FairAndUNbalanced.com

 

From The Journal of Improbable Research:

Scary animals, a new study reveals, can be separated into five distinct clusters :

“(1) non‐slimy invertebrates; (2) snakes; (3) mice, rats, and bats; (4) human endo‐ and exoparasites (intestinal helminths and louse); and (5) farm/pet animals. However, only snakes, spiders, and parasites evoke intense fear and disgust in the non‐clinical population.”

…

The study revealed some unanticipated results – such as :

“Having been bitten by a dog [also] decreased the mean disgust rating and the more serious the injury, the lower the rating was.”

– More –
 

 

 
From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

Here we go again, another case of anti-semitism at hand and yes, it’s in Texas:

But there might be some hope…

– More –
 

 

 
From The Onion:

“As a society, we’ve become more tolerant, and this new law will make sure that no matter their personal beliefs, those who sell guns can’t refuse a firearm purchase simply because the buyer has a history of violence or other red flags,” said Abbott, explaining that he was distressed to learn that some Texas residents had been denied firearm purchases because they had several domestic abuse convictions on their record.

– More –
 

 
From Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes:

Liberation is too hackneyed a word. Everyone wants liberation from something. What does this prove, but a universal lack that’s never satisfied? Moksha, if I remember right, is the Sanskrit for liberation: a mythical state that you read about but never meet in the flesh—unless from a probable charlatan seeking disciples.

Let me unburden myself from the very idea of liberation, that straining against the shackles wanting change. Why does everyone long for change, when change is already everywhere? Change is the one constant thing, it never runs out.

Now is the moment of my turning round, my volte-face, which sounds like jumping in the air to spin round and face the other way.

– More –
 

 

From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

There is still a lot I don’t think we know about last weekend— the G-7, where Trump variously lied about why Russia was not part of the conference, why he did not attend the climate portion of the talks, said that Melania Trump has come to know NK’s Kim Jong Un very well when she has never met him, and lied about high-level talks regarding a future trade deal with China. That is an epic quantity of lying, which has been followed by debates by Trump proxies (McEnany, Stu Varney, etc.)

But of course he does. It’s very well documented that he lies. What isn’t as well documented is how well he actually knows what the truth is, and that should be actually concerning. Is he lying because he knows very well what’s going on, but thinks we need to hear a better story, such as the tale that a Chinese trade agreement is coming, so stop tanking the damn stock market already?

Or does he have no clue at all, and we’re just trying to read the tea leaves in a cup of plain tap water?

The real story seems to be frighteningly a bit of both.

– More –
 

 
From Infidel753:

North America, too, once teemed with elephants, camels, lions, giant sloths, mammoths, and other huge creatures. After thriving for millions of years, they too suddenly became extinct around 12,000 years ago. It’s been suggested that this had something to do with the end of the last ice age, but these animals had come through many previous ice ages just fine. 12,000 years ago also happens to coincide with the arrival of the first humans in the Americas. In this case we actually have, for example, mammoth skeletons with spear-points embedded in them, suggesting the real reason for the mass extinction.

Why were these animals so easily killed off by primitive hunters, while their Sub-Saharan African counterparts were not? The evolution of human intelligence, and thus of highly lethal weapons and strategies for hunting, was a slow process spanning millions of years. As proto-humans gradually grew smarter and more dangerous, the animals of Sub-Saharan Africa had time to adapt. To a lesser extent the same was true of animals in southern Asia and the Mediterranean world, who coexisted with proto-humans for up to a million years.

The native animals in Australia and the Americas had never needed to adapt to this danger, which did not exist in their environment. Then, just 40,000 and 12,000 years ago respectively, they were “suddenly” (relative to evolutionary time-scales) confronted with a fully-developed threat for which evolution had not prepared them. They probably felt no fear of the puny-looking new creatures. Long before evolution had time to breed that fear into them, the little newcomers wiped them out.

– More –
 

 
From The Propaganda Professor:

I first heard the term sky hook at age 19 when I worked briefly in a hardware store. As a hazing stunt against new employees, it was the custom for another employee to call the department where the newbie was working and, pretending to be a customer, ask about the availability of sky hooks (“in a brass or bronze finish”, my co-worker Joe specified when he called me). Never having heard the expression before, I assumed it was just a colorful term for some kind of hardware I was unfamiliar with; I did not assume that it was an item that bolted directly into the sky — which was indeed the idea. (After placing Joe on hold and figuring out I was being had, I picked the phone back up and said, “Sorry, sir, we have no brass or bronze — only raspberry.”)

The term sky hook originated among pilots in the early Twentieth Century as a tongue-in-cheek reference to some imaginary hook in the sky that held planes up and enabled them to maneuver under difficult circumstances. Metaphorically, then, it came to mean any theoretical concept that “held up” other concepts. (Subsequently, the label has been applied to other ideas, and even to real mechanical devices.) Or more broadly, any unsupported presumption that becomes the basis of policy or dogma. For example, the belief in a flat earth could be deemed a sky hook; from it was suspended the perception of how the entire cosmos looked and operated, and false notions about the limits of navigation. This is an example of top-down thinking; and it’s a good illustration of why it’s so counterproductive. (Still, top-down thinking has its uses in some circumstances; many people, for instance, who become very successful in their chosen field begin with a dream of where they want to end up and then figure out how to get there.)

The ultimate sky hook, of course, is God.

– More –
 

 

From News Corpse:

However, there is a common thread that weaves through much of the hallucinatory fallacies that clutter his emotionally and intellectually stunted brain. He has an all-consuming fetish with his perceived popularity. Crowd size seems to be a stand-in for his virility. And often his craving for attention is manifested in his obsession with polls. But unfortunately for him, they mostly reflect how bitterly despised he is by most Americans. Even polls from Fox News and his favorite ultra-biased pollster, Rasmussen, show him in dire straits.

But polls are just the political equivalent of a mode of survey that Trump has had much more exposure to: The Nielsen Ratings. His fourteen years as the host of a reality TV game show has permeated his world view. And it is the prism through which he sees everything related to his life and presidency. This contorted mindset produced a Sunday morning tweet attacking sitcom star Debra Messing:

Here Trump is renewing his competition with other celebrities while also wholly inventing their alleged admiration for him. (I’d bet the limit at the Trump Taj Mahal that Messing never called him “sir”). He’s also demonstrating that he gauges his self-worth by his comparison – not to other presidents – but to other Hollywood luminaries. That’s his benchmark of approval. What’s more, he measures the value of news media by the same criteria. It isn’t insight or knowledge or experience that validates the media. It’s ratings.

– More –
 

 

From jobsanger:

This shooting, like those before it, makes a few things very clear:

• There are too many guns in this country (more guns than people).
   
  
• Guns are too easy to get by people who shouldn’t have them (criminals, terrorists, the dangerously mentally ill, etc.).
   
  
• Young white homegrown men are far more dangerous to the public than immigrants (yes, this shooter was a 30 year-old white man).
   
  
• Republican legislators think guns are more important than the lives of their fellow Americans.

– More –
 

 

From Tommy Christopher:

On Saturday morning, between retweets of Hurricane Dorian updates and convincing professions of love for Tiffany Trump, Trump extended a piece of an olive branch to Fox News by praising those on the network whom he still feels are “fair” to him.

“Has anyone noticed that the top shows on @foxnews and cable ratings are those that are Fair (or great) to your favorite President, me!” Trump wrote, adding “Congratulations to @seanhannity for being the number one shoe on Cable Television!”

– More –