Ingrid Bergman in front of them on the left side of Bogart, but I wanted her to be looking on behind him. I didn’t want to tip off that there was a love affair.” The studio had but one request: Wanting to sell Bogart as a star, it asked if the poster could be more exciting. “So I went back and put a gun in his hand,” he said. It worked. - - flashbak |

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (1)

Brazilian Scientists Bake Bread Out of Cockroach Flour

The VICE interview doesn’t reveal how the two scientists turn the cockroaches in to flour, I think it’s fair to assume that the insects are dried and then finely ground into a fine flour-like powder. This then mixed with regular mixed flour to create baked goods like bread with a considerable protein content. Lucas and Menegon conducted a study and found that a bread containing just 10% cockroach flour presented a protein increase of 49.16 percent, when compared to bread made only with wheat flour. | Oddity Central - Collecting Oddities

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:06 AM | Your Say (4)

Have you ever had the experience where in a sudden blast you lost your shoes, and didn't know how it happened?

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I know this day is coming. Soon.
They will force you through the full body scanner same as before. Then you will step into the next anteroom, where powerful blasts of air will instantly disrobe you: pants, shirts, shoes, undies. For children and the infirm, unyielding robots of lovingkindness will assist. Shwoop! A container will appear in an alcove, with a right-sized featureless grey smock. Put it on, or the waiting robots will do it to you. Your clothes and carryons will be whisked away to be packed in storage. You will find your assigned personal pod where, like in The Fifth Element, you will slip gently into unconsciousness. When you wake up, you will be at your destination, your clothes upon you, your bags in front of you. And away you go, you Eloi stud muffin you. Posted by: John A. Fleming to Core Samples @ AMERICAN DIGEST

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:00 AM | Your Say (1)

"You’ll say ‘Please, Mr. President, we beg you sir, we don’t want to win anymore.

It’s too much. It’s not fair to everybody else.’ And I’m going to say ‘I’m sorry, but we’re going to keep winning, winning, winning, We’re going to make America great again.”

Trump's first full month in office brings massive employment boom as U.S. companies added whopping 298,000 new jobs in February. New job figures from ADP beat economists' estimates by more than 100,000

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:19 AM | Your Say (5)

March 7, 2017

Ear Witness

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Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case (updated)
Amazon declined to give police any of the information that the Echo logged on its servers, but it did hand over Bates' account details and purchases. Police say they were able to pull data off of the speaker, but it's unclear what info they were able to access. Due to the so-called always on nature of the connected device, the authorities are after any audio the speaker may have picked up that night. Sure, the Echo is activated by certain words, but it's not uncommon for the IoT gadget to be alerted to listen by accident.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:30 PM | Your Say (7)

I’m a leftist now. ....

I joined the DSA, I listen to Chapo Trap House, I’ve got one of those sideways berets; the whole Loot Crate.
I should add that I don’t understand any of it. I spent the entire election process posting anti-Trump Disney Princess memes in reaction to his fascist treatment of Mexicans while completely ignoring the fact that Walt Disney was a Nazi-sympathizing union buster whose company recently tried to patent the phrase “Day of the Dead” in order to sell toys. I switched from Uber to Lyft even though they’re basically the same company. I’m calling my senator and leaving garbled voicemails through my Black Bloc mask. I’m definitely not making things worse by making a cheap fad out of an actual resistance. Anyways none of that matters because I’m here, and I’m ready to fight against the president who won the election because I didn’t mail an absentee ballot back to Wisconsin because Maynard James Keenan told me that Bill Hicks told him that George Carlin told him that not voting is a form of protest. I’m here, and I have a Hulu password if anyone in the resistance needs to use it. A Millennial Reviews: ‘Seinfeld,’ a Send-Up of the Clintonian Liberal Elite | | Observer

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:56 PM | Your Say (5)

(1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order

under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that—

(A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at—

(i) the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers, as defined in section 1801(a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or
(ii) the acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801(a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title;

(B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party; [The weasel loophole phrase here is "no substantial likelihood"] 50 U.S. Code § 1802 - Electronic surveillance authorization without court order

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:39 PM | Your Say (1)

They didn’t go for the Communists first, and then the socialists and the trade unionists, then the Jews, and then him.

No, first they went for the guns or, rather, liberal social democratic Weimar went for the guns.
That made things easier for the Nazis, who then went after free speech, when it couldn’t be defended. Then they could go after the Jews and the rest with impunity. In closing, let us consider Goethe’s words: “Be the anvil or the hammer.” Friends, if and when it comes to it, be the hammer. If It's OK to Punch a Nazi, Can It Be Wrong to Hospitalize a Stalinist?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:20 PM | Your Say (4)

A Brief History Of The Iconic Bungalows Of L.A.:

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"The climate was perfect for a rambling 'natural' house with porches and patios...
but there were sociological reasons for the American Bungalow’s birth in California. Los Angeles and upscale Pasadena, an 1890s resort town, were growing fast. By 1930, Los Angeles would have more single-family dwellings that any comparable city, with 94% of its families living in single-family homes! An essential part of this mass suburbanization was 'an innovative, small, single-family, simple but artistic dwelling; inexpensive, easily built, yet at the same time attractive to the new middle-class buyer.' Enter the California Bungalow, a term that was in use by 1905 if not before." - - LAist

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:58 PM | Your Say (1)

Just remembered to tell you there's a new Woodpile.

But you already knew that, right? Right Woodpile Report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:34 PM | Your Say (2)

Why I Decided To Become A Big Rig Truck Driver

With $20,000 I will have more than enough money to travel to four continents this year.
This is above and beyond visiting virtually every major American city in my big rig, enjoying everything from the Bunny Ranch to random (and free!) hookups with strippers that I use PUA techniques on. (Oh, and before the haters pile on, I dated daughters of executives, daughters of well-connected families and the like when I was a mainstream media guy back in the day. I was so horrified of the “good girls” and the slavery they expected of me by virtue of their association with me I defected and decided to live a life as a free man until the cultural situation changes.)

How does a man live an awesome life on that amount? First off, any money you make in the states can be multiplied by taking it abroad. Second, once a man purges his mind of the materialism and consumerism he has been indoctrinated with from childhood and instead chooses to live a life of minimalism, he will discover the fact his money buys freedom. - - - Return of Kings

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:24 PM | Your Say (1)

No Proton Decay Means Grand Unification Must Wait

Without proton decay, the evidence that the forces that govern elementary particles today are actually splinters of a single “grand unified” force is purely circumstantial:
The three forces seem to converge to the same strengths when extrapolated to high energies, and their mathematical structures suggest inclusion in a larger whole, much as the shape of Earth’s continents hint at the ancient supercontinent Pangea. “You have these fragments and they fit together so perfectly,” Barr said. “Most people think it can’t be an accident.” | Quanta Magazine<
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:53 AM | Your Say (1)

Brunettes. Sigh.

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:03 AM | Your Say (7)

“The silent reader is an enigma …

This is why social media fetishizes books as objects.
It is easier to express (and inhabit) a reading aesthetic than it is to describe reading … Reading is multifarious—if we were to develop a list of features common to every literary experience it would be very short—yet people want to make rules about books. We are driven to evaluate them, and through them ourselves … I have seen and experienced the discomfort associated with failing to understand or finish a text, and the impulse to measure and rank and explain. Teaching literature often means diagnosing and circumnavigating these insecurities … That we turn to books in times of great emotional need, during political crises, and to find a way through mourning speaks to their power. But, as with friendships, they do not need to be life changing to be valuable.” Against literary evangelicals | Overland literary journal

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:59 AM | Your Say (1)

Another profound revelation is that the CIA can engage in "false flag" cyberattacks which portray Russia as the assailant.

Discussing the CIA's Remote Devices Branch's UMBRAGE group, Wikileaks' source notes that it
"collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques 'stolen' from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation. "With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the "fingerprints" of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from. UMBRAGE components cover keyloggers, password collection, webcam capture, data destruction, persistence, privilege escalation, stealth, anti-virus (PSP) avoidance and survey techniques."

Wikileaks Unveils 'Vault 7': "The Largest Ever Publication Of Confidential CIA Documents"; Another Snowden Emerges | Zero Hedge

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:48 AM | Your Say (3)

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When English Arts and Crafts Met Japanese Woodblock Prints

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 AM | Your Say (1)

Why Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary is Trolling Trump

Already, the dictionary’s string of frequent, focused stings feel less like jokes and more like subtle, systematic attacks.
In other words, it’s easy to read between the dictionary’s lines: they don’t like Trump and they’re not afraid to show it. If Merriam-Webster’s editors aren’t careful, though, they will undermine the very thing that makes their dictionary useful. An accusation of bias is (or should be) a death sentence for a dictionary. All the clever jokes in the world won’t save Merriam-Webster from a widespread perception of political partisanship—and promptly cost them half of their readers. - - - Acculturated

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (2)

Do You Have a Moment to Talk About Our Lord and Savior, Cold Brew Coffee?

First, you begin with good organic water.
I normally stop by Whole Foods or any old neighborhood market that sources all of its produce from a hundred-mile radius. I tend to get the best results from that new bottled water that they package from the drippings of lava rocks in Hawaii. Then I grind my Nicaraguan beans in a mortar and pestle. That will really preserve the coarseness without breaking into the bitter flavor pocket. (We’ll discuss bean anatomy later.) From there you just put the grounds in the water and let it sit overnight. It will be difficult, make no mistake about it. Monologue - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (4)

No in America

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 AM | Your Say (1)

“Because I don’t feel comfortable being out as a religious person here.”

My student hadn’t even been aware that her friend was religious. When she asked her why she had concealed this essential fact about herself, her friend replied, “Because I don’t feel comfortable being out as a religious person here.”
I also heard that the director of the writing center, a specialist in disability studies, was informing people that they couldn’t use expressions like “that’s a crazy idea” because they stigmatize the mentally ill. I heard a young woman tell me that she had been criticized by a fellow student for wearing moccasins—an act, she was informed, of cultural appropriation. I heard an adjunct instructor describe how a routine pedagogical conflict over something he had said in class had turned, when the student in question claimed to have felt “triggered,” into, in his words, a bureaucratic “dumpster fire.” He was careful now, he added, to avoid saying anything, or teaching anything, that might conceivably lead to trouble. The American Scholar: On Political Correctness - William Deresiewicz

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:00 AM | Your Say (3)

March 6, 2017

5 truly bizarre lifeforms recently spotted in the deep Pacific

Clearly our favorite of the bunch, this bizarre armored sea robin not only looks like it's walking on two tiny stick-figure legs, but it's also got horn-like projections on each side of its snout, branched barbels (or whiskers) in front of the mouth, and large, purple butterfly wings for fins. "In sea robins, including the armored sea robin, the first few rays [of the fins] are free from the membranes of the rest of the fin and are very thick," the NOAA explains. "The fish uses these thickened, stiff fin rays to 'walk' along the bottom." = - ScienceAlert

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:48 PM | Your Say (0)

Trump's gone right past Schumer, ignored the surrogates and gone straight for the former president himself.

This escalation represents a real threat to Obama.
Suddenly everything is out of control. Nobody would have minded much if Trump had gone after one of Obama's henchmen -- which is probably what was expected -- but none can foresee how an exchange of blades between principals will end. It is safe to say however that unless the combatants disengage someone will get hurt. It will be a terrible moment for American political civility when a king lies on the political floor. The whole point of a peaceful transition of power is to prevent a clash between kings. Yet the very tragedy the electoral process is intended to prevent is happening before our eyes. King vs King

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:51 PM | Your Say (4)

Ace: How to Survive In the Age of Rage

Best thing you'll read today. The world feels like a Twilight Zone episode to them -- the world they went to sleep in on November 8, 2016 was not the same world they woke up to the next day of November 9, 2016.
Parts of it looked the same, but nothing looked quite the same. The feeling they have is the horrific, creepy feeling of the uncanny -- a feeling that things look normal and familiar from most angles, but you can't shake the sense that there's something off or alien about them. A classic trope of the uncanny is the automaton or doll which appears human, or, even worse, the human who appears to be a doll. (Content warning on that -- very creepy.)....
Remember how shellshocked and benumbed liberals were after 9/11? Oh we all were, don't get me wrong. But they were shellshocked and benumbed because it wasn't just 3000 Americans that were slaughtered that day, it was all their sacred religious pieties and all their smug certainties about how the world really worked.

Americans experienced the shock of sudden almost-inconceivable horror on 9/11, but progressives experienced something even worse: The feeling that they'd been wrong their whole lives. -- Read it all at How to Survive In the Age of Rage

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:26 PM | Your Say (1)

11 Excuses to Eat More Bacon

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FRENCH TOAST BLT WITH ROASTED GARLIC VINAIGRETTE

Not that you needed them. | Epicurious.com HT: Maggie's Farm

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:46 PM | Your Say (1)

Polar Bears Are A Pest - End Their 'Threatened' Status

When Al Gore showed them drowning in his Inconvenient Truth, it was bullshit.
When Greenpeace produced this moving propaganda film about a homeless polar bear wandering forlornly round London to a Radiohead soundtrack, it was bullshit. When Plane Stupid released this Trustafarian bedwetters’ video in which polar bears dropped dead from the sky due to man’s selfishness and greed (TM), it was bullshit. The polar bears are doing just fine. Better than fine. - - DELINGPOLE:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:34 AM | Your Say (1)

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

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Yes, the horrible rumors are true. We once dressed like this. Why? I have no idea. Nobody does.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (6)

Faux-Negro in Whiteface Changes.....Name

You're just going to love Rachel Dolezal's new name :Rachel Dolezal, the former head of Spokane, Washington’s NAACP chapter who claimed to be black before her parents ‘outed’ her as white, officially changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo in a Washington court in October, legal documents obtained by DailyMail.com show.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (4)

This Soldier Stayed With His Dying Dog Until His Last Breath

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“He had a smile on his face when he was getting put to sleep,” Smith said.
“I was holding Bodza as he passed.” Smith’s nine co-workers were there to support him. They let the man break down and sob. “He was selfless — more than any human I’ve ever known… I miss him every day.” - - | Bored Panda

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 AM | Your Say (2)

The proof of this is the fact that the GOP has no plans ready for the 2017 legislative session.

Both parties wanted to see Clinton win. The Republicans, at least the leadership, liked the setup under Obama.
They got to pose as rock-ribbed conservatives fighting Obama, without ever having to do anything. Democrats liked that Obama was just issuing executive orders and bypassing the parliamentary process. The Washington ecosystem was at equilibrium as long as everyone on both sides played their part.

The proof of this is the fact that the GOP has no plans ready for the 2017 legislative session. They have been talking for years about ObamaCare and now we know they never planned to do anything. The same is true of taxes, which is the one thing Republicans like doing. They have no plans for anything, not even something symbolic. They not only have no plans, they are still staggering around in shock, not sure what they should be doing. Suddenly nothing makes sense to the people inside the bubble and they are scared. The Destroyer of Worlds | The Z Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (4)

One famous early Irish text records how a woman known as Inghen Ruaidh—or Red Girl,

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after the color of her hair—led a fleet of Viking ships to Ireland in the 10th century.
Bioarchaeologist Anna Kjellström of Stockholm University recently reanalyzed the skeletal remains of a Viking fighter found in the old trading center of Birka, in Sweden. Mourners had furnished the grave with an arsenal of deadly weapons, and for decades archaeologists assumed that the elite fighter was male. But while studying the warrior’s pelvic bones and mandible, Kjellström discovered that the man was in fact a woman. What You Don't Know About the Vikings

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:47 AM | Your Say (4)

Lenin's Hanging Order

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"Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because 'the last decisive battle' with the kulaks is now under way everywhere. An example must be demonstrated.

1. Hang (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers.

2. Publish their names.

3. Seize all their grain from them.

4. Designate hostages in accordance with yesterday's telegram.

Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometres around the people might see, tremble, know, shout: "they are strangling, and will strangle to death, the bloodsucking kulaks".

Telegraph receipt and implementation.

Yours, Lenin.

Find some truly hard people."

Thus did V.I. Lenin command leftist mobs in 1918 to be whipped up by his Bolshevik organizers. - - Lynch Mobs of the Left

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:23 AM | Your Say (3)

March 5, 2017

Extreme Birding: Can the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Be Found in Cuba?

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Ted Parker, another famed birder, did die, along with premier neotropical botanist Alwyn Gentry and leading Ecuadoran conservationist Eduardo Aspiazu Estrada, in a plane crash doing a treetop survey; so did Phoebe Snetsinger, then the most prolific birder in history, when her van rolled in Madagascar. Nathaniel Gerhart died in 2007 in a car accident in Indonesia—three years after he discovered previously unknown habitat of the Selva Cacique—and so did Siarhei Abramchuk in 2010, from an encephalitis-bearing tick bite in Belarus. Subramanian Bhupathy, head of conservation biology at the Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History in India, died in 2014 after slipping down a hill and landing with a bamboo spike in his eye. - - | Audubon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:11 PM | Your Say (4)

Hijacking a milk truck was next.

Drug suspects raid Pepperidge Farm delivery truck for cookies, police say - ABC15 Arizona

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (0)

How a Generation Lost Its Common Culture

My students are know-nothings.
They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture. - - | Minding The Campus

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:32 AM | Your Say (6)

March 4, 2017

Too much of nothing

Do you ever get the feeling there is an elaborate game underway?
That the elite media are working overtime on behalf of their political teammates? That to do so they have created something out of nothing? That they themselves have succumbed to the hysteria they seek to foment among us? | Power Line

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:06 PM | Your Say (8)

Trump’s Transportation Secretary halts funding for California’s bullet train

In a handwritten note on the one-page letter that Brown sent this week, he wrote, “Can we discuss this on the phone?” Brown’s office declined to say why he asked for the phone call, as opposed to having his staff set up such a call with Chao -- Legal Insurrection

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 AM | Your Say (1)

'Adulting 101' teaches basic skills to Millennials

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"On the first class of Adulting 101, we covered basic cooking skills that you can do in your dorm," Assistant Director of Library Services Teresa Lucas told KCBY-TV. "We also talked ways to stretch your dollar in the grocery store and how you can get the most bang for your buck."Watch: - UPI.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (6)

The Japanese: Nuked too much or not enough?

"I only read it for the articles:" Lonely Japanese man who amassed a SIX-TON pile of dirty magazines died when it collapsed on top of him... and his body wasn't found for six months.
A 50-year-old former carmaker identified only by the name Joji, had died buried underneath under a pile of the pornographic magazines.It was unclear if he had suffered a heart attack and fallen into the stacks of magazines which had then fallen on top of him, or whether he had been crushed by the mass of paper. There were also clippings from erotic magazines where it appeared the man had cut out his favourite articles, and thrown away the rest of the magazine.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (3)

Gods and monsters: the Bible gets a comic book makeover

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There may be demons, plagues and the all horrors of the apocalypse, but there’s no room for any spandex superheroes in a graphic novel that its publishers are claiming is the longest ever produced.
The only superpowers that feature in the 10,000 panels of the Kingstone Bible are wielded in the good fight, as the greatest story ever told gets a 12-volume comic-book adaptation. Christian publisher Kingstone has been working on the project for seven years, using more than 45 illustrators to pull together what it is calling “the most complete graphic-novel adaptation of the Bible ever published”, at over 2,000 pages, in either 12 paperback volumes or three larger hardcover volumes. - - The Guardian

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:18 AM | Your Say (8)

In Living Memory

I was eight on Dec. 7th, 1941. We clustered around the RCA radio in our house and listened to the news. My two brothers (ages 12 and 5) and I didn't exactly know what it all meant. But we knew it was serious and our lives were going to change. In our small village of 700 people all able bodied men under 30 left to join up. Our father left to help build the Sand Point Naval Station in Idaho and later to build the Kaiser steel mill in Salt lake City. That lead eventually to our parents' divorce.

We lived in a small mountain town where air crews in training at Lowry Air Force base would come for R&R. Mostly they road horse back and drank (actually quite a lot) at the local bar. The last ones we saw were headed for Saipan and Tinian to fly B-29s over Japan.

We collected scrap paper, cardboard, tin foil, cans, rubber bands, bacon grease, and every bit of scrap metal we could find laying around anywhere. Every week or two a truck would haul our collection efforts away to Denver, which at that time was a six hour drive away.

Our only news was on the radio and at the weekend movie where they ran a movietone news on the war effort. Gasoline, tires, meat, butter, and many other things were rationed. Few complained. Most everybody pitched in. My brothers and I knew that if the war lasted long enough, we would be leaving for the military. There was never any question about it in our minds, It was what you did.

I remember VJ Day. We all cheered. People danced in the streets. Cars honked their horns all day long. There was a tremendous sense of jubilation.

It was a different sort of childhood than one has today, but I treasure the lessons I learned and miss the spirit of cooperation and pulling together that is sadly lacking in our world today.

Posted by Jimmy J/ at Comment on Global War by Lee Sandlin

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:45 AM | Your Say (2)

March 3, 2017

Shoutout to Broad Ripple and Scatcat

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For some reason, my mail thanking you for all your donations always bounces back as "undeliverable." Know that I thank you deeply for your support of American Digest. These days it means a lot. -- Gerard

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (2)

Life's Harsh Lessons

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Wet Cement Perfectly Tells the Tale of a Faceplant | Atlas Obscura

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:46 AM | Your Say (3)

"Advertising signs that con....

... you into thinking you're the one; / that can do what's never been done; / that can win what's never been won..."
George Carlin sums up the language:

“Quality, value, style, service, selection, convenience, economy, savings, performance, experience, hospitality. Low rates, friendly service, name brands, easy terms, affordable prices, money-back guarantee. No cash? No problem! No risk, no obligation, no red tape, no down payment, no entry fee, no hidden charges, no purchase necessary. Limited time only, act now, order today, send no money. Batteries not included, mileage may vary, all sales are final. Don’t forget to pick up your free gift: a classic deluxe custom designer luxury prestige high-quality premium select gourmet pocket pencil sharpener. Yours for the asking, no purchase necessary. It’s our way of saying thank you”. - - Orwell speak | BESTqUEST

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (2)

The Japanese: Nuked too much or not enough?

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Soon, You Can Spread Coffee On Your Toast In Japan Mark your calendars. March 1, 2017 will be one to remember because on that day, people in Japan will be able to put coffee on their toast. What a time to be alive.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:43 AM | Your Say (2)

March 2, 2017

The Democrats have found their 2016 Presidential Candidate!

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Springtime for Democrats! Man spends $50,000 on over 100 procedures to transform into a 'genderless' ALIEN (and he plans to have his genitals, nipples and bellybutton removed next)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:39 PM | Your Say (18)

New York City: Hell with Good Restaurants

1 scoop or 2? Raw cookie dough is latest New York City food fad | Lifestyle from CTV News People have been standing in line for up to three hours at a month-old New York City shop that sells scoops of raw dough in a cup or a cone like ice cream.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:36 PM | Your Say (5)

"Never a rose without a thorn."

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Still, even as we celebrate the scale and speed of this change, the rates of depression, loneliness and substance abuse in the gay community remain stuck in the same place they’ve been for decades.
Gay people are now, depending on the study, between 2 and 10 times more likely than straight people to commit suicide. We’re twice as likely to have a major depressive episode. And just like the last epidemic we lived through, the trauma appears to be concentrated among men. In a survey of gay men who recently arrived in New York City, three-quarters suffered from anxiety or depression, abused drugs or alcohol or were having risky sex—or some combination of the three. Despite all the talk of our “chosen families,” gay men have fewer close friends than straight people or gay women. The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness - The Huffington Post

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:23 PM | Your Say (7)

Polaroid’s SX-70: The Art and Science of the Nearly Impossible

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One sentence:
We could not have known and have only just learned–perhaps mostly from children from two to five–that a new kind of relationship between people in groups is brought into being by SX-70 when the members of a group are photographing and being photographed and sharing the photographs: it turns out that buried within all of us–God knows beneath how many pregenital and Freudian and Calvinistic strata–there is latent interest in each other; there is tenderness, curiosity, excitement, affection, companionability and humor; it turns out that in this cold world where man grows distant from man, and even lovers can reach each other only briefly, that we have a yen for and a primordial competence for a quiet good-humored delight in each other: we have a prehistoric tribal competence for a non-physical, non-emotional, non-sexual satisfaction in being partners in the lonely exploration of a once empty planet. -- Technologizer

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:52 PM | Your Say (2)

Napflix

Get some sleep: Lava Lamp Yellow 4 Hours Of Relaxing Decompress Enjoy See Bonus 16x Speed At 4hrs 6 Min Napflix | Siesta Video Platform.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (2)

Larger than the Slug? That explains it!

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There's a massive, glowing blob in the Universe, and a mystery source is lighting it up:
"It's extremely bright, and it's probably larger than the Slug Nebula, but there's nothing else visible except the faint smudge of a galaxy," says one of team, J. Xavier Prochaska, from the University of California, Santa Cruz."So it's a terrifically energetic phenomenon without an obvious power source."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:33 AM | Your Say (3)

'Da Kine,' Hawaii's Fantastically Flexible All-Purpose Noun

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This isn’t to say that da kine is always negative, nor that, really, it has to have “da” in front of it.
You could describe someone as “a smart kine people,” or tell your kid to “make sure you da kine before we go” (referring to doing a chore), or explain where someone went by saying “he wen da kine dem” (referring to going with somebody’s family, or friends, or whatever makes the most sense in context). Sometimes you can get clues: the word “stay,” in Hawaiian Pidgin, indicates an ongoing action. If you say “I stay eat lunch,” that means, basically, “I am eating lunch,” with no need for the -ing ending that English uses. If you talk about a woman, and you say she’s “stay da kine,” that often means, says Sakoda, that the woman is pregnant. - -| Atlas Obscura

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:09 AM | Your Say (3)

The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (3)

Stuart Bridge, Stuart, Florida

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M.E.H.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 AM | Your Say (0)

Dopamine Puppets

Humans need a minimum level of pleasure in life, and we will do almost anything to get it.
If we don’t have socially-acceptable sources of pleasure, we can easily turn to crime, risky behavior, drugs, or anything else that can give us a buzz. We might even go so far as to hallucinate that Hitler became President of the United States just so we can be outraged about it. This filter on life suggests that the best way to bring the country together is to provide alternative sources of dopamine. Honest debate never changes anything. Facts never change anything. Reason has left the building. If we want unity, it will require new sources of dopamine to replace the outrage-induced kind. - - | Scott Adams' Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 AM | Your Say (2)

March 1, 2017

Advice for Submitting to Literary Magazines in the Coming Totalitarian Dystopia

Is it imaginatively transporting (I mean, will it make me forget that we elected a fucking fascist sociopath for even like ten seconds)?
Is it really entertaining? (For this question, consider using the litmus test WOULD READING IT ALOUD DISTRACT THE FOOT SOLDIERS COMING TO ARREST ME LONG ENOUGH TO COME UP WITH AN ESCAPE PLAN?) Remember that every editor is reading your submission thinking it might be the last one they ever get to read; they don’t want to be pulled kicking and screaming into a van thinking, “Not another quiet domestic story where nothing happens.” - - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 AM | Your Say (3)

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:06 AM | Your Say (2)

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:06 AM | Your Say (3)

Steve Bannon says KKK may have to delay the race war another 20 years: "It's not the right time"

"Food has lost its taste. The colors aren’t vibrant anymore. (Not that I like too much color in this country anyway!)
I no longer hope for a galactic empire or for a world where women stay in the goddamn kitchen where they belong,” begins Bannon’s book, heralded by Breitbart but no legitimate source of news as “transcendent, powerful in its solidarity.” The book raised eyebrows from critics on the left, where intellectuals are astounded that someone so quick to label his opposition as “snowflakes” is unable to cope with life post-election. — President Hillary Rodham Clinton

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:49 AM | Your Say (3)

We are all products of our environments, our past – aren’t we?

We hear a lot about glass ceilings in the United States – outside forces that rob us of our birthrights.
Mostly by the whiners; as if the natural state isn’t poverty, but instead wealth and leisure. As if there isn’t an immediate ceiling over the top of every child who is born. As if the ceilings in Africa aren’t so low as to force even the strongest, smartest into a perpetual stoop. Will Our Passing be a Whisper? | Joel D. Hirst's Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (2)

Trump did a High Ground Maneuver by referring to many of the criticisms of his administration as “trivial.”

Now the people who keep making such criticisms are defining themselves to be in the unimportant part of the conversation.
That is super-strong persuasion that I think most people missed. It’s a trap. Wait for more “trivial” criticisms, with the President’s supporters calling them out as they happen. It will make the critics look small and unimportant.President Trump’s Speech Last Night | Scott Adams' Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:07 AM | Your Say (0)