Category: Uncategorized

 

From The Propaganda Professor:

Predicting the future accurately is always a daunting challenge, even when it entails merely assessing the potential of a single person. Walt Disney was fired from his first newspaper job by an editor who declared that he had no imagination or original ideas. Michael Jordan failed to make the cut on his high school basketball team. Steven Spielberg was rejected three times when he applied to University Of Southern California film school. Elizabethan playwright Robert Greene famously scoffed at a newcomer on the theatre scene, a certain young “upstart crow” named William Shakespeare. Network executives urged Gene Roddenberry to “get rid of the pointed ears guy”. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first TV job because she was “unfit for TV”. A newspaper editorial during the 1992 presidential campaign predicted that George Bush would win reelection quite easily, with Ross Perot coming in a distant second, and dismissively added that “Bill Clinton is not considered a factor.”

The difficulties are magnified astronomically when you are dealing with groups of people, and entire cultures. There are so many butterfly-effect variables, so many of which are unforeseeable. In 1962, when a new major league baseball team made its debut, they were truly horrible, winning only 40 out of 160 games. Everyone wrote them off as hopeless, forever doomed to be a laughing stock. Nobody saw it coming when, 7 years later, this ragtag team called the New York Mets made an abrupt pivot in mid-season, surged into the playoffs, and decisively defeated the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles to win the World Series.

Not surprisingly, then, many people who have predicted the future, including individuals who were extremely knowledgeable about the topic, have been drastically, embarrassingly off track.

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My President explains why he must start a trade war with China:
(3 sec)

Harry Potter explains why a young woman, Romilda Vane, must have him:
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Wrestler Jeff Jarrett explains why he must be the next World Wrestling Champion:
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A future Republican President:
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From Gregory B. Gonzalez at MadMikesAmerica:

Donald Trump is an idiot! I know saying that every time I write an article about him is redundant, but as they taught me back in middle school, you must always begin whatever you write with a topic sentence.

Like a lot of people, I just assumed Trump would hit bottom and finally realize how much of a moron he truly is and at least try to keep his mouth shut long enough to do his job, and like those same people, I was wrong.

As much as I hate to admit it, there is no bottom. It’s like jumping off a cliff and finding out there is nothing below you to hit, just this abyss that never ends. I swear, by the time he’s done screwing up this country, every citizen in it is going to have a scorching case of PTSD. I can feel it already.

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From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

Hey, it’s sports in Seattle!

From Axios’ morning email thingie, so the weird formatting and odd bullets are totally theirs:

“‘Adult Recess’ Is Booming,” with people reliving schoolyard memories with tetherball, hopscotch and Lincoln Logs, despite sore muscles and tweaked knees, The Wall Street Journal’s Jim Carlton reports (subscription):

• “In Seattle’s Cal Anderson Park, about 1,000 men and women turned out for an adult recess … that included kickball, hopscotch and tetherball, along with chicken nuggets and grilled cheese.”
   
• “In Greensboro, N.C., the city decided to put on an adult recess [that] included Twister, four square and tetherball.”

Afterward, many head to a bar.

Imma call bullshit. Jim Carlton clearly is out of his depth in reporting how infantile Seattle is.

As Cal Anderson PLAYFIELD is in my neighborhood and I walk past it at least twice daily, I can confirm that are no tetherball courts anywhere in the playfield or park, I’ve never seen anyone playing kickball. It’s a big park/playfield, BUT 1K hipsters playing four square? Hopscotch? It would be noticeable. Also: There is no large expanse of concrete to do this, so this is also patently BS.

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From Julian Sanchez and Caleb O. Brown:

An assault in Manhattan leads a prosecutor to get a warrant for cell phone location data from Google. Is this how it’s supposed to work? Julian Sanchez comments.

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From John Scalzi at Whatever:

The intent behind this person’s words was cruel, and I believe intended to insult and to wound. After no small outcry, this person apologized, and Mary Robinette, who is one of the most gracious people I know, accepted it. But I for one never forgot either the insult to her, or the dismissive intent behind it.

Last night, Mary Robinette Kowal won the Hugo Award for her novel The Calculating Stars. This follows her and her novel also winning the Nebula and Locus Awards.

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From Tommy Christopher:

Leaked Memo Shows House Republicans Literally Claiming Trump-Echoing El Paso Shooter Was ‘From the Left’

A leaked memo of gun violence talking points shows House Republicans instructing members to claim that the El Paso shooting suspect whose manifesto echoed President Donald Trump‘s anti-immigrant rhetoric is actually an example of “violence from the left.”

On Friday, The Tampa Bay Times published a document entitled “Q&A on Combatting Gun Violence” and subtitled “House Republicans Are Committed To Preventing Gun Violence,” which features many well-known Republican arguments against gun control.

But one passage in particular seeks to blame the El Paso shooting, as well as several other shootings that were not politically motivated, on “the left”:

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From Infidel753:

The world’s two largest mafia gangs — the “governments” of Russia and China — have recently come under challenge from some of their subjects. These challenges are not likely to end well, but they serve as reminders of the long-term weaknesses of such regimes.

Since July, Moscow has been the scene of pro-democracy protests drawing tens of thousands of people. The immediate cause was the official “disqualification” of non-toady candidates for local office (Russia still holds “elections”, but de facto bars anyone not loyal to the regime from running), but the real fuel for the protests has been discontent with corrupt authoritarianism and lack of democracy at the national level. The regime has called the protests “riots” and reacted with mass arrests and beatings, yet the numbers grow with each march. The city has been put under what amounts to military occupation. Polling shows 37% of people in Moscow supporting the protests, 27% opposed, and 30% “neutral”.

So far the uprising doesn’t seem to have spread beyond Moscow, but as Al-Jazeera explains:

In a highly-centralised state like Russia, the capital is possibly the only place that really matters when it comes to regime change. It is indeed the peaceful revolution in Moscow in August 1991 that ended communism and precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union. That revolution was preceded by two years of gigantic rallies with hundreds of thousands in attendance. Today’s protests are still a far cry from those, but they are growing…..

This may actually be the biggest threat to the regime yet.

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From The Journal of Improbable Research:

“For travelers, balancing luggage, a snack, personal items, and a drink can be difficult, often resulting in spilling of beverages either while walking around or while seated on, for example, a plane or in a car.”

What one needs, perhaps, is a self-stabilizing drinks-cup holder? And, fortunately, a newly patented solution has become available.

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From PZ Myers:

Much credit has to go to the Portland Antifa, who turned up in numbers to mock and dissipate any action by the racists. Eric Ward summarizes the day on Twitter, as does Robert Evans, with lots of photos. It sounds like the Proud Boys rally mostly fizzled, although there was a scattering of arrests and weapons confiscated. I think the best sign that they failed, though, was that they were reduced to arguing that they won because “Go look at President Trump’s Twitter.” He talked about Portland, said he’s watchin’ antifa. That’s all we wanted.. Your victory is getting Donald Trump to blab some nonsense on Twitter? That’s what he does every day while sitting on the toilet.

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