ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. AS THE CHOSEN ONES KNOW, ZARDOZ IS ALL ABOUT TWO THINGS – CLEANSING BRUTALS AND HIS KITTY, MR. WHISKERS. ZARDOZ GOT A TUNE UP, DOWN AT THE GARAGE – AND IS FASTER THAN EVER! WHO KNEW THE BRUTALS DOWN AT SHELBY’S FIX N’ FUEL COULD TUNE GRAVATRONIC DRIVES SO WELL? ANY WAY, STILL HAVING SOME DOWN TIME, ZARDOZ DECIDED TO POP IN AND VISIT FRIEND STEVE SMITH. ZARDOZ HAD TO TAKE MR. WHISKERS WITH, AS ZARDOZ WILL NOT PERMIT BRUTALS TO WATCH HIS KITTEH!
ZARDOZ WAS UNAWARE THAT FRIEND STEVE SMITH HAD A NEW PET BUNNY:
FRIEND STEVE SMITH AND…UM.
SO WHEN ZARDOZ LANDED, MR. WHISKERS JUMPED OUT AND …
MR. WHISKERS, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
BEFORE ZARDOZ COULD ADMONISH MR. WHISKERS TO BEHAVE…
MR. WHISKERS, WHAT DID YOU DO?
THE TABERNACLE HAD JUST INFORMED ZARDOZ THAT THE RABBIT IN QUESTION WAS THE NEW PET OF FRIEND STEVE SMITH. NORMALLY, A GOOD CLEANSING DOES NOT BOTHER ZARDOZ – BUT THIS WAS NO BRUTAL, PART OF THE PLAGUE OF MEN THAT POISON THE EARTH. SO NOW ZARDOZ IS UNSURE OF HOW TO BREAK THE NEWS TO FRIEND STEVE SMITH, WHEN HE RETURNS FROM THE CAMPING SITE DOWN THE TRAIL.
THEREFOR, ZARDOZ WILL GIVE THE CHOSEN ONES LINKS, WHILE ZARDOZ COGITATES UPON THIS PROBLEM.
- “YOUR LAW AGAINST US IS UNLAWFUL“… ZARDOZ’S LOGIC CIRCUITS ARE ALREADY STRAINING. THIS IS NOT HELPING.
- THE PENIS IS EVIL. KEEP IT HIDDEN, BRUTALS!
- SELF-CLEANSING BRUTAL NEAR HAT AND HAIR? ZARDOZ WORRIES ABOUT THE HAT AND THE HAIR, ESPECIALLY LATELY.
- ZARDOZ BEGINS TO THINK THE NHS MIGHT DO MORE TO CLEANSE THE FILTH OF BRUTALS THAN EVEN HIS BRUTAL EXTERMINATORS.
ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.
…
MR.FLOPEARS?! WHAT HAPPEN???!
SO WHEN ZARDOZ LANDED, MR. WHISKERS JUMPED OUT AND …
MR. WHISKERS BEEN WATCHING TOO MANY COP SHOWS.
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS TV CRITIC CHOSEN ONE. MR. WHISKERS IS A GOOD KITTY! HE JUST GOT A BIT TOO PREDATORY WITH THE WRONG RABBIT. ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.
MR. WHISKERS IS A GOOD KITTY! HE JUST GOT A BIT TOO PREDATORY WITH THE WRONG LUPINE.
You will get no further ‘HAIL ZARDOZ’ from me while you sound like a Police Union Rep!
Shelby’s FixnFuel must have got into the ships computer, nevermind the gravitronic drive.
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS REPAIR SPECULATING CHOSEN ONE. NOT SO. PROPER POST LANDING FELINE PROCEDURES WERE NOT FOLLOWED. THERE CAN BE NO TRAINING TO MAKE UP FOR THIS- MR. WHISKERS IS A CAT, AND THEY ARE ARE FAR HARDER TO TRAIN THAN BRUTAL EXTERMINATORS… AND STEVE SMITH IS CAPABLE OF MUCH MORE THAN SUSPENDING MR. WHISKERS WITHOUT CAT NIP…ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.
Lupines are wolves. ‘Lepus’ is hare.
Giant rabbits, even.
Wallace and Gromit politely disagree.
As long as MR. WHISKERS doesn’t eat it under the bed. That was my kitty ‘s favorite place to eat his prey. Nothing like awakening to the tear of flesh or the crush of a brain pan at 2am. He was a good kitty.
That’s pronounced “Kittah”. (pedant)
Exactly
/Cartman
Eric: “Mom, kitty’s being a dildo!”
Eric’s Mom: “I know one naughty kitty who’s sleeping with mommy tonight”
Hail Zardoz!I
Today I gave the gift of the gun. I bought his and hers ar lowers. I got a YHM and she got a Spikes punisher (her choice).
The best part, this will be my gf’s 1st ar, but she already knows what her second lower will be. She has her eyes on a Spikes billet crusader. ?
Keep her! But you know, not in your basement Warty style.
L O L.
Oh, she’s a keeper.
Excellent news!
Advice for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B97e2XXxKdM
O Mighty Zardoz, has it not been ordained that Rabbitry are food for the higher orders?
Wait, I think I know how this goes!
A Minister, a Priest and a Rabbit walk into a bar …
Sanctum Peter Cottium
Deus in re unium
hippitus hoppitus Reus Domine
In suus via torreum
Lepus in re sanctum
hippitus hoppitus Reus Domine!
Zardoz: I prayed fervently to you this morning, but here it is evening and the AL still has the DH rule. Would you prefer a certain sort of sacrifice?
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS BASEBALL WATCHING CHOSEN ONE. BASEBALL HAS LITTLE TO NO CHANCE OF A CLEANSING, SO ZARDOZ DOES NOT WATCH IT. HOW CAN BRUTALS IN UNIFORMS, WITH CLUBS AND PROJECTILES NOT CLEANSE ANYONE? ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.
Cardiff and Vale University Health Board has appealed for any qualified nurses
and healthcare staff who can help as other struggle to get to work in the snow.
Welsh nurses could learn some things from their sisters in Saskatchewan.
When the valleys get hit with snow, it can actually be quite a challenge. Plus, the nearest snowplows are probably 200 miles away, so I’d cut ’em some slack*.
* Note, it’s not often I’ll cut the leekmunchers any slack.
leekmunchers
New euphemism for vegetarians. Thanks!
About 95% of Britain’s leek consumption happens in Wales. It’s a cultural thing.
Huh. My wife makes a mean leek and potato soup ….
I met a Welsh chick at music festival in Portugal once. Fucking gorgeous but a total tease.
Leeks are great, I made up the other 5% of consumption all on my own when I was there. Welsh girls – well – generalization is tough. The ones who grow up outside the big cities tend to be up for almost anything.
Their home towns will have been boring, rainy and dull, dull, dull. The allure of tramorwyr is intense, and the really cute ones can be a lot of fun.
“Welsh nurses could learn some things from their sisters in Saskatchewan.”
Cupping the balls?
Close! More like ‘teaching the youngins’
Is it bad that my 1st thought on that article was, “whycome the PUSH BUTTON sign on the door isnt also ‘en francais’ ?”
Dude. WHY YOU NO VISUALIZE HOT COUGAR TAKING 3 FOURTEEN YEAR OLDS AT ONCE?
Someone send the cops to Tres’ place. His account has been compromised.
You must be using “hot” in canadian terms, like centigrade or litres. She’s 10/10 for a 14 year-old Tres. Now she looks like fun for an hour or two, but dont let her know where you really live IYNWIMAITTYD.
Zardoz has a pet?
I am astonished at the number of idiots cheerleading Trump’s brewing tariff-fueled trade war.
Team uber alles
I am astonished at the number of idiots
cheerleadingwho voted for Trump’s brewing tariff-fueled trade war.and expected him to be anything remotely libertarian, or for him to get the swamp drained.We like Trump because he presses the buttons of a lot of the people we hold in disdain but he has never curbed his dog and will always step into a steaming pile.
Pressing buttons only gets ya so far, even if those whose buttons being pushed deserve them being pushed, good and hard.
Pretty much the only good things about him are his dislike of regulation, that he has caused the left and the MSM to drop their masks and the left and GOPe hates him so much some awful things do not happen. Beyond that well….
Trump hasn’t drained the swamp but his brief political career exposed so much rot in the ruling class and its propaganda wing that even I was astonished how bad it is. And I thought I was cynical and knowledgeable about the U.S. politics.
Aligned, but apparently I am an “idiot”
Snow is still expected to fall in northern England and parts of Scotland, while in London conditions are set to improve after 11am, with highs of 5C are expected.
Global warming is a bitch isn’t it?
We had snow at out house in the SF Bay Area today, blanketed everything for a few minutes until it melted off. First time since 2006! But I’m sure this fits right in with all the climate models.
Maximator will bring me up to my alcohol limit for the week, but because I’m working the weekend I’m going to one past the limit. I’ll have to make it a good beer.
I just picked up some Hotbox Coffee Porter (it was number 4 on the list), as well as some Larry’s Latest Sour. But I’m busy fighting off a head cold, which means that those are sitting in the fridge while I go for whiskeys and items that I’m not looking for nuanced flavor out of.
Sorry about the cold.
From the list, I’ve had:
Boulder Beer Co. Shake Chocolate Porter
Breckenridge Brewery Vanilla Porter
Breckenridge Brewery Nitro Vanilla Porter
Great Lakes Brewing Co. Edmund Fitzgerald
Deschutes Brewing Co. Black Butte Porter
Founders Porter
Cutting back on alcohol really has screwed up trying new beers.
Supposedly, Sunday Morning Stout is now available in Massachusetts. It is not yet available in New Hampshire from what I’ve seen. I’d like to be able to buy it without having to drive to Massachusetts.
I like Black Butte and I cannot lie.
+1
For me, you can only add the Hoppin’ Frog Infusion A Coffee Porter, the Anchor Porter, and the Bell’s Porter. The fact I dislike coconut takes a large chunk of the list off my wants. I’d put the Founder’s Porter at the top of the list from the ones I’ve tried. I t’s just a solid Porter, with Black Butte coming up a close second.
Founder’s Porter is my favorite porter.
A smiling perv is a little better than a grim-visaged stoic one. Right? Right???
Looks like there’s gonna be Hell to pay when STEVE SMITH finds out about his bunny.
Take solace in these fine specimens.
http://archive.is/Jv42a
Though I do appreciate #2’s most prominent assets, #35 makes it all worthwhile.
#5, #10 but Good Heavens #24. Chicks that have that quality make me drop 10 IQ points. It’s a weakness and I’m not ashamed.
What a great collection, Q. I’ve drank at the same bar in Tulum as 23.
Was she there?
Not at the time, but there was plenty of other eye candy about.
I’m supposed to be working.
Hmm..
Hmm….
I’ll just track #29 down and lend her my copy of “Starting Strength”. I’m unimpressed with her squat form.
#34’s instagram. She’s better at squatting, but needs better depth.
My late lamented, recently departed kitteh was about 16 one fine summer day when he terminated a very large dutch rabbit belonging to a neighbor and dragged its heavily mauled carcass back to our house. The neighbors saw nothing, and we felt that since there had been no sign of a struggle, discretion was better than honesty.
To this day, they think the rabbit must have liberated itself and spent the rest of its life gamboling carefree in the forests.
And then we moved from #10 Rillington Place…
This was more like a scene cut from Cannibal Holocaust.
We did have to pressure wash a LOT of blood off the deck.
I keep my kittahs inside exclusively because of the danger that they would expose themselves to and the danger that they pose for other critters. It’s cool to have bird feeders but It’s not a kittah smorg.
He used to primarily deal with chipmunks, mice and other vermin and up until quite recently the occasional woodpecker which was very beneficial.
Nobody puts up feeders around here. If it has a pulse, it’s a pest. Bears, deer, woodchucks, coyotes, bobcats, opossums, squirrels. We have too damn many of all of them. We even had a report of a mountain lion, but I’m a bit skeptical.
For the flying vermin we have turkey vultures, red-tailed hawks and half a doze other kinds of deadly raptor. It’s like Mogadishu up here in the woods.
Bubble.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/02/sunnyvale-home-shatters-new-record-with-enormous-price-tag/
Sunnyvale? SUNNYVALE? Who’s trailer are they selling, Bubs?
Thing I liked the look of (and kinda doubt) is the inverted bid/ask premium.
You’d think being on a Hellmouth would drive real estate prices down.
Hey now, that’s no way to talk about Lucy!
I thought we didn’t talk about Lucy here.
No, that was there. We can talk about her here.
Breaking.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5458143/Shots-fired-White-House.html
Nobody on the inside shot themselves. Meh.
That’s been thru’ the edit cycle 4 or 5 times. People are incensed that Trump doesn’t spend his weekends at the White House.
I think it’s one of the good things about him. The farther away from work he is, the less he can do, even if only superficially, the better.
I remember people bitching about Obama playing golf too much, as well as Bush Jr and all of his holidays and brush clearing, and now Trump.
There is no problem here – the less they do, the better. If only their subordinates and the rest of the government were doing just as little.
Sometimes I dream of the whole executive branch being smitten by sciatica for a while.
Not because I hate them (much) but because they’ll be medicated and relatively harmless.
A better way to describe it:
SELF-CLEANSING BRUTAL NEAR HAT AND HAIR? ZARDOZ WORRIES ABOUT THE HAT AND THE HAIR, ESPECIALLY LATELY.
There’s no way that office carpet is gonna clean itself.
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS GHOSTLY CHOSEN ONE. SO MUCH FOR READING ZARDOZ’S THIRD LINK… ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.
D’OH!
It took several rounds for the dude to kill himself? Kudos for only killing himself though.
He was probably a cop.
Nope. No dead dogs lying nearby.
Ted, I saw your question in the previous post. This is the NPR tweet I tweeted at. Mine is there in the thread but not a reply and or a like I received notice of that day. I don’t know what Twitter is up to but I think it pretty well established they are fuckers if you are not a lunatic progressive. I don’t get it because there are other skeptical opinions there. NPR tweeted about that story three different times Fri with a different selling point each time.
Yellow snow warnings?
Yes, I am so immature I made that joke.
Chinese Cocaine?
Don’t eat the yellow snow!
“Don’t go where the Huskies go and don’t you eat that yellow snoooow!”
Fuck me.
It’s Zappatown on my stereo tonight.
That brings back memories. Back in my immature high school days (as opposed to immature adulthood), our high school sold the same milk cartons that the elementary schools sold. They featured a character called ‘safety pup’; who would offer inane little sayings like ‘don’t take candy from strangers’ (which is pretty good advice for a little kid, even in a small town).
Of course, being the degenerate fuckwads we were, we made up our own more… earthy… sayings. Safety Pup says ‘never stick it in crazy’ was a favorite, followed closely by ‘Don’t eat the yellow snow’.
Good times.
Trump shitting on the neighbours.
Canada is the largest foreign supplier of steel to the U.S., accounting for 16.1 per cent of the country’s imports. Brazil has the next-largest share at 13 per cent, followed by South Korea at 10.2 per cent.
Further muddying the waters were questions whether steel products used in highly integrated supply chains, such as auto manufacturers in Canada and the U.S., would face steeper duties.
“There’s an awful lot of steel that goes back and forth,” Bradford said.
A study by Association of Oil Pipe Lines last year showed that a 25 per cent increase in pipeline costs could increase a typical project by US$76 million, while major lines like TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL expansion would cost at least US$300 million more.
I’m starting to think that Trump has not really thought this through. Most of these companies are bi-national (NTTIAWRT) and depend on the border being merely a line drawn in pencil. They ship back and forth without anyone being harmed. What in the fuck is he on about?
It took you this long to realize that? Not being snarky.
The hell you say. Tariffs increase costs? Nonsense, It punishes bad actors. Don’t you even populist bro?
I still don’t understand what “populist” means.
I think “nationalist populist” would be the term I should have used for the tariff mongers. Or the Breitbartians.
I really don’t see the benefit of Trump talking tough with Canada. If there’s one country that disproportionately feels the pinch of everything – good or bad – including trade with our gargantuan neighbour to the south it’s Canada. Now he’s put this country in a position where Poptart Lasagne is forced to increase the ‘tough talk” rhetoric. And it’s really not his strong suit.
Unless I’m missing something.
Up in Canada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1rGeTBj4jM
Not available?
Huh – working for me.
Another version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDk5rwtJG40
Better!
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your number one pick for President with best domestic policy according to the Glibertariat, (and, what, number 2 or 3 in foreign policy?)
I forgive you. I’m sure most of you were either high as a fucking kite or pants-shitting drunk when you filled out that poll.
I was absent for the poll, though I would have only voted for Hagbard Celine.
Not Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho?
Not familiar, and I tend to distrust those whom are not friends with Dolphins and do not command their own submarines.
Familiarize yourself.
President Camacho seems like xe would make a great diversity appointment to the crew of The Leif Ericsson.
I don’t get it.
All I see is Obama.
Best President EVER!
Who else was better? I voted Reagan the highest, and he did stupid things, too.
After that, it was like a race to the bottom. NIxon loved price controls for crying outside!
Where was that poll?
Tallest midget and all….
Except….Bernie and Hillary.
I’ve got bad news and good news depending on how you see life.
The bad news is you’re gonna die.
The good news is you get to choose your executioner and by what method!
Damn. I forgot all about Gary Johnson and ideological-fluid Howdy Doody there.
So I’ve been intending to crank out an article or two for the website pertaining to medicine and wanted to do a little market research to see what topics might be of interest to the community. Brainstorming, I’ve come up with the following but would appreciate any other suggestions.
1. History of the FDA and good/bad of proposed alternatives
2. Benefits and problems of medical care independently performed by nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and nurses
3. The history of the medical education model in the United States
4. The training of providers currently
5. Why does healthcare cost so damn much?
6. Is American healthcare really as bad as all that?
7. What the hell is healthcare anyway?
8. Is life as a doctor really like those TV shows?
Any help or snark is appreciated.
How about is Socialized medicine a good idea?
I would support investigating and reporting on 1 thru 5.
Do the male enhancement supplements sold over the counter work? Asking for a friend.
5 would be my vote. That one is fun to argue with progs but I have limited knowledge. I usually end up reverting to the Gov and cronies limit supply through over regulation = high costs.
All of them sound interesting, though I’d start with #5.
In the 90’s my shoulder got torn up at work. I went through a solid year of exercise and rehab, acupuncture and bullshit. They finally threw their collective hands in the air and booked me a flight to Calgary and a private clinic. The day of my surgery there were over a dozen men, just like me lined up factory style, everyone of us with the same injury. The next day they charged me for some orange juice, shot me full of morphine, bundled me into a cab to the airport and never gave a shit about me again. This. This is how a health care system should work.
You had to PAY for some orange juice?
MONSTERS!
If you’re cranking out two articles, 5 &6.
3 and 8
1-7 look interesting.
I spent the afternoon on a Roof, in a driving Rain, trying to Braze a Steel/Copper connection, it wasn’t pretty, so I go back Sunday at 8 and finish, yippee!
Fortunately I got a Sixer of Hop Bullet and one of these Tripels,
https://photos.app.goo.gl/vE4tld9QBonvCPKF2
The discovery of Reardon Metal cannot happen too soon.
Thing is, you use Silver to make the connection, and the flux kept melting in the rain, so i melted the actual valve, oops
Whenever I solder I invariably burn myself. This is known.
I saw Yusef, brazing in the rain.
Yeah But Whenever Festus thinks about it, He Burns himself,
/He Burns Himseeelllfff
I like how I’m a fucking Fireman, You can call whenever you want, and I’m just waiting to fix your Fucked up Shit on a rainy Saturday, I don’t have a life, Customers SUUUCK!!!
Take that sobbing down to the girl’s bathroom where it belongs….you’re a slave to filthy lucre. And she is a harsh mistress.
Those aren’t tears, that’s my Trenchcoat shedding Water
I hope you have something on under that trenchcoat….
Someone left my flux out in the rain. 🙁
Harris’s mutton-chops on fleek af
Ted, your up there with HM, I never know what you’re going to pull out of your ass, Cool, and at least SFW 🙂
Top this! https://youtu.be/3i0DMbCKnAg
Festus, YES!
I had a warped upbringing. Mom was a hoarder, and Grandma and Grandpa subscribed to both Reader’s Digest and National Geographic. So I read a lot of old issues of those two magazines.
Here you go, Festus.
An old plumber taught me that the best thing to keep water out of the pipe you are trying to solder was to stuff part of a doughnut in it to plug it. I think if you had a box of doughnuts you could have shielded the area with it to keep the rain out. Doughnuts fix everything.
For water He is absolutely correct, It’s called Plumbers Bread, and it works. Basically soaking up excess moisture til you burn your Copper, then the Water melts the Bread away, True Story
I know he is correct I have done it. Doughnuts are better to keep around than bread imho though.
You can use them to distract anxious law enforcement officers too. Break ’em up into chunks and chum the street with them.
Guy I knew used that as the reason he always had a slice of cheap white bread in his toolbox.
that’s Plumbers Bread!
/Seriously
The beer looks good.
real mild for the kick, almost a cider taste/texture, a real nice brew. The Brewery is in Temecula, so Local for me
I thought it never rained in California.
HAHaHAHaHahAH1!111
until it does……
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4j_I_zvER8
Very subtle.
Also does this mean that the Evil Mirror Universe Yeoh is Hillary?
Heavy Handed leftist moralizing is nothing new for Star Trek: Let this be your last battlefield, the Ferengi, 3 episodes/Movies about Iran-Contra or this DS9 episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Tense_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine)
I’m watching the entire series again, and No I don’t see very much SuCCessful Leftists anywhere, and Your MOM
You clearly haven’t been watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui6g23ygov8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV4Oze9JEU0
Neither of which are DS9, Maybe Formatting is your issue, or your Mom?
/Watch DS9, Derp!
Really, is this why the Glibs left? You change terms in mid post? I’m not addressing your Clown show any longer Winston,
And I’m sure You don’t care…
DS9 was made by people who actively disliked the Utopian Communism of early TNG.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Tense_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine)
Also this aired after the 1994 mid-term elections. Gee I wonder what they are implying here?
Why not watch it and make up your own mind? I watched the Bell episode Last Night, and it had NOTHING to do with events, then or now, Try watching it for the story, Life isn’t always an Agenda, God I want to call you a bunch of useful names but that’s not nice, so, FUCK OFF SLAVER!!!
Erm, really? Trek has always been about allegories.
Um you are talking about Star Trek here. And agenda is something they have always had and have never ever tried to hide.
Erm…the Trek people are the ones making statist propaganda, not me.
Again, WATCH THE SHOW! the Allegories change, but I know you don’t actually like SciFi, you can only Quote WikiBS, I’m out
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Past_Tense,_Part_I_(episode)
Forgot link.
Stupid ass Wikipedia makes Stupid People Smart…..
All I see is that you interpret the show the way want and not the way the writers want. Fair enough but I don’t see what is wrong with pointing it out. Anyway scifi allegories are often either heavy-handed and stupid or too subtle and not really noticeable at all. I mean Discovery had a Trump allegory despite it not making very much sense.
way *you* want
Step up to the best sci-fi from the 90’s.
I’m sorry.
Definitely the best.
Heavy-handed leftist moralizing is nothing new for most of TV, movies, and news.
There was one TOS episode where the aliens of the week were stand-ins for Arabs, with the Klingons as the USSR and the Federation as the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday%27s_Child_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)
Can’t forget the one with Yangs and Koms. Back when Roddenberry was nationalistic.
Oh and those Busby Berkeley musicals had some pretty blatant New Deal Propaganda.
***
My favorite Gene Roddenberry quote, I remember he said in an interview ones, “Aliens in space didn’t build the pyramids. Human beings built the pyramids because they’re smart and they work hard.” That was his perspective. He thought human beings really could get past all the bad things in the world and could accomplish great things.
***
https://www.libertarianism.org/media/free-thoughts/politics-star-trek
Leftism and optimism have some overlap.
Roddenberry was part of the Post-War 1960s liberalism which was very optimistic about how technology would liberate us all and how desegregation and the Welfare state would solve all things. Then Nam and Nixon happened.
yep
***
Famously optimistic about humanity’s future, Roddenberry believed his crew had a responsibility to spread freedom and end tyranny throughout the galaxy. He even named the Enterprise after an aircraft carrier that helped the Allies win the Second World War. He once said that “if man survives that long, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures”—his faith in American liberalism was the guiding principle for the first crew of the Enterprise.
In fact, when that spirit didn’t fully come through on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Roddenberry wasn’t pleased. The movie, released in 1991, at the end of the Cold War, is about striking peace with the Klingons, and according to director Nicholas Meyer the Trek creator was furious with him for creating a socially imperfect Enterprise crew, one wrought with hatred for the species they’d fought for decades.
“Mr. Roddenberry really believed in the perfectibility of man, of humans, and I have yet to see the evidence for this,” Meyer said at the 2011 Hero Complex Film Festival. “VI is a film in which the crew of the Enterprise has all kinds of prejudice, racial prejudice, vis-a-vis the Klingons. And some of their remarks, including how they all look alike and what they smell like, and all the xenophobic things which we grappled with—that was all deeply offensive to him.”
***
https://www.wired.com/2016/09/star-trek-politics/
And most of the failings of the setting trace right back to that.
Sounds like Sandefur doesn’t like freedom of Religion.
the changing face of Star Trek?
http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/the-politics-of-star-trek/
***
This moral weariness highlighted the moral disarray into which the franchise had fallen. By 1987, when the new Enterprise was being launched on the new series Star Trek: The Next Generation, the liberal landscape had changed. The show premiered a year after feminist philosopher of science Sandra Harding referred to Newton’s Principia as a “rape manual,” and a year before Jesse Jackson led Stanford student protesters chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!” The Kennedy-esque anti-Communist in the White House was now Ronald Reagan, a former Democrat and union leader who thought the party had left him.
Next Generation’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) was more committed to coexistence and non-intervention than to universal liberty and anti-totalitarianism. Following Spock’s lead, Picard would elevate the Prime Directive into a morally obtuse dogma and would seek ways to evade the responsibility of moral judgment. Time and again, the show featured false equivalency on a grand scale, coupled with the hands-off attitude that the Kirk of “The Apple” had dismissed as complicity with evil.
***
TOS was very much a “Western Liberal Values as the Bestest and everyone should follow them” show and very optimistic about how Cold War Liberalism would lead to humanity’s perfection.
Sandefur has a big warboner doesn’t he?
Also he ignores how Roddenberry himself adopted this extreme non-interventionism. Apparently Roddenberry himself stated that if the TNG crew ever encountered a non-warp species engaging in genocide they should not intervene.
today I learned
***
the hottest temperature that we have ever actually encountered is in the Large Hadron Collider. When they smash gold particles together, for a split second, the temperature reaches 7.2 trillion degrees Fahrenheit. That’s hotter than a supernova explosion.
***
OK, so about 3.6 x 10^12. 1 second after the big bang, the temperature was 1 x 10^11 K. That temperature is too hot for atoms to exist. Where did this huge amount of heat energy come from?
https://futurism.com/science-explained-hottest-possible-temperature/
It never got above 53 today, Why should I care about the French? Or some Alien I never met? maybe He likes it Cold? I mean, what few Hundred Kelvin among Friends?
/Tholian Hater!
3.6 x 10^12 K. I swear there was a K there the first time I wrote it. Also I neglected to subtract 32.
That’s better, 😉
That’s hot.
So, where does Trump get the power to raise tariffs? Can’t Congress do anything about it? Seems to me that back in the day (ante-bellum U.S.) Congress passed the tariff laws (pissing off the South) not the President.
Pen and a phone, man.
PEN.AND.A.PHONE!
That is a good question. The same place they get the power to impose sanctions talked about in the first link? Is it another power congress gave up to the executive? Kind of like the whole war thing.
It’s not war “war” when you look at it our way.
“War-war” “Rape-rape” “It-it” So confused. Must find sock drawer…
seen in a liquor store
Leadslingers Whiskey
Military Special Whiskey (they also make gin, tequila, and rum)
seen on a bumpersticker
As a former fetus, I oppose abortion.
I larfed.
Thought I had after waking up from my nap today: Good BBQ is like sex. You can do it alone if you go slow and have a good rub.
Yes that will be going on a t-shirt. I had ribs in the smoker while I napped.
Sure have been a lot of top notch scientists who fit the stereotype.
***
Cavendish was a shy man who was uncomfortable in society and avoided it when he could. He could only speak to one person at a time, and only if the person were known to him and male.[28] Cavendish conversed little, always dressed in an old-fashioned suit, and developed no known deep personal attachments outside his family. Cavendish was taciturn and solitary and regarded by many as eccentric. He only communicated with his female servants by notes. By one account, Cavendish had a back staircase added to his house to avoid encountering his housekeeper because he was especially shy of women. The contemporary accounts of his personality have led some modern commentators, such as Oliver Sacks, to speculate that he had Asperger syndrome,[29] though he may merely have been anthropophobic.
His only social outlet was the Royal Society Club, whose members dined together before weekly meetings. Cavendish seldom missed these meetings, and was profoundly respected by his contemporaries. However his shyness made those who “sought his views… speak as if into vacancy. If their remarks were…worthy, they might receive a mumbled reply, but more often than not they would hear a peeved squeak (his voice appears to have been high-pitched) and turn to find an actual vacancy and the sight of Cavendish fleeing to find a more peaceful corner”.[12] Cavendish’s religious views were also considered eccentric for his time. He was considered to be agnostic. As his biographer, George Wilson, comments, “As to Cavendish’s religion, he was nothing at all.”[30][31]
***
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cavendish
He may have discovered “inflammable air”, but my older brother discovered flammable air.
+1 Blue Flamers
+1 Ass Blow
My daughter actually burned the hair off my shin while we were watching a movie. I wished then that I hadn’t told her about that but in retrospect it does make for a nice icebreaker at the cocktail parties that she hosts and the Wife drags me to.
I imagine the Royal Society functions in a different light. Everyone settles in a calm, comfortable atmosphere of learned and wise conviviality until the man-servants arrive with the brandy and tear away uniforms. After that its all “Gay Steel Mill” until the cows come home.
Ah, you’re one of the Senior Fellows, I see.
Bravo, sir. Bravo.
*taps out spent pipe* Indubitably Good Sir, Indubitably…
God fucking dammit. I just got more work dumped on me for this weekend.
Second and last beer for the night.
That looks real nice! Enjoy!
That sucks. I completed my last weekend work for the old company this morning. I’m not sure my boss really grasps why I shouldn’t be making decisions for ongoing projects yet.
Wow. That’s not good management.
Yeah… there’s several reasons I was looking for a new position.
Boss is a decent guy, but a terrible boss.
And in other news, I have been directed that there is now a list of approved targets at the range I use, and ROs must police the new regulations.
OK. I’m gonna run up some prints of a large carrot and maybe a rutabaga as a target and see how that flies.
I think you should go with a piece of sushi. A roll of course for scoring.
Indoor range. It’d be way too messy.
I meant drawing it on paper. Now that I think about it, I think you should draw a big vagina or a penis. They didn’t say anything about body parts did they?
The club I belong to has long prohibited shooting at any identifiable pictures of people. Generic bad guy targets are allowed.
On normal nights, those are out. For the club members attending force-on-force training when instructors are running the show, we’re allowed Police and FBI pattern targets.
I don’t even have a range at the moment. The one we used to go to had problems with the law after some people were apparently firing their guns in the wrong direction. After that, they installed big pieces of wood at the firing line that has about a 1-foot gap through which you shoot, and it’s at sit-down level, so no shooting standing up (shooting a lever-action sitting down is no fun). Then my friends and I were shooting 9mm handguns doing Mozambique drills, and the RO came over and said, “no rapid fire, guys”. We decided we weren’t going back there again.
Public and club range night is like that. No doubletaps, no holsters etc, but the range I’m at – once you become a paid up member and attend one Force-on-Force 101, you can participate in a bunch of other courses, along with a separate Personal Protection evening which includes holsters, tac reloads, room clearing, cover/concealment drills and so on.
One of the guys who runs the course is a civilian trainer with the military and we have about 5 or 6 other RO-grade personnel watchdogging us. It’s a lot of fun and a great way to burn off $30 of 9mm in an evening.
$30 of 9mm is what? Half an hour?
*checks prices*
About 150 rounds. Still a light session.
Only one guy out walking the range at a time, and this is CT so we shoot slower.
I feel for you guys. I have not been to a real range since I got out of the coast guard in ’94. We just go to the hills and shoot around here. Some of my neighbors don’t even bother to do that.
I know a guy who has some land, but it’s not a huge lot so we can only do pistol calibers. Plus, the guy does have a life of his own and everything, so it’s only once every few months that he can host us out there for a little shooting.
A lot of ranges are like that – only grudgingly resigned to the fact that people shoot guns (gasp!) there.
Then again, take a look around your local public range sometime. Bullet strikes in everything except the targets, and the customers frequently look like they’re auditioning for a ‘House of 1000 Corpses’ remake.
It’s a problem, and I don’t really have a good idea of what to do about it.
In Spanish, they don’t say “I love you;” they say “Yo quiero comer tu culo,” which roughly translates to “You are the light of my life.”
It’s such a beautiful language.
Even I know what “culo” means. I aint fallin for it.
We aren’t stupid HM, and might speak more than one Language, Just Say’n
I said it was a rough translation.
No need to be pedantic.
I thought you were Linguistic Dude? We are Pedants?
Yes. You take the romance out of everything.
/Shakes fist at Clouds!
fun fact:
The word east comes from the Greek word for dawn, auos. It’s interesting how many ideas associate related ideas the same way. In many languages, the word for eat is a form of the word for food or vice-versa. Same deal for word and talk/speak, book and read/study/write, etc. In many Asian languages, the word for rice also means meal.
Translate this “Atook Alloon da Lana”.
Dialog from a terrible movie that was re-made into another terrible movie and yet another terrible movie starring Jack Black.
Caveman comedies will always flop.
You shut your filthy mouth! Caveman was an hilarious romp (because I was fifteen and stoned outta my gourd) that featured a pre-fame Shelly Long when she was actually hot. It didn’t hold up but I lurved that film more for what it meant to me at the time rather then any artistic value it conveyed. Shit, my high school nick-name was “Lar”.
It’s amazing how literally anything is funny if you’re 15 and stoned. I used to smoke a bowl or two and then crack the fuck up at Everybody Loves Raymond, for fuck’s sake.
I am writing a scene where a returning character first shows up in the story, and I can’t remember their eye color. Do I:
A: Switch to the open script for the audiobook version of one of those appearances where the description will be.
B: Write whatever because people won’t notice.
C: Hunt down the file of the exact story where they appeared and open that up to find the information.
D. Find a certified fanboy on the internet and ask him (her)
That would take longer than looking it up.
I have all of the original source materials on my computer.
D: Pink
C.
I’m afraid that was it.
They were blue.
Pick any color. If anyone bothers you about it later, say a wizard did it. From now on, never describe a character’s eye color again.
That would be giving up.
I’m not going to give up.
This. Was it important to describe the eye color in the first place?
The scene was actually completely plot irrelevent. It was one of the main characters spotting his ex-girlfriend while on his way out of a crowded restaurant and noticing she was on a date. One of the attributes he always noticed were her eyes. It was entirely a character item (and explained that he wasn’t dating her anymore since the breakup had been between stories)
In movies, there are things called continuity errors which are rarely noticed.
Errors in my books bug me.
I’m still trying to figure out why Travis thinks he took almost nine hours to finish a marathon when it sould have been four.
I’m thinking his time was 3:57, and he wore #857, and got the two mixed up somehow (I’m trying to think of a plausible reason for that)
Heh. An author that posts on this website is a little OCD? I’m fucking deked right out of my spaceboots!
He was thrown in a van and kidnapped for five hours.
Rolled by a Saigon hooker.
@westernsloper no, that happened during Shadowboy. The marathon was before that book.
Ok, well then someone Cosbied up is oj at the hydration station and he tripped is balls off in an alley behind a dumpster for five hours and then resumed the race stumbling to the finish line. Or what 6 said.
His actual time is 3:57, otherwise he wouldn’t have garnered a track scholorship. The problem was he said in dialogue that it was “not under eight hours”, and in his head that it was “actually closer to nine”
If someone is tripping balls behind a dumpster are we really going to hold them to recollections of exact time?
On page one of Game of Thrones, that asshat spent a whole paragraph describing some shitheel’s gloves. It was at that moment I hurled the book away in disgust and vowed to never read anything from Wiener Wiener again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNACsbSwAHY
Here’s the snippet in its entirety.
That doesn’t say a word about anyone’s gloves.
I was comparing the brevity of my scene obsessed over minute details to the stated description of an overblown blather about irrelevencies.
Also, gloves are an important cultural element of the Sanaltan class system. (The middle and upper classes of the island wear them to keep their hands from getting tanned. Hats are also a part of the class styles to keep as much sunlight off their faces as possible.)
It sounds like purple prose to me, but if sells, keep doing it.
***
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
***
My paraphrase: It was night in London and a storm was raging.
I would be a terrible novelist. I speak about 100 words a day.
You think that’s purple prose? You don’t read a lot of fiction, do you?
I prefer nonfiction. Last fiction I read was The Forever War.
Was that another misleading title like “The Neverending Story”?
How does a returning character first show up in a story?
They appeared in other stories before. This is their first appearance in this story.
In that case, just give him sunglasses.
Sunglasses at night? This isn’t the eighties.
And explain he is stoned af so his eyes are beady slits and bloodshot.
YEEEEEAHHHHHHHHHH!
Have him wear colored contact lenses.
You know the answer is C.
Maybe…
Apologies – I was scrolling (late) and missed this response.
Fort Lauderdale cops beat woman just 8 days after she testified against police brutality.
Not sure how trustworthy this story is, but not out of the realm of possibility.
Welcome to Broward County, where if our cops aren’t cowering in fear at having to do their jobs they’re beating people.
The Miami New Times/ Broward-Palm Beach New Times have documented it well. If they’re reporting it, it’s legit.
It’s either a testament to tolerance and peace, or some form of stockholm syndrome, that the good people of Broward County have yet to burn down all of the police facilities in the area, and hang the constabulary from trees.
One thing I’m really fucking thankful for is that the BSO doesn’t patrol in my city, and we have a pretty decent police force. I mean that in comparison to others, which means they have brutality incidents, but they’re not as bad as the county force (or the Fort Lauderdale PD, which is as awful as the BSO).
Coral Springs has a decent force as well (they’re the ones that actually went inside to try and find/stop the shooter at MSDH while the BSO deputies were cowering outside.)
We may not have basic due process rights, but at least the cops here don’t beat the hell out of people daily. The Koban system (a racial homogeneity probably) seem to result in restraining the cops here. Just don’t get accused because they’ll fuck you.
There must be a streak running through depts like this that are actually happy when stories like this get out. Think twice before crossing the cops. This is worse than when they try to cover it up.
I don’t know but Michelle won’t run for President.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/michelle-obama-wont-run-president-ambitious-plan-instead/
Phew! Hooeey!
I’m sure the Republic will be fine.
Anyone see this?
https://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2018/03/Broward-Ferrari.jpeg?resize=600%2C587
Wait till they have to buy a water-pump for that thing. Or an alternator.
Don’t even have to click on it. That was a promotional pic. The dealership wrapped the car for the picture. The Sheriff’s Office didn’t buy a Lambo.
That makes it worse, IMO, I thought it was a drug Confiscation dealio
I could be wrong, and too d̶r̶u̶n̶k̶ lazy to look, but isn’t Broward Debbie Wasserman’s bailiwick ?
Yeah, she’s my congresswoman. She has a very white, middle/upper class district, and Broward went 66% for Clinton anyways. She’s entrenched around here, at least until she gets thrown in jail.
Why is Ferrari in the address link when it’s a Lamborghini?
It identifies as a Ferrari, shitlord.
lol
In the 1940’s and 1950’s, my great grandfather was the warden at this prison camp.
Bull queers?
/Andy Dufresne
Beers, Steers, and Queers
Well done. Ill raise you 1 Jerry Jeff Walker
You know who else ran prison camps with easy access to major rail lines?
Steve Bezos?
Reading Railroad?
Someone with deficient anti-aircraft defenses?
Every Warden of Sing Sing
/Rail line runs right through the prison.
Sessue Hayakawa?
The interesting thing about that prison camp is that it would have been colder than a witch’s tit in winter but for some serious heating. Look at the size and number of windows in that place.
Alright, I’m about to light a joint after 5 bourbons and six pack this arvo. Who else here is under the influence, and what are y’alls poisons of choice?
24 ozr’s of Coor’s Light
My Kroger was out of 40’s, so I think Im on #7
Are you using Nick Gillespie papers? I am on to the Mules but I am almost out of vodka.
I think the French looking dude on the ZigZags would smoke Gillespie under the table.
Second beer and last beer of the night.
10oz of budget-minded blended scotch.
Water and lime. Maybe some peppermint tea.
I don’t know. Its all so exciting.
Coffee.
Two juicy buds in a bowl, and some vodka tonics. Feeling pretty out of it.
Malbec at dinner, and now vodka.
Martian OG and Hop Bullet Double IPA
Bourbon and beer tonight. I just had to pee in a cup earlier this week anyways.
Vodka. Always.
My paternal Grandfather joined the US Cavalry in the 1920’s and got drummed out for stealing 1911s to sell off-base. His father was hung for shooting dead my Great Grandmother because she was stepping out on him. Apparently she was a great beauty, red-headed and wont to sing. My maternal Grandfather looked like fucking Clark Gable, fathered a shit-load of daughters and died as a hobo. Maternal step- grandfather served during the war but refused to train kids for the meatgrinder. He ended his military service in the stockade. This is my story.
Damn, son, sounds like a book that should be written.
Did you inherit Clark Table’s jug ears?
*sigh* No, but his gift with ladies lives on and will die with me.
High West Rendevous Rye and Founders Solid Gold Lager
Winner
Forgot I had some Shiner Birthday Beer 109 – Farmhouse Rye in the fridge so switched to that to go with the rye whisky. Good stuff
I picked up a bottle of Martell VSOP yesterday, so I’ll be making some sidecars. Girly drink? Maybe, but it’s still good. Plus, being able to mix girly drinks at home is a useful skill…
No. 7 OTR with a Coke chaser.
My special Bloody Mary tomorrow morning.
Retiring at the end of the month, looking forward to smoking a joint when I’m no longer subject to a drug test at work.
… Hobbit
Something that occurred to me while watching a pretty fucking hilarious clip on youtube highlighting hollywood’s conception of “race-relations in prison” circa early 1990s
in that period – late 1980s to early 1990s – crime and violence in the US was at an all-time peak. shit was genuinely pretty hairy all over, but in NYC it was pretty much an everpresent thing that you were always aware of. (e.g. an example- there was a turnoff on the deegan expressway where armed car-jackings by squeegee guys happened almost daily. everyone in the city knew this and it was like local cultural-wisdom knowing which corners to skip past or blaze through red lights)
films like Robocop were popular not because they imagined some dystopian impossible future, but rather because they described how many people saw the ‘out of control’ cities at the time. the level of violence that was ‘normal’ was actually pretty obscene, and i imagine its hard for younger people to understand this. (*i could go on a long digression about why the exoneration of the central park 5 has recently been used in an effort to pretend that much of this crime-wave never really happened, or was an invention of ‘white fear’, but i’ll skip it)
it wasn’t necessarily racially-motivated/influence crime, although there was certainly lots of that as well. see: Bernie Goetz, Yusef Hawkins, Crown Heights hit+run incident, howard beach ‘lynch mob’, tawana brawley (yes i know it was faked), etc etc. And that was soley *local* stuff. on the west coast you had the Rodney King shit and then OJ.
i think you get the picture.
Anyway… in the midst of this genuinely fucked up period of time… it was actually extremely popular to make ‘entertainment’ out of contemporary super-violent criminal behavior and culture. NWA didn’t come out of thin air. And hollywood churned out movies like “Boyz in the hood” and “menace to society” and “south central” (above linked laugh-a-minute film) and “New Jack City” and on and on and on and on. People lapped it up and hardly anyone thought of it as ‘exploitation’ or particularly ‘racist’. If anything much of black america was happy that stories about urban black life were being made and that they weren’t being treated purely as cannon fodder for Charles Bronson, etc. Hiphop became a multibillion dollar industry because white people loved listening to that gritty urban black experience.
Basically, none of it was *hidden* or marginalized or downplayed. if anything, the crazy violent cities provided endless material for a thriving culture-industry.
The point i’m gradually leading up to:
Everyone thinks america is more “woke” now, and pretend that shit like Black Panther… a fucking african superhero – from africa, not baltimore – is evidence of this.
Call me crazy, but i think that’s super fucking retarded.
Rap music today isn’t really saying shit about the issues in black america. You don’t see Hollywood making “hood”-style movies about gang violence in chicago or baltimore. The Wire was really the last honest portrayal of that sort of thing, and even it is treated like some nostalgic thing rather than acknowledging that the same places have similar problems today.
in short, i think 2 decades of very very low crime overall has basically made people stop thinking about the reality of ‘underclass life’ in america. “Race” is no longer discussed in terms of ‘urban neighborhoods overrun by crack dealers’, but rather “why are there no black characters in Harry Potter?”
Of course i could turn all of this into a rant about how this is the Left’s fault and that they’ve basically abandoned the urban poor in favor of winning the hearts of fat purple haired gender studies activists. Or it could be about how everyone lives on the internet now. My point is really a broader one about our national sense of “how different classes in america live”, and how little of our cultural products – music, movies, etc – really don’t seem to reflect any of these things anymore. There’s really very little curiosity in the reality of other people’s experiences, despite all the ‘woke’ bullshit. Maybe its not possible to tell the truth about things anymore out of fear of how you’ll be judged by the culture-mob.
anyway, apologies for the long rant. I will go back to watching South Central now.
“basically abandoned the urban poor ”
Won’t change as long as 95% of them will reliably vote for any yellow dog Democrat on the ballot.
They tell me that I can’t understand what it’s like to be [whatever] because I’m not [whatever]. If I ask a question, I’m enacting their labor. If I ignore them, I’m alt right.
Of course Straffin.
The easiest way to remember is – whatever you do, you are in the wrong.
Spooner’s argument fits. If I didn’t sign it, I’m not bound by it.
Good for you!
*two thumbs up*
They’ll still try to hold you to their terms though.
Good luck to them on that. I don’t work for an American or European company, don’t work at their universities and don’t use Twitter. I couldn’t accumulate FY money, so I put myself in a FY environment. *One contract I have could be vulnerable, but I don’t really need it.
Great Rant, Gilmore.
Two stories about NYC –
My old man was a trucker, too, and at one stage in the early 80’s, he hauled the odd load down to Hunt’s Point Market, the primary distribution point for fresh produce throughout NYC. Hunt’s Point was notorious amongst truckers as place best avoided, of guys who would open the doors on your trailer at a stoplight before you arrived there, hookers all over the place, and cops that would tell truckers to run the red lights at night.
My wife’s first teaching gig was at a public school down the road from Hunt’s Point, also down the road from some kind of waste transfer station. The school in question had no functional air conditioning, and between the exhaust from all of the trucks coming and going, and the garbage station, on warm days the school became an intolerable place to be. Mrs Gordilocks took the kids in her class from a public school to the nearest local grocery store which had air conditioning, in order to cool the kids off and get them away from the smell.
Cool story Bro,
/ Good on yer Mom 🙂
yeah, that sounds about right.
my mom was a teacher, and while she mostly worked in good schools for rich kids which we couldn’t afford (e.g. allen stevenson, dalton), for a while she was jumping from school to school in the NYC area, and some of her gigs were some unbelievably fucked up places. One school in the bronx was inside a former ice-skating rink, and the place basically had zero venilation and the dome-roof leaked, so the inside of the place was like a humid petri dish. half the students developed chronic asthma, while the others simply didn’t show up. the teachers were effectively prison guards. there are still places like this in NYC today.
And a lot of these shitty schools are the ones spending the most money per pupil, which is why it pisses me off to hear people whine that inner city schools are just “underfunded”.
If money bought educational outcomes, the inner city schools would be producing the best and brightest graduates the world had ever known.
New York spends somewhere between half again as much to twice the national per-pupil amount and gets at best medicore results, and often catastrophic ones.
Plus, all the data shows that funding has exploded in the past few decades while all measures of student performance show either a stagnation or a decline, and that’s probably not even adjusting for the fact that the curricula have been dumbed down in an attempt to paper over the embarrassingly low graduation rates in some of these schools.
It’s almost like hiring armies of do-nothing “administrators” isn’t working.
Those are some good points. I remember when there were gangs around Wrigley Field and Logan Square was full of Latin Kings. Now the poor in most major cities have been quarantined to certain areas or pushed out to inner ring suburbs (the Paris Model).
Have you ever read, “Run, Baby, Run”? The Mau Maus. The preacher tries to save gang member Nicki. “You can cut me into 1000 pieces, and each one would scream ‘I love you!'”.
Those pieces of him sound gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that
The Cross and the Switchblade. The movie is a riot.
ooh. i have the soundtrack to that on vinyl. i can’t remember what i used it for, but i think there were some hilarious quotes/exerpts from the film on it, and at least one breakbeat. I’ve never seen the movie itself.
lol, the movie starts with exactly the breakbeat. i had 2 copies and it was one of the only things i could ‘juggle’ without fucking it up.
Freddy Fresh also sampled it (the horn lines), but i found that out later. can’t remember what, but it was obscure. WhoSampled doesn’t even mention it. i love re-discovering this stuff, i’d never have remembered that record in a million years if you hadn’t mentioned it.
i actually managed to find the song. 1997 white label EP. I literally just guessed what year i heard it and found it. he has over 100 12″ releases, so that’s basically ‘needle in a haystack’ stuff.
*footnote:
this train of thought was partly inspired by the inane Lindy West NYT piece linked to earlier today … and how people like her – the prototypical fat purple haired socialist gender studies queen – are exemplars of the New Woke, and pretend to be the champions of black americans.
I think of idiots like her, then i think of NWA or X-Clan, and i think, “this crazy bitch thinks she’s looking for for the interests of black people in South Central LA, or the 9th ward of New Orleans, by ranting about “Ugh White men!” right before the Oscars”.
because, really: what’s important and relevant today isn’t “why failed public schools in Newark or Trenton continue to doom black youth”, its “we so need queer and transgender role models in our fantasy films”
The insanity of it all should be obvious, but instead everyone is completely deluded and trapped in a little internet-driven bubble world where this isn’t actually completely crazy.
and again – the thing that’s really striking to me is the incuriosity about how other people lead their lives. There’s something more like a false sense of cultural homogeneity, as though everyone should be seeing the universe through the eyes of millenial internet journalists. The idea that there are a wide range of types of people in America with very different interests and priorities seems to be completely lost. Its a narrowing of perspective, and the cultural-product shows it.
Its a narrowing of perspective, and the cultural-product shows it.
That made me think of the Parkland kids on their bus tour of activism and the media circus around it for some reason.
At least they found a common enemy. Money in that for leaders of their respective movements.
I think that is a huge aspect of the shift Gilmore is getting at and I think it really took hold with Barack Obama. There is a man who never really held a real job other than teaching for a short time, proudly carried the label of “community organizer” and became president. There has always been am industry of movement mongering which was probably a side track for the people who populated the international NGO’s that help fuck up the rest of the world but now it has expanded into a full fledged legit line of work. I wish I could get paid for bitching about something. I have to do it for free.
And how are the communities Obama organized doing? Who cares he is rich as fuck.
I always thought Obama passing himself off as “African-American” was one of the bigger swindles of recent decades.
Imagine how bad it would’ve been had he not been elected?
Hmmm, that was supposed to be snark, but they have a point. *Shudders at thought of President McCain.
I visited NYC a few times (on a couple of occasions visited my BIL’s family on Staten Island. One of his cousin’s husband took us for a drive through the Bronx. It was all so Warriors come out to play) in the 80s and 90s pre-Giuliani and know what you mean despite not being a resident. We were followed, were at Times Square for New Years in 92 when police on horseback started clearing the streets as soon as the clock struck midnight, stayed at the Chelsea before the renovations, took the subway at night into Trenton NJ to visit a friend’s uncle (yes, it was as sketchy and scary as you’d imagine), went to the Limelight. enjoyed 42nd street (at least if my memory doesn’t fail me) when there were still freaks walking along and so on. One time four of us hopped out of a cab to go to a club and noticed a really long line up but before we could decide if we should wait a bouncer waved us in as if we were rock starts. Those trips were priceless to me and even bought Lou Reed’s ‘New York’ at Towers Records which I think is an album that reflected the time you describe.
We continued to visit after Giuliani even going to my cousins wedding held in Brooklyn but by then it all settled down and NYC was clean and safe. Still awesome but man those pre-Giuliani days…
Early 80’s were really scary in places.
My uncle used to go often in the 70s and 80s to go watch the Expos/Habs play the Mets/Rangers and he had some tales.
I have Montreal stories but they’re pretty cheeze-whiz compared to those.
Montreal may be hedonistic but it lacks (ed) the violent component and general ‘anarchistic’ feel NYC had.
When you entered NYC it was like entering ‘Escape from New York’.
Yeah, I was 14 and being able to buy beer at a corner shop was pretty alright to me. We roamed the city on the Metro and I never felt one ounce of danger. Boy those people in the townships sure didn’t like this Anglo, though (the older folk, the kids were pretty cool but racist as fuck).
As in the Eastern Townships?
What part of the city?
Repentingy, specifically. It was totally suburbia but we went to visit my host’s parents a few hours east and it really was a different world (think Lac Megantic but more rural). The matriarch wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence (but she did feed me well). It was unearthly.
2 points:
1. The “criminal underclass” is still very much alive in places that the MSM tend to ignore like Cleveland and Buffalo. While much of SF and NY (I can’t speak for LA) are gentrifying the underclass away, lots of other cities aren’t seeing much of that.
2. I am pretty certain that NY Post article was cooked up entirely to take a cheap shot at the Daily News. I’ve never seen a “squeegee man” in my 20 years here.
I had a really persistent squeegee man over near the Javitts Center last year, but nobody involved thought that cleaning the windshield was the focus of the interaction.
whens the last time you drove across the willis avenue bridge?
i didn’t see them either when i lived in manhattan/brooklyn, because i never drove. but when i was a kid riding around in the parents car, they’d be at all the major entry/exit points to manhattan. Basically, anywhere that traffic builds up to get onto a bridge on-ramp. The targets were commuters who’d desperately throw a few dollars at the cracked out guys to keep them away from their car.
1993 NY times on the Squeegee phenomenon
I’ve seen hookers at the Queensboro bridge but no squeegee men.
If there are still squeegee men I can only imagine they’re the sorts who can’t cut it panhandling on the subway. Those guys (and some gals) are generally not as aggressive or cracked out.
I remember a black homeless guy (around where Dell’Arte restaurant) just simply following us ( four guys were in the group and he was non-plussed) non-chalantly telling jokes for I think it was something like four blocks. Finally, frustrated he said, ‘man, I’m humping my ass for you fellas!” We were amazed by his moxy, agreed with him and gave money.
Rap is dead and Trap killed it.
Apparently Trump’s tariff authority rests on the Trade Act of 1962, whereby he can raise tariffs to whatever level he wants on specific products.
Time for Congress to amend the authority of the president (this one or any future one).
Thank you JFK
While I’m strolling down family memory lane, one of my granduncle’s on my mom’s side was an upper turret gunner in one of these behemoths and survived 30+ missions to tell the tale.
I’ve been inside the aircraft featured in this video when I was a teenager, but have been unable to scrape together the minimum donation required to go for a ride.
At least for most of the missions it was night-time.
Cover of night could not protect you from these savages.
My granduncle used to say that after nearly every mission, they had to spray out whatever was left in the rear turret with a hose.
Sherman tank crews talk about how much their tanks sucked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns6l7sCoWX4
Thanks!
My grandfather, the son of the prison warden, drove a Sherman in Europe, and then in Burma,
He landed D-Day +3 and helped liberate France, Belgium, and The Netherlands.
Took a wrong turn at Ardennes?
Nope. He was an amphibious landing specialist, and due to his home unit being split up amongst others because of it’s size, he got re-routed to India and then Burma before the party was over.
Ahh… Patton.
My grandfather, before his mind went, claimed he met Patton somewhere in Europe between D-Day and when my grandfather was wounded at Bastogne.
After my grandfather’s mind started going, he started needing a wheelchair. He claimed Patton himself showed up to deliver the wheelchair.
Did he give any orders, or just deliver the wheelchair?
Who knows at that point. Unless it was something in his childhood, my grandfather at that point couldn’t remember anything clearly.
Yeah, the 110s were a real problem, chewed up a lot of tail gunners – heavily armed and plenty of ammunition.
Part of the problem was also the isolation. Those poor fuckers were strapped in for up to 11 hours at a stretch – with no heating – and were exposed on a 270 degree arc and your only hope of plenty of warning was is the aircrew in the other planes was on the bounce and awake. It’s no surprise that so many were lost. For nostalgia’s sake, there’s an English comedian/folk singer named Mike Harding who wrote a really great and moving song about a Lancaster that never came back – Bombers’ Moon.
It’s good to see the old birds still flying.
I got ride on a B-17 once. A quick half-hour flight.
Can someone explain to me why Alex Jones is close to getting kicked off YouTube, but stuff like this is hunky dory?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q-BOrtzzjU
The label on the axe chopping down the statute of liberty says allahu akbar. The song has lots of gunshots and aloha snackbars.
The problem is with you. You can’t multicultural hard enough
I really want them to boot Alex off the platform. Turn him into Obi Wan.
lol
Future coworker wrote in an email to me in response to my angst about the impending timing of the resignation and then the moving nightmare:
“There are always a few bumps when getting the wheels out of the ruts.”
Boy, ain’t that the truth? But it’s a pithy statement that captures the realism of what a pain it’s going to be along with the optimism of a new beginning and a separation from the monotony of the daily grind that my current work has become.
I got this, with a little help from my friends.
So the offer is final?
Getting out of ruts ain’t easy.
Replace those trucks with govt agencies and you can see a nifty little allegory.
You got the job?
Hayek,
You are the only other Pulsed Power Engineer that I have ever encountered on the Intertubes. I would really like to visit with you IRL and was hoping to catch you during our tour of the Midwest this spring. Guess we’ll have to meet when we travel to SoCal.
Congratulations on your new job. Don’t know the details on your new gig but San Diego has been the home of a lot of pulsed power outfits over the years; Pulsar, Maxwell, many more.
… Hobbit
Huh, small world, eh? Yeah I am familiar with the strange history of pulsed power in San Diego. Phyisics International, Titan, L3–it’s all kind of a big soap opera with a lot of crossover among companies and people.
Not sure about the timing of it all, but pretty sure it’s going to happen, barring disaster.
Offer is official; they gave it to me after 5PM Friday. I haven’t accepted yet, but with a couple of small adjustments, I’m nearly certain I will do so.
I’ve been trying to find info on how Trekkies vote. I suspect then lean heavily left, but I only have info from the UK.
***
One study found 41% of Lib Dem supporters were fans of Doctor Who, compared with 31% of the general population. And compiling the 100 favourite TV programmes for supporters of each of the main parties threw up no fewer than 17 sci-fi shows for Lib Dem supporters, but only six for Labour and two for Conservatives. Intriguingly, Lib Dems also bucked the national trend of preferring Star Wars over Star Trek, with 36% of supporters favouring Captain Kirk and co.
On his blog, Lib Dem assembly member for South West Wales Peter Black (one of the few party members to openly list sci-fi among his interests) professed himself “very excited” about the findings. He understandably opts for the “big picture” part of YouGov’s conclusion: “Is this evidence of the Liberal Democrat ability to think big, and imagine a better world in the future? Is it true that ‘Science Fiction is a crutch for people who can’t handle reality’? Or is it the other way round …”
***
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/shortcuts/2014/feb/03/lib-dems-party-science-fiction-fans
I was a bigger fan of Trek when I was a kid.
After I grew up, nostalgia wasn’t enough to paper over the flaws in the foundation, and I cooled towards the franchise.
I’d like to see how many Objectivist/Trekkies their are out there.
I dunno the answer to that but I’d guess about 75% of the sci-fi I read (which is a lot) is written by lefties. You can tell because the Earth is always damaged/destroyed by humans in some way often related to “climate”.
There’s way too much science fiction in the vein of Asimov’s Foundation series for my taste.
And Clarke’s works had vehement communist undertones throughout.
“Psychohistory” broke my suspension of disbelief.
And/or, corporations are usually the villain.
Related.
Derp
I submitted a parody of 1984 a couple weeks ago. Must have found the limit of what won’t be carried here.
‘1984’ – Socialism as it is implemented.
‘Star Trek’ – the fever dreams of someone who thinks human nature is mutable. When used to support socialism, is laughable, as it requires a post-scarcity society as a pre-requisite.
‘Blade Runner’ – Noir storytelling. It’s dark, but even the poor people seemed to be doing okay.
Holy derp.
The left does realize that all that shitty Federation architecture was dumped into the Presidio, right? Y’know, the former army base they’re always agitating to put to “public” use.
This seems to be a trend lately: progs using fiction to demonstrate the validity of their beliefs.
Not really
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward
Not sure how much longer this is going – probably close to an hour – but the Diversity & Comics live-roast of “America” #12 is great.
https://youtu.be/u2PQOfyNhTE
🙁 YouTube made live streams even worse? Used to be when you opened one, you could go to the start and watch from there. Now it’s stuck on ‘live’. I’ll wait till he posts the finished recording later.
Yeah, I’m not getting notifications for streams at all. But…he made it a “scheduled” one so you could click on it before it opened and wait. Not sure if that’s new, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it.
I don’t have an account. If I want to follow a channel I just bookmark it and check back whenever I wonder if they have new content.
Whoa. .308 comments. Spooky.
I’d love to shoot my .308 more often, but ammo costs eat into my plastic crack habit.
My only 7.62 NATO firing gun
I bought it when I went on my shooting hiatus and it’s been collecting dust since. It’s in the queue of guns I need to shoot now that I’m shooting and buying again.
Probably don’t need to mention it but make sure it’s 7.62×51 and not 308, unless the headspace is right.
Meaning the ammunition I shoot? Yes, I intend to only shoot 7.62 NATO in it.
I’ve not heard of 2A/2A1s in .308, only 7.62 NATO.
I’ve been researching ‘real’ 308 Ishapores and I don’t think they exist.
In reality, a Lee Enfield action should be plenty strong enough to take 308, but I don’t relish being an informal Underwriters’ Lab.
The No. 1 and earlier actions as originally designed and built weren’t. The Indians discovered if they used a different steel, they would take the pressure. So the Indians built the 2A and 2A1 using the different steel. The discovered another problem: The different steel wouldn’t take any typical gun finish. So the Indians spray painted the rifles.
The No. 4 action could take 7.62 NATO pressures, and after the Second World War, the British converted some to 7.62 NATO. The L8 series. If I remember correctly, they went nowhere.
I have one, it is a fun shooter.
larf
Microaggressions can be ‘lethal,’ profs tells Berkeley students
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10589
***
A UCLA professor told students at the University of California, Berkeley Wednesday night that “racial microaggressions” can be “lethal” because they lead to “racial battle fatigue.”
During the event on “Free Speech and Racial Micro Aggressions,” Dr. Daniel Solorzano also argued that microaggressions should be viewed as “assaults directed at people of color” in order to keep them “in their place.”
…
Notably, however, data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that in 2016, blacks had the lowest suicide rate of any racial demographic, just below Asian/Pacific Islanders and significantly lower than American Indians and whites (Hispanics are considered separately).
***
Shut it down, we’re done.
That prof has the revolutionary conscience I want sitting on the bench, not sitting in a classroom.
Sadly, sociology professor is the position where he will do the least damage.
Microaggressions turned me into a newt.
That Man sure Likes to Use Random capitalization In His Sentences.
You know what other Person spoke a Language that capitalizes all Nouns?
George Washington?
EE CUMMIES?
LOL
Ludwig von Mises?
Ah, this is closer to what I was looking for.
Favorite TV shows by party affiliation
http://www.businessinsider.com/favorite-tv-shows-of-democrats-and-republicans-2016-7#democrats-favorite-tv-shows-12
***
According to E-Score, “Republicans prefer programs that are family-friendly, funny, plot-driven or have storylines that involve ‘good versus evil.’ These shows may be more appealing to supporters of Trump.”
…
According to E-Score, “Democrats prefer programs that are sexy, edgy, emotionally involving, ethnically diverse or have strong characters. These shows may be more attractive to supporters of Clinton.”
***
Both like The Walking Dead, Supernatural, and The Big Bang Theory.
wait… NCIS is still on the air?
Season 15.
Oh the Simpsons is still on the air as well…
It will always be on the air in some form- good looking people solving crimes with lasers.
No, that’s CSI, I don’t think NCIS uses lasers so much.
NCIS, as I recall, uses Gibbs’ gut.
Who watches more than a couple hours of TV a week anymore?
I do. Big time. Mass consumer of pop culture right here.
Go on. Anything good out there?
It would be interesting to me to see controlled data as well. For instance, do Republicans and Democrats of the same age and education level really watch different shows?
I can’t think of a show that backs libertarian ideas on inner city problems more accurately than the The Wire and it was really popular amongst blues.
David Simon would be surprised
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-marx-two-americas-wire
A few paragraphs later:
Hey dumbass, those libertarians you hate so much are actually the only ones in the political arena who are serious about ending the War on Drugs and all these bad effects.
China would like a word.
And North Korea has maintained a 100% incarceration rate for decades
“the most incarcerative state in the history of mankind”
Around 18 million people went to gulags during Stalin’s rule and about 1.5 million of them died there.
https://www.nps.gov/malu/learn/news/upload/Gulag_Fact_Sheet.pdf
I don’t know why the National Park Service has info on this, but there it is.
I’m right, though.
Have you watched “The Wire”? Do it. Trust me.
It is easily the most libertarian show ever made and that progressives can watch it and not draw the right conclusions is absolutely hysterical.
Even funnier, the very creator doesn’t understand his own research, which involved closely so getting to know police, labor union folks, teachers, etc.
Let me give you some highlights off the very top of my head. This is just scratching the surface:
1) The cops in the show are motivated by staying alive and generating the statistics that the mayor’s office currently needs. The mayor’s office wants to tout murder rates, the cops do a careful job of making sure not to look too closely at potential murders. They want to generate convictions? The cops try to sniff out cases where murders can easily be pinned on someone.
2) The only time in the entire show the cops make any progress helping the city is when a few rogue cops secretly set up a red light district. They make a deal w/ local gangs to overlook things like drug and prostitution in the area. As the research actually shows, of course, this really works… it does in the show too. It sucks crime away from other areas and allows the government to narrowly target protection, medical services, emergency services, etc.
3) The utterly corrupt race-bating mayor of Baltimore is undone trying to take credit for this. He then tries to backtrack when it turns out the cops doing this under the table doesn’t poll well.
4) The new mayor was a young idealist. He gets an opportunity, though, to do something corrupt to sell out his values and win the election. He rationalizes, though, that if he does this he can do a lot of good once he gets power. You can guess what happens. New mayor same as the old mayor.
5) The criminals are, of course, at least as smart and innovative as the cops and more desperate because they absolutely depend on it. The cops just want to go home to their families at the end of the day.
6) The police force only makes any progress when a small, independent task force is set up. The leader of this task force is actually a smart, competent guy and he quickly figures out that some bumbling and ineffectual cops are actually quite competent at doing things the bureaucracy never recognized. He makes them specialists and figures out how to use people to the best of their ability… for awhile… naturally pressure from the government closes down this operation before it accomplishes anything to its full potential. They fail to get the big guy.
7) The media is primarily interested in selling news and even manufactures it (another major storyline).
8) The gang kids who go to urban schools are forced to by truant officers, but the entire system is a sham. The truant officer shows and has them go to school for the day to say he did his job and check them off a list. They have an arrangement.
9) Political pressure from idiot bureaucrats makes the school teacher’s job nearly impossible.
10) There’s an entire season about labor unions — basically organized criminals.
Etc.
Again.
Top of my head.
I don’t understand how you could watch this show and think Democratic policies are awesome.
TOP MEN
Simon might be a prick, but he’s a hell of a journalist and story teller. (Read Homicide: Life on the Streets or The Corner to see just how good his writing is). Prof of that is how he can craft a story that is so honest it reflects a truth he doesn’t even believe in. Where you can separate the art from the artist.
The Wire is good enough that the message can be the complete opposite truth then what the messenger thinks it is.
The thing with The Wire is that progs watched it as outrage porn, because for them, the only reason the city is screwed up is because not enough progs are in charge or they didn’t try hard enough.
I only watched an episode or two, and the gist is “the schools suck, the cops sucks, the city sucks- won’t Saint Che Guevara swoop in and save us?”
I’m surprised that “progressives” can even stomach the thought of Baltimore. It’s a place where Democrats have basically ruled with no opposition. They have tons of welfare and gun control – things that should make it a utopia according to the “progressive” models of society – yet it’s one of the most dangerous cities in the country. Funny how that works.
That might be the reasons progressives aren’t so optimistic anymore. Even when we get rid of the deplorables and toxic white males do they act as if they think utopia will result?
How many of them even know the city was under uncontested Democrat party rule for decades?
I’m still convinced they don’t even get us.
I hear the term “heartless”.
I’m not heartless. I really want to help America’s inner city blight problem.
That’s what I’m saying give our ideas a shot. We’ve tried yours. They keep failing. The whole damn TV show I’m talking about is a monument to their failure.
Oh, they get us.
What you don’t get is that they don’t want to fix the inner city blight. How are they going to rely on the inner city vote if people are dragged out of their poverty and hopelessness?
Oh no, having libertarian ideas resolve the crises they whine about is positively the worst outcome for them.
Seems more like they hate us. Like really really hate us.
It will never happen unless we can loosen the grip that pubsec unions have over local urban elections.
Reminds of how early TNG was about lefties absolutely repulsed that JFK and LBJ did not bring them the utopia they desired and instead we had Reagan.
Stop your foolishness or I’ll take you back to Farpoint human!
As an uneducated libertarian/conservative rube I have not watched tv regularly since the early 2000’s. Except football of course. Not really due to political bias I saw in shows, it just got stupid and fuck paying for cable or dish for stupid. I can get that for free online.
Right. Who pays for porn?
Only 2200 words written tonight. Dammit, I’m slacking.
Now, if you’ll turn to page three in your packets; we’ll go over fiscal projections. I’m pleased to announce a thirty-two percent increase in profit for the fourth quarter, as well as a sixteen percent rise in yearly revenue at all subsidiaries, this is despite heightened competition and higher labor costs. Compound percent yield of course assumes reinvested interests. Now, value-oriented stocks appear to be attractive prospects once again and quite able to generate a healthy cash flow and give investors a reassuring margin of safety. Although the market is far from where it was six years ago, we’re looking anew at value stocks and mutual funds that hold value-oriented shares which tend to have a low price-to-earnings or price-to-book ratios or high yields from dividends, in fact, value stocks have performed better than growth stocks over the past several years among the larger corporations and the long-term compound appreciation is quite impressive.
Failed to Deliver, error 303; not attached to gif or video of Sailor Moon.
Seth MacFarlane? Ugh.
Get a load of Keyser Söze here!
Ew….
Super gay.
On the topic of TV, there’s a hit show here called “Skatto Japan” every Monday night. Viewers send in their stories of people getting their comeuppance for boorish public behavior. Things like cutting in line etc. Usually, another customer or passenger on the bus finds some clever way to publicly humiliate the offender. Here’s one skit from the show you can understand without subtitles.
Reinforcing social norms and values.
I’ve seen enough hentai to know where this skit is going.
That show would go over like a lead balloon in places like my city where nobody has any sense of shame.
What are the chances a libertarian is elected to your city council?
His city elected a socialist mayor.
So any day? /Gillespie
Well, 17% of us did.
陰茎！
Just say “Chimpo” unless it’s tiny, then it’s a “Chinko”.
Exactly. The skits are hyperbolic, but they certainly reflect what people would want to do if they could.
What an unusual language they speak on your planet. Which one is the female?
Saw this poster the other day. It’s the new version of Smap called Arashi. The way they dress those dudes… *smdh*
I imagine this magazine is popular there.
About right. Thing is, due to immigration restrictions, all the dangerous and physically demanding blue collar jobs are done mostly by Japanese dudes. Those are some scary AF guys.
Enough of your filthy lies.
So you’re saying the Village People have an accurate portrayal of NY construction workers?
Pornhub would never lie.
Eye bleach, though I have no idea what she is singing. I guess I should learn Russian.
For ZARDOZ:
http://www.strangesports.com/images/content/111070.jpg
I know the penis is evil, but ZARDOZ doesn’t have a penis does he?
http://www.celeb-for-free.com/pics/celeb4209/pics/sophie_reade_05.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pzCMCqna1Tk/UUkTa8mpmvI/AAAAAAAAF1Q/rgJVxmOecms/s1600/Joey+Fisher+Topless+Super+Big+Boobs+Nuts+Photoshoot+the-gutteruncensorednews.blogspot.com+011.jpg
Not NSFW in spite of the title.
http://thetango.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/hot-girl-01.jpg
Is she wearing Mr Flopears?
Could it be that they accidentally put an HM video on the monitor?
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dulles-plane-winds-vomit_us_5a999b28e4b0479c025232f5
A video reenactment.
“Turn that shit off. I’ll show you good music”. Sorry, never results in the other guy digging your tunes.
I’ll show you good music.
(Say something nice about link, despite not having clicked on it. Introduce my own link with, “If you like that, you’ll like this.)
Best use of this stupid hashtag (trending #1 in the US!) going around Twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD2wbHCXvLo
Living room dance party at my house. Stay til the end of the track for the Howard Dean sample.
OT: Is there any kind of universal perception on what is “sad” or “happy” music?
For instance, it seems like most Russian, Eastern European, and klezmer music has a lot more minor chords and songs that would be classified as “sad” to the typical American listener. Do these cultures produce a greater percentage of sad/melancholy music, or do they just have a different idea of what happy/sad tones are?
And then you have stuff like Japanese noh music, which seems emotionally unclassifiable. If you asked a Japanese person what kind of emotions this music evokes, what would they say?
It’s a fascinating question. I’d say it’s a mixture of nature and nurture. Yes, a certain part of emotional connotation to particular keys and modes is acculturated, but we have known for a long time that certain parts of our brain seem to be specialized in music (as opposed to language or random sound). Our brains are very good at recognizing the root of a chord, and different parts of the brain light up when listening to major and minor chords, including the limbic system. The brain seems to like harmony better than dissonance. Likewise, in all natural languages, emotion can be expressed in someway through intonation. It is theorized that the neurological origins of language seem to have the same roots as birdcalls and shit. When you think about it, language and music is a bit of a false dichotomy…particularly in tonal languages.
The brain seems to like harmony….
I hate the Beach Boys.
Ok, but do you at least like bones and thugs?
Yes
Don’t know much about Noh, but since it’s part of a drama, I’d think that listening to it without watching would be like listening to the musical score from Friday the 13th or Halloween.
It seems to apply to traditional Japanese music in general, though. I read an anecdote somewhere that soon after Japan was opened up to the West, a European orchestra came and performed Mozart for some Japanese noblemen. They sat and listened politely, then after the performance was done, quietly talked among themselves about how hard it was to endure such racket.
Can’t say I much liked Mozart much myself when I first heard it. The Koto and shamisen I loved upon first hearing.
You ever met a Russian? They are grumpy. A Russian can say good morning and they sound pissed off.
Cheery and ignorant happiness may have been selected out of the population over the past few centuries.
You’re right that there’s a lot more use of minor chords in eastern music. the scales however tend to be “melodic’ minor which is used in jazz and classical more often in the west, and isn’t as distinctly “Sad” as it is ‘dark’ or sassy-sounding. (think gypsy music, which is by no means ‘sad’ but has a lot of minor changes)
in the west, we use minor pentatonic more often, which has (as the name suggests) 5 notes instead of 7, and it lacks the 2 “jazzier” notes which you hear so often in eastern melody. Minor pentatonic is basically the “blues” scale and is what 90% of classic-rock uses.
i think the simple way to put is that western songs in minor keys tend to be more uniformly similar, hence the perception of ‘minor’ as ‘sad’. eastern folk music rooted in minor keys tends to have far more variety and less one-dimensional.
*footnote
i’m not sure, but i think the japense koto used in noh also – by some accident of fate which i’m sure musicologists have written shelves of books about – uses the minor pentatonic scale. and it has that VERY sad repetition of phrases you find in minor blues songs in the west. It even has similar types of slides and bends. i think the main differences is that phrases don’t resolve on the root very often, so it often has this “leave me hanging” feeling
basically, if you can play the blues guitar, you could probably jam out w/ a koto, and do a reasonable facsimile of their traditional music.
this person plays some blues on the koto and you can sort of hear how, if you just changed the rhythm, it might sound more like the og stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjNzzktJIkU
Did you watch the Closing ceremony in Pyongchang? They had the Korean Koto thingy jamming with electric guitar and a Korean folk band. It wasn’t pleasurable.
Did love this, though. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OEpVDafY6Z8
lol, that’s hilarious
im not really familiar w/ the instrument, and i didn’t realize that the whole thing is simply TUNED to minor pentatonic. its basically a harp. i thought one hand actually fretted notes, but its actually just there to mute strings you DONT want to play, or bend them
As you know, music ain’t my thing, but I do go to see traditional performances often. Taiko, shakuhachi, koto. The delicate movement of tiny women manipulating the strings is mesmerizing.
In this one you can better see the pickup she added to get the electric sound, along with the plug to basically make it an electric guitar.
Olympic opening + closing ceremonies are like the superbowl halftime show to me. i don’t do them. *unless i was super baked.
Throat singing works with so many styles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNrYg7ps220
I studied a little Noh and Kabuki in college as part of my minor. But don’t remember much, but I do remember SGT. Kabuki Man
LOL, so TROMA had a Toxic Avenger cartoon in the early 90s, apparently they also wanted to make a SGT. Kabuki Man cartoon.
Reminds me a little of the “Cooo-ooo-kie Crisp” dog.
Fun fact: it was originally manufactured by Ralston Purina (yes, the dog food company) before General Mills bought it and changed the recipe.
My brother accidentally ate dog food once. For some, reason the dog food was the table in plastic container similar to the one we kept cereal in. Also, the dog food in the dark looked a lot like generic chocolate puffs.
At least he realized his mistake before he finished the bowl.
My brother used to actually eat dog food. He was a weird kid.
The one who became a nuclear engineer in the navy?
Sounds about right.
No, the one who works in IT.
Sounds about right.
In “why am I telling anyone this” news; I once ate a few Milk Bones at a party. They weren’t terrible.
SJW Triggered by “men are taller than women” – gets swiftly removed by taller, stronger man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLRBodKsgTA
features Curb Your Enthusiasm theme
Good god, there really IS a correlation between SJW gender grievance bullshit and blue or purple hair, isn’t there??
[Professor Farnsworth voice]
Oh my, yes….
https://thefeminismproject.com/softer-stuff/jcpennys-hereiam-campaign-almost-makes-up-for-their-sexist-past/
***
Blogger Kath, the women behind Fat Heffalump, was brought to tears by the ad.
I mean what can I say? It’s wonderful! Including actual fat women, including fat women of colour. Doing kick-arse stuff. With nary a word about “health”. No “plus-size” models that wouldn’t actually wear the plus-size range. No faux-bo-po slogan accompanied by a bunch of tall, hourglass, white women. Fat women actually speaking about themselves and their own experiences. Fat women showing that you can have an amazing life, exactly as you are.
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bo-po?
Any other weather geeks out there? Check out this site. The wind patterns are mesmerizing and all of the features are pretty cool. Forecasts so far have been pretty much spot on.
… Hobbit
That site (along with my WeatherBell subscription) were pretty useful to me during hurricane season.
It’s pretty good, but a monster memory hog – in Opera at least.
Soylent Grin: why does soy consumption cause rictus in men?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az352YaZNM0
Meh, besides soy sauce I’ve only had soy products like once before, and I’ve made that face in photos. My breasts also lactate, possibly unrelated.
The only time I ever deliberately use soy products is, 1) soy sauce, and 2) tofu in dishes like chankonabe and mapo tofu, both of which contain meat to which the tofu is merely a complement.
However, I don’t buy the “soy turns males into girly men” hypothesis. It’s based on the presence of phytoestrogens, but other vegetables contain phytoestrogens in far greater amounts than soybeans.
But yea, any soy product that is dressed up to resemble meat is going to taste like Satan’s asshole.
No, I think girly men turn soy into ‘meat substitutes’, I don’t believe soy turns men into girly men.
today I learned
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Their name comes from the Greek phyto (“plant”) and estrogen, the hormone which gives fertility to female mammals. The word “estrus” – Greek οίστρος – means “sexual desire”, and “gene” – Greek γόνο – is “to generate”. It has been hypothesized that plants use phytoestrogens as part of their natural defence against the overpopulation of herbivore animals by controlling female fertility.[3][4]
The similarities, at molecular level, of estrogens and phytoestrogens allow them to mildly mimic and sometimes act as antagonists of estrogen.[1] Phytoestrogens were first observed in 1926,[1][5] but it was unknown if they could have any effect in human or animal metabolism. In the 1940s and early 1950s, it was noticed that some pastures of subterranean clover and red clover (phytoestrogen-rich plants) had adverse effects on the fecundity of grazing sheep.[1][6][7][8] Researchers are exploring the nutritional role of phytoestrogens in the regulation of cholesterol and the maintenance of proper bone density post-menopause. Evidence is accruing that phytoestrogens may have protective action against diverse health disorders, such as prostate, breast, bowel, and other cancers, cardiovascular disease, brain function disorders and osteoporosis,[1][8][9][10]
***
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogens
***
A more comprehensive list of foods known to contain phytoestrogens includes:
Coffee
Hops,[30]
Bourbon whiskey
Beer,[31]
***
[Darth Vader “No”]
Recently in confirmation bias
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The study failed to find a link between testosterone levels and musical taste in female volunteers, but for the males a clear link soon emerged. Higher testosterone levels in males was linked with a preference for a type of music that the researchers labeled as “unsophisticated.” This category encompassed genres such as both soft and heavy rock. Individuals with lower testosterone levels were more inclined to enjoy what the researchers labeled as “sophisticated music,” a genre that included both classical and jazz.
***
http://www.newsweek.com/psychology-testosterone-rock-music-jazz-785506
Soft rock is an oxymoron.
I hated it before it was cool
A lot of people might say that of you. But I’m not one those people. I just like reading those people’s posts.
Phony/ Holden Caulfield.
Is that like a movie reference? I don’t get it…
I thought this would have been obvious to the old fogeys on this site with their old man rock music. 😉
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye
Catcher in the Rye, so he was like gay for bread?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comin%27_Thro%27_the_Rye#The_Catcher_in_the_Rye
Years and years ago, I decided to become something of an autodidact, and reading a lot of “classics” was part of that.
The Catcher in the Rye was one book I really didn’t care for. It just seemed to be like nothing was really going on, nothing was at stake, and most of the story was this angsty teenager just wandering around NYC ruminating on random bullshit. But that’s just, like, my opinion and stuff, man.
Dismal book.
I think that was Gore Vidal, cousin of Al.
Al Vidal?
Never heard of him. Was he the guy in the music video with Chevy Chase?
I mean he is Al Gore’s cousin.
Has Chevy Chase ever sung The Ballad of Chevy Chase?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ballad_of_Chevy_Chase
I like that quote from Mark Twain on classics. Also for the hilarious irony of it.
The irony that Mark Twain ripped off a lowly boat worker named Samuel Clements?
No, that has written some of those classics that no one reads.
The fact that it can be proven how many of Mark Twain’s ‘Classics’ can be shown to have been stolen from a lowly working man named Samuel Clements demonstrates how the capitalist system exploits the workers at the expense of the elite!
Clemens was a Confederate so screw him.
Huh, just realized the lead singer of Thin Lizzy wasn’t a white guy, nevervideo of them before.
Where are the thin women named Elizabeth?
Stay away from my niece you son of a whore!
I still miffed that Thomson Twins have no twins or anyone named Thompson.
But the Olsen Twins had a board game.
Which one is the best? Or Elizabeth?
Whichever one it is that is locked in my basement.
And talk about fake advertizing – Men in Hats – never wore hats!
Next thing you know you’ll show me a video of Men Without Hats wearing hats.
The Rolling Stones are actually people!!!! How Outrageous! Old bands I my day used to have real manly men,non-SJW real names like er…Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians!
I’m sorry, that was a bit harsh. I should have said son of woman of the night.
DUH.
Lynott was an interesting personality. Irish mom, Guyanian father, born illegitimate in Birmingham, moved to Manchester, then ‘adopted’ by grandparents in Dublin, where he picked up that accent. His mother took over a pub in Manchester in the 70’s which I used to drink at at the start of the 80’s.
I never met him myself but I knew his mom at the peak of Thin Lizzy’s fame and she never really approved of the lifestyle and she thought Gary Moore was a total shit for some reason – possibly because of Lynott’s pretty obvious addiction by that time. It was an interesting coincidence in a way and indirectly got me back into knowing B-list musicians after I’d left London.
I’m totally untalented musically, but I seem to end up hanging out with them.
I never liked I Got A Secret either…
I was in several bands in my youth, despite the fact I can’t sing, dance or play an instrument.
Well, yeah, I drummed for a band in college. I never thought it was important to actually be a musician to bang a drum.
An earlier Boorman film called Leo the Last sounds…interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_the_Last
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz#Production
Huh. Aren’t a lot of Glibs still pissed that Peter Jackson dumped Tom Babadil?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRqbdpbDwVo
How many Glibs prefer this to Peter Jackson’s trilogy?
I prefer this to the Peter Jackson trilogy.
Do you find it better than the Trek reboot films?
GILMORE, you got me thinking about this blogpost by Charlie Sweatpants – he who coined the term “Zombie Simpsons” – talking about how present-day Simpsons writers have either made no effort or simply do not understand the roots of The Simpsons:
Many of us get annoyed with the DC hive mind of journalists – well, I’m guessing it’s the same principle with entertainment writers today. They’ve got similar backgrounds, went to the same schools, live in nice neighborhoods – they don’t know how to write something like The Wire, The Simpsons, New Jack City, etc.