Month: September 2019

 
From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

Should we talk about the government? Because it looks like NOAA top brass had to tell their people, whose job is the weather, not to talk about it, because if they contradicted the Little Bronze God in the Oval Temple, what would he do? Maybe reduce their funding through some leger des main trop petit pour un gross homme, in much the same way he is raiding other programs for money to fund his border wall. You better believe people snap to when Trump makes demands if a Rear Admiral decides his job description is “one who covers Trump’s entire orange peel rear.” (That’s the Coast Guard, and in addition to taking a hit from Trump’s utterly stupid shut-down shenanigans from last year into this year over wall funding, they too are getting raided for wall money. Maybe the man threw himself on a reputation grenade for his department. I can’t be too judgmental about that.) It kind of implies that Trump is running the government like some kind of mob boss.

There’s a lot of other indicators, of course.

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From Scotties Toy Box:

This is what the misinformation put out by the racists have brought the US to.

That this woman thinks she has a right to demand someone prove to her they are legally in the country, to show her ID, treat the person like shit, and claim she was going to block his truck. All because she has gotten the idea she somehow is the legal authority and others who look hispanic or speak spanish have to prove themselves to her.

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From PZ Myers:

Am I alone in thinking this idea, even if it worked, was ridiculously stupid? I’m living in the Midwest, in the midst of farm country. When I drive to the big city of Minneapolis, I pass through about 150 miles where all I see on either side of me is corn and soybeans, each individual plant of negligible value, growing with negligible individual care (in aggregate, it’s expensive in time and labor), without computers tweaking each plant along. It’s what plants do. Farmers don’t have the time or money to nurse each 1m2 of cropland along with personal attention and a dedicated computer. I don’t understand the point of this gadget at all. My wife planted a little circular garden in our backyard, maybe 5 meters in diameter, and right now I’m buried in somewhere around 50kg of tomatoes.

This box is the most useless over-hyped technology ever. I wonder how much Jeffrey Epstein invested in it?

That’s assuming it worked. Surprise! It doesn’t!

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• Of all the petty, immature, so-called “humor”: making fun of Ivanka’s unintentional windblown look? …Okay, guilty. Maybe she instinctively puffs her arms when feeling threatened. [Stop, Burr! Just stop! – Aunt Tildy]. driftglass speculates on what Ivanka will wear tomorrow. I’m so … very … ashamed.
   
• Category 5 hurricanes are epic in their destructive force. Several have hit the United States since my President took office. Mr. Trump has been publicly befuddled each time. M. Bouffant at Web of Evil follows the terrible history of Category 5 hurricanes as they howled through the mind of Donald Trump.
   
• PZ Myers tracks hilarious internet reaction to my President’s increasingly shrill double downs, triple downs, quadruple and quintuple and on and on downs to his sharpie down dumb defense of what started as a simple, innocent verbal stumble. Just … can’t … admit … a mistake. Ever.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit has discovered, within Category 5, the elusive particle that physicists have suspected might exist: someone on the left as wacky as our current President.
   
• Andy Borowitz reports on US reaction as the British Parliament moves against Boris Johnson. Americans are shocked by the spectacle of a legislative body taking action.
   
• After Mike Pence’s visit, Dorian de Wind at The Moderate Voice reports that Irish eyes are not smiling.
   
• Scotties Toy Box finds one interesting contrast as America’s Vice President goes wayyyy out of his way to stay, and have his official entourage stay, at a Trump (that would be Donald Trump) property, thereby pushing US taxpayer dollar’s into the owner’s pockets.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post is angry about the latest anti-immigrant cruelty by the Trump administration: sending a new official order to desperately ill people, mostly children, who are here temporarily for medical treatment unavailable elsewhere in the world. They, and their families, are ordered to drop all treatment and leave the country within 33 days. Not all are children. Jack reports on one severely disabled young adult woman, who will likely not live long after her forced return to Guatemala.
   
• Michael John Scott, at MadMikesAmerica, points to the warm embrace of religiosity by the Republican Party, and the epically callous nature of the party and of the version of Christianity it now represents. Some Christians have expressed similarly harsh criticisms.
   
• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, a Christian evangelist feels sorry for Bruce and Bruce’s hate filled atheism. Bruce responds.
   
• nojo watches, and laughs at, the drama. Conservative columnist Bret Stephens discovers some obscure criticism by a distant professor and goes all how-dare-he. Looks up the fellow’s boss and his boss’s boss and writes to them. THEN obsesses in print about it: A true competitor to Donald Trump for the Philip Queeg Strawberry Award. Great fun is had by all, with the exception of Bret Stephens. Calling Bret’s reaction an overreaction is an underreaction.
   
• John Scalzi writes science fiction. He writes with enough talent to win the coveted Campbell Award, originally named after influential editor John W. Campbell. It has recently been renamed. The Gunn Center of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas also is renaming their annual Campbell conference. It is now the Gunn Conference. John Scalzi defends that decision, and similar decisions by other institutions. Seems Campbell was a fascist jerk who used his editorial position, attempting to impose his horrible views on writers of science fiction everywhere.
   
• Frances Langum reports as Sarah Huckabee Sanders reports on her first day reporting to Fox television. Seems she is surprised and disappointed to discover so many feminists don’t like her. After all, she is a woman.
   
• Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara suggests that our annual celebration of Labor Day is absurd. Labor has minimal value. It’s skill and intellect and merit that are valuable. Besides, Labor Day is, well, kind of marxist.
   

 

From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

History is a good teacher.

If we pay attention to her, she reminds us that populations don’t become monstrous overnight, that nations don’t abandon humanity in a single moment, that generational human rights atrocities don’t form in an instant or in a vacuum.

Corporate sickness is never sudden.

There is always a slow, deliberate, almost imperceptible pattern…

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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.”

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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…

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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.

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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.

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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.

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