LOL
Leicester won, Spuds won, and ManUre looked like shit while losing at home to Burnley for the first time in almost 60 years. Liverpool-Wolves today! Columbus beat Winnipeg and the Minnesoooda Wild doubled up on the absolutely abysmal Detroit Red Wings. Why a fucking shitshow they have become.
Flowery writer John Hancock was born on this day. Not really any other birthdays, so I won’t dwell on them. Instead, I’ll get right to…the links!
Oops, our bad. But we swear, it was an honest oversight.
Pimps.
If any big-name celebrities, politicians, or businesspeople kill themselves today, chances are they were a pedo. Or “paedo”, for those of you across the pond.
This headline os slightly misleading. But only because they felt free to ignore Senate rules and came and went as they pleased. Hell, Feinstein actually left the grounds an hour before it was over.
I’m genuinely unsurprised to see what journalistic standards are these days. But this is still funny as hell.
Shithole that will probably kill off humanity.
Remember this the next time somebody tries to tell you we should be more like China. Of course, we chucked a guy in jail for making a video when it was going to embarrass Obama, so maybe we don’t totally have the high ground .
Sure the government of San Fran can make the trains run on time, but where the hell are they going?
Nice mullet.
I have a feeling he’ll be keeping his nickname in prison. What an asshole.
The hair in this is just amazing. Enjoy.
That’s it. Go have a great day, friends!
I’m genuinely unsurprised to see what journalistic standards are these days. But this is still funny as hell. – people like this hooligan are destroying the good name of social science
Peer reviewed. We now know his peers are.
You know who else destroyed the good name of social science?
Does this still work if he actually wrote the material here?
And for showing this whole thing is a sham that rips off college bound idiots, this man and his accomplisces MUST be burned at the stake!
Remember this the next time somebody tries to tell you we should be more like China. – depends on the person. To some thins wold be overselling.
Tankies?
One positive to your Everton prediction, even after the debacle vs Newcastle. The point edged them closer, they are only 4 pts out of 5th.
But this goes back to one of my points. The middle is a lot of mediocre teams, but even though they are only 4 pts behind 5th, they are still in 12th, so to get there they have to pass 7 teams. And someone or two is going to go on a nice run. Passing teams is hard, it isn’t just about point difference, because the middle will be playing each other and earning points.
6 point gap between 4th and 5th. 5 pt gap between 14th and 15th. 5-14 are from 34 to 30 pts. 15-19 is 25 to 23 pts.
The top 4 is separating out. Norwich has a good lock on 20th. Then there are the other 2 groups that are good fights. 10 teams fighting for the last Europe spots. 5 teams fighting to avoid 2 of the relegation spots.
It’s gonna be exciting, that’s for sure. And yes, the top 4 appear to have checked out. In two flights: Liverpool and then the other three. I wonder if any of them will feel safe enough to start fielding better teams in FA Cup play now that they’re safely in the UCL but have no chance to win the league.
I also wonder if Liverpool will start doing so should they happen to lose a league game soon.
I wouldn’t say Chelsea have 4th locked up.
6 pts clear and the teams below them all suck to some degree. They could collapse, but seems unlikely. I don’t see them getting to 3rd though.
Next 3 PL games are also LC, Man U, and Spurs.
Maldonado-Passage also was accused of killing five tigers in October 2017 to make room for other big cats
From that haircut, I’m guessing cougars.
“Hey ladies…I’m here!”
House managers, led by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), began presenting three days of opening arguments Wednesday in the historic Senate impeachment trial of President Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
I think i saw that Schiff argued that we couldn’t trust Trump to be punished at the ballot box, because he could just steal the election again. As in he said that as part of his argument to the senate.
Yeah. He’s laying the groundwork for Impeachment 2: Second Term Boogaloo for when Trump wins but someone from another part of the world exercises what we call “first amendment rights” by posting pro-Trump things on FB or twitter.*
*remember, Mueller actually indicted Russians for election meddling for FB posts.
I read somewhere this is a desperate attempt to have some kind of possible cover for team blue should their spell that keeps RBG looking like she is alive fails or gets dispelled and everyone finds out she is a zombie and Trump then decides to nominate someone else. Think about it: We impeached him! He should NOT be allowed to pick a judge we don’t want!
Not just FB posts, but regardless it and the other indictment (for hacking) seem to have gone nowhere.
This tantrum and attempt at coup has from the beginning been about the democrats realization that the deplorables can’t be trusted to vote team blue as commanded and their actions to mitigate that problem (their take on the fact that the plebes are not stupid enough to keep voting team blue or for establishment team red asshats).
The best remedy for this is to vote Democrats out of office.
The downside is we get more ‘Democrats ten years later’ Republicans. Yay.
What amazes me is that this moron is saying that our elections no longer have any integrity. Let that sink in for a moment.
History lesson
And the impeachment drumbeat did start before Trump took office — during that endless migraine of an autumn in 2016. But it wasn’t necessarily coming from Democrats.
“The GOP needs to elect Trump, then impeach him,” wrote Jonathan Ashbach, a conservative writer for the Federalist, a right-wing online magazine, in October of that year.
Ashbach enjoined the Republicans to impeach Trump off the blocks, as soon as he took his presidential oath. He admitted this was a “desperate measure,” but the times, he wrote, called for such Hail Marys. He went on: “If Republicans take the lead in removing Trump from office, the party might regain some of its lost credibility in parts of the electorate that it is anxious to attract.”
——-
At the top of the Republican hierarchy, Paul D. Ryan, then the speaker of the House, told Reince Priebus, then the head of the Republican National Committee, “This is fatal.” According to an extensive report in New York magazine, Ryan went on: “How can you get him out of the race?”
But Trump stayed in, and of course eked out his hinky victory in the electoral college. More outrages followed. Enough that by spring of 2017, Trump’s own deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, was proposing that he wear a wire in hopes of exposing Trump’s misconduct. He also discussed recruiting members of the president’s Cabinet to remove Trump from office for being unfit.
In short, Republicans have been trying to impeach this president since before he was sworn into office. And now, at last, they could make good on the fantasy.
As the Republican senators hear opening arguments in the prosecution of Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, many of their anti-Trump colleagues and advisers have huffed off in despair or fury. These days, it’s impossible to tell what calculations individual senators are making. Does the word “unfit” cross Romney’s mind? Does Graham ever hear “we will get destroyed” prophecy in his mind’s ear?
They were against Trump before they were for him, I guess. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the nation.
Save us from the Hinky Orange Man, before it’s too late.
And the impeachment drumbeat did start before Trump took office — during that endless migraine of an autumn in 2016. But it wasn’t necessarily coming from Democrats.
I think you mean: “It wasn’t only coming from Democrats.
Ronald Reagan part 2 in the Red Bull era.
The establishment types are pissed an outsider has exposed them for the incompetent and corrupt marxism/fascism peddling grifters they are. Trump has managed to accomplish practically all the things they spent a few decades telling us we couldn’t have that. Things like competent government, a good economy, the US being a fossil fuel exporter instead of dependent on the ME, halting bad trade deals, breaking the march of the freeloaders that team blue wants to replace the people with, exposing the media for the partisan inept hacks they are, and a slew of others. But the most evil thing orange man has done in the eye of the establishment, is make it blatantly obvious how stupid the supposed elite are.
Where is this “competent government“ of which you speak?
Its…its around here somewhere?
It has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement. The only country in the world.
Indeed. The biggest obstacle to the U.S. being like “Denmark” or whatever other fantastical paradise that people think exists, is that the United States government (and, of their own accord or by being dependent on Big Federal Daddy, most state and local governments) is incompetent and corrupt. This is not going to change easily, no matter if you elect President “Drain the Swamp” or President “The West Wing”. The most any President can do is work around the incompetence and corruption, and then that workaround just builds a new layer that eventually adds to the accretion of insurmountable obstacles for tomorrow. This culture is baked into the core of government, it starts at the legislature, flows through the courts, and solidifies in the bureaucracy. Presidents contribute in their own ways to it, too, of course, but they are more transient. The question more people should be asking is not “How can we be more like the Fantasy Kingdom of Denmark I invented in my head” but rather “Why is the U.S. not descending into warlordism?” because the latter is a more realistic possibility.
And then we install Hillary to her rightful place in the presidency.
Nah, then they can impeach Pence and after that it’s President Pelosi.
“The GOP needs to elect Trump, then impeach him,”
To what end? To tell voters that they don’t matter? To virtue signal to some other voters? This is a terminally stupid idea, and it gets no better if you replace the GOP with the Democrats and Trump with Obama. If you want to change the election outcome, you have to convince enough voters before election day.
An ostensibly Pleasant Hill-bound BART train took a wrong turn and ended up at the Lake Merritt station after crossing into the East Bay on Tuesday, according to the transit agency.
I have no clue where any of those places are.
Don’t sorry, they’re shitholes.
Far be it from me to defend the Bay Area but Lake Merritt is pretty nice (I had a friend who lived there) and Pleasant Hill is a typical suburb. You can do far worse on a BART train.
Pleasant Hill was the place where, over the years, Spud and I spent many Sundays that are difficult to remember.
Hell, Feinstein actually left the grounds an hour before it was over.
There is not a reason for her or anyone to be there anyway, at least not for the shampeachment.
Umm, Yes there is. We need a fair trial and that means Jurors have to hear all the arguments.
Diarrhea Feinstein
How long does it take to say “Orange Man Bad”?
It’s one phone call and they have the transcript. Appearance of corruption? Check. Case closed. I honestly can’t even imagine what arguments would change those facts.
That must be utter hell to be forced to listen to that shit for 12 hours (?) a day.
The process is the punishment.
But they are doing it to themselves. *shrugs* Guess there is some poetic justice in there somewhere.
Schiffty and Nadless are stuck there too, I think.
They are willing to take it up the ass if it helps them prevent orange man from rolling back the left’s agenda.
I’m talking about the shitbag republicans that sold us Iraq War part Deux. Schiff and Shumer have always been living in a hell of their own creation.
Rand Paul should troll moar by bringing a bottle of chocolate milk into the proceedings. The Twittersplosion would be glorious.
Maybe some cotton candy, like he’s at a circus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus_peanut
The thought alone of those things makes me gag.
Popcorn. In a bag marked Corn Pop.
And instead of a suit, wear dockers and a Burisma polo shirt.
All the spoofs featured “very shoddy methodologies including incredibly implausible statistics”, as well as “ideologically motivated qualitative analyses” and “claims not warranted by the data”.
SCIENCE!
One, “Our Struggle is My Struggle: Solidarity feminism as an intersectional reply to neoliberal and choice feminism”, was a rewrite of chapter 12 of Hitler’s 1925 autobiography with feminist “buzzwords switched in”.
They aren’t called feminazis for nothing.
TGA has a new calling in life, I think he would be good for doing this kind of work.
Do you mean that they are too stupid to realize that but for a few buzz words their beliefs kind of mirror those of one of the most evil beings to ever have lived? Or that they are so stupid that they simply can’t see how stupid they are? I think you mean that they are doing both, though…
I think they’really just pissed at being called out so obviously.
Americans take note: this is what liberty looks like. You don’t have it.
https://twitter.com/johnmilbank3/status/1219978653402046465
The ‘Liberty’ to be forced to allow all and sundry to tresspass on your property whether you want them or not?
You keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means.
If that’s what he’s talking about, we have those too… And ours are often paved.
Are we looking at the same image? Or are you trying to set the stage for some ‘gotcha’ that isn’t equivalent?
Are not sidewalks easements that require me to allow people to pass. Can’t put up a fence on the sidewalk.
Do you have sidewalks cutting across the middle of your property?
You upset bro? Do we not have easments here in America? I’m just making a joke that the point the guy thinks he’s making isn’t even true. Sure maybe we have slightly better protections for property owners than in Airstrip One, but even on his own grounds he’s being stupid.
Exactly what leon says.
Every US state has laws on easements. England had to pass a law to specific protect “historic” paths, which is what that was in the picture.
I will take our version over theirs, but he is wrong even on the existence of very similar things here.
How many easements going through the heart of a proprty are for all and sundry and not say, the power company? You keep avoiding the question of equivalent conditions.
How many easements going through the heart of a proprty are for all and sundry and not say, the power company? You keep avoiding the question of equivalent conditions.
Equivalent conditions: if the paths under consideration are truly historic paths, as robc says, and not a license to wander aimlessly, then the US absolutely has the equivalent in law. Adverse possession establishes easements by unrestricted use, and while this varies by state essentially if it can be shown that you have neither conditionally permitted nor expressly prohibited the transgress of your lands for a period of time (such as 10 years) an access easement will be established if it can be shown that people freely transgressed your land along a set path over the period of time.
Idiot doesn’t understand property rights.
Oh, I bet they do. Since they don’t own the property, they like the idea of denying the people that do own it of said rights. I guarantee you if they owned the property, they would have a completely different take on the whole thing. Nothing but idiots and small minds in this crowd of marxists.
Looks like serfdom to me.
Is that the pathway to buy a TV License?
An escape route from Muslim rape gangs for 9-year-olds?
Also in the US you need stargazing permits
https://twitter.com/SallyMayweather/status/1219975080379371520
Those appear to be gate passes to get into state parks after normal operating hours.
I want to joke about that but it is just too ridiculous on its own merits.
That’s New York state. You can’t judge the entire US by one state, I mean next, you could point towards California, or Minnesota for what the whole country is like.
It’s not even that. The whole premise that it is a “stargazing permit” is false. It’s an entry permit to state parks after hours. People are imply a limitation of stargazing rather than property access.
What limits on access to state parks should or should not exist and whether state parks shoul or should not exist are a different matter – most of the state is not a park. (And I still want to abolish the Adirondak anti-resident area)
Why the fuck do Euros care about us so much?
Envy.
We like having someone to pity.
Yourselves? Because every time these comparisons come up, it’s not long before the state of european affairs turns out to be worse.
You are trying too hard today. Dial it back…a bit, and it will work better, Pie.
Looks like he’s in favor of building a wall.
That’s a terrible wall, it wouldn’t even keep the Welsh out, let alone Mexicans.
The wall was there when the two Lords wanted to keep their property lines demarcated. Then when one Lord bought the other Lord’s lands and serfs he wanted to take the wall down but the serfs he bought wanted to keep the wall up because they didn’t want the other serfs stealing their shit. So the Lord compromised and only took out a small section so he could walk through it as a shortcut for himself.
“You can walk through but your sheep can’t,” ain’t freedom.
ideally a sheep gets stuck there
You sound Welsh – are you sure you’re Romanian?
Now I see good Euro ingenuity at work man…
*Applause*
Yes, UK is very proud of their freedom to rape sheep and low-class white girls.
Now try to defend yourself with a gun or speak freely about controversial topics.
I don’t need to defend myself as the land is safe, and we do not want the so called freedom to hatespeak
/provides Pie’s address to a group of Romani.
Oh no, they might walk off with his new roof!
But I’m sure they’ll have a roof they could use to replace it for a low price.
Well at least I don’t have bullet holes in my roof
Unless there’s prowlers on your roof, there’s no need to fire through the architecture. It’s like you don’t even shoot.
I SHOOT OK I SHOOT ALL THE TIME
No bullet holes in my roof or the walls of my house. But at one of the oldest craft breweries in Ohio, there’s a different story. They myth is that they’re from an attempt on the life of Elliot Ness.
I heard of Loch Ness didn’t know there was an Eliot
“I SHOOT OK I SHOOT ALL THE TIME”
Did the conversation just take a wrong turn into people playing with their puds?
Pie: Really? You never heard of The Untouchables? But there are rumors of the Lake Erie Monster.
THAT NOT RUMOR, THAT TRUE! STEVE SMITH AND COUSIN SEA SMITH GOOD FREN WITH LAKE ERIE MONSTER!
/flexes zebra mussels
No, we’ve got those. We call them easements.
I don’t get it…
Take some time after the boob links to get the blood back to your brain
Me neither, but I’m guessing some kind of open borders statement?
A smarmy limey regrets not being born American.
In much of Europe, hikers (and sometimes campers) have very old common-law rights to traverse on the “open fields” sections of “private property”, but are excluded from the “cartilage” which is the area around the home on the property.
This air-quotes are because land allocation in Europe started from a very different perspective than in the US. In Europe, the government as the nobles, and the nobles owned the land. There was no such thing as private property not in the government (or Church, or church, but that’s not much different) hands.
So the end result is, in England, you have the right to traverse on a well-worn dirt ditch that serfs used for thousands of years and in Finnland, you have the right to go camping in the 7,000 acre un-improved forest owned by some private individual who is part of the government.
Which is totes different than in the US, where you can only go on sidewalks, easements, roads, and anywhere (generally) on public land, which just so happens to be a fraction of all the land in the US and btw the fraction has a very small denominator. Which is totes different because $IgnorantOfTheWorldEuropeanOpinion.
Fuck you too autocorrect. Its called curtilage.
And it’s a concept here in the US to define where 5A extends or not. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.
Good stuff, thanks. And here I thought it was simply “No Fat Chicks”
Relevant
I regularly hike in state parks. There are stone walls everywhere. It just means that some poor colonial used the stony soil for a pasture or even worse, tried to grow crops there. Not sure what that has to do with freedom.
So is that the path the English take to take their terminally ill children to another country for medical treatment?
BART train took a wrong turn
It jumped the tracks?
Remember this
Leftists of all stripes already want to jail people for speech.
Only those who deserve it
Everyone deserves it, and when they find out what you said on Twitter in 2013, so will you.
STEVE SMITH WONDER WHY ROMANIAN FREN TROLL SO HARD TODAY? STEVE SMITH SAY “RELAX”.
Good morning, Sloopy!
Nice mullet.
It’s a nice mullet, but it’s not as good as this one.
The ’80s were a strange and wonderful time. This one rolled around after your selection. I’m pretty sure I had this album on cassette. Shameful, really.
Music link should have been this.
Earliest conspicuous use of product placement for Paper Mate?
Americans take note: this is what liberty looks like. You don’t have it.
Freedom is Slavery.
Last night, 52 Intel team armed with the latest intelligence hit the streets in hopes of preventing violence in your community. After a brief foot pursuit they were able to arrest one male and recover this loaded firearm. #SmartPolicing
https://twitter.com/NYPD52Pct/status/1214705527629975552
This looks more operational than the one in the tweet from… I forgot when I posted it but recently
Total hipster gun, look at those bespoke, hand-made bullets. No casting here man, each one is unique.
Reminds me of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O8m0mMDpHw
A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do
Sad, but the comments are pretty good.
I’m a bit surprised those rounds didn’t go off when whoever beat them with rocks was doing it. Seriously, how the hell do you get ammo into that condition?
Facts first.
On Wednesday afternoon, a CNN analyst cooked up a “conversation” between two Republican senators in order to smear President Donald Trump, his party, and Fox News. He later admitted to having completely fabricated the quotes, but only after The Washington Post’s self-described conservative Jennifer Rubin retweeted his “report.”
“Overheard convo between two Republican Senators who only watch Fox News. ‘is this stuff real? I haven’t heard any of this before. I thought it was all about a server. If half the stuff Schiff is saying is true, we’re up s**t’s creek. Hope the White House has exculpatory evidence,'” Joe Lockhart, the CNN analyst and the former White House press secretary for Bill Clinton, tweeted. His message received 5,600 retweets and 20,600 “likes.”
Ten minutes later, he added this caveat: “Ok maybe I made up the convo, but you know that’s exactly what they’re thinking.”
It does not matter if it is true, it is morally right
These people really love to project their own deficiencies and vileness on others, and that’s why we have the shit we do these days.
“Why would you think it was OK to make up conversations?”
“I learned it from you,
DadSchiff!!!”did… did this company just invent phone booths
https://twitter.com/lexlanham/status/1220060367805648896
Phone booths have more utility – they come with a phone.
Maybe they come with USB port you can charge your phone at and share all your data with the Chinese government who made the charge port.
^^ This guy gets it.
Today is #NationalPieDay. So we need to pick a virgin to sacrifice to Pie and his coven.
Fake News. Pi day is in March.
3/14
Thot Thursday will make you want to abuse your power.
http://archive.li/GMMPF
Abuse means to use in a way not intended. The evolutionary purpose of status is to get laid. Ergo, banging thots is not abuse of power.
Credentials, please
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sharply criticized the financial credentials of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on Thursday, saying the 17-year-old should study economics at college before lecturing the U.S. on fossil fuel investments.
Speaking at a press briefing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mnuchin was asked whether the world’s largest economy needed to completely and immediately divest from fossil fuels.
“Is she the chief economist or who is she? I’m confused,” Mnuchin said, before adding this was “a joke. That was funny.”
“After she goes and studies economics in college she can come back and explain that to us,” Mnuchin said.
Thunberg, alongside 20 other young climate activists, has called on all of those attending the forum to stop the “madness” of ongoing investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction and “completely divest” from fossil fuels.
Thunberg was not immediately available to comment when contacted by CNBC Thursday morning.
She FEELZ the truth.
Gawd no, please. Greta after studying state sponsored economics in Uni would create a Balroc.
She would be about as economically save as Karla Marx is with here economics degree from BU. At best she would be qualified to bartend or if she really sucks at that as AOC did, maybe be in politics.
I read AOC’s book on Economics: A Watermelon Grows in Brooklyn.
Give people free shit and just fucking rob the productive to do it!
Clearly you didn’t read it, or you’d know there are no “productive” just people who robbed others.
PO-TAH-TO… PA_TAH-TOH…
Mmmm… nightshades.
I don’t care if she is absolutely right about everything, the idea that the left is pushing is that we are supposed to just be beholden to what a 17 year old thinks.
Accept marxism because it came from a barely educated, marxism indoctrinated child!
Shouldn’t she finish high school first?
Why? It’s not like colleges actuall teach anything anymore, so there’s no prerequisites.
the 17-year-old should study economics at college before lecturing the U.S.
I mean, it worked for She Guevera.
Maybe you should sit this one out, Treasury Secretary Magical Thinking.
Do Open Offices even live up to their claims?
I mean even in the most cynical way, an open office would be a system to try to cram in as many people as possible into a smaller space to save on rent costs. But do they even accomplish that? Don’t they allow for employee sprawl and so could they actually end up in creating a less compact area than even just a bunch of cubicles, which have a defined size and limit?
Depends. My office has less than the minimum corporate rule distance between desks.
Corporate rule I mean the internal regulations of the company I work for.
Then again we never had the concept of cubicle in Romania. Even in commie times engineers were mostly open office
How else could the apparatchiks watch your every move?
When I was moved into an open office, I made sure I wasn’t assigned a desk. Since so many people stopped coming to the office regularly, I got my choice of desks as far from obnoxious people as possible. I’d still rather have my old office where I could meet people, close the door, have some privacy…
The people that still have offices and make the decisions about where the corporate serfs have to sit want you to know they don’t give a shit.
Do Open Offices even live up to their claims?
No.
Do Open Offices even live up to their claims?
Do they claim to be annoying because I have to see and hear other people all day?
“That’s called ‘collaboration.’ You should be more of a team player.”
Ah, youre the head of our real estate division! It all makes sense now!
What are you going on about? Real estate law is… Nah can’t even come up with a joke about my soul crushing work life. Kids drop out of school now! Every day you stay increases the chance you will end up a lawyer.
…too late. 🙁
The condition is managable. Whatever you do, don’t become a judge!
Are you kidding? Judges have absolute power in their domain, and get to punish the annoying lawyers and clients we lawyers have to be civil to.
I started my civilian career (after military and university) in the mid-80’s in which I was sharing an office with another engineer. After a few years I finally had my own office to myself. Then I screwed myself by coming back to Japan and was first in a cubicle, then open office in a number of different companies and positions.
Finally, I find myself doing project based work for a few companies with no entity – other than myself – in Japan. One of these companies has arranged for me to have access to a group of shared offices which I go to when I need a place to concentrate for the day. I am much happier not having a place I have to be every day even if I don’t have a steady paycheck. I’m free to collaborate with any company or group which can pay for my skills and this arrangement has recently started to snowball into a string of well-paid gigs.
I had to wear a suit for the first time in several months today.
*fans self*
He wears them so rarely that he’s had the suit since the seventies – it’s plaid polyesther.
Oh. *grimace*
Um … no, no that suit doesn’t make you look like Herb Tarlek. Not at all.
No, it is this one.
Cruel. Don’t tease me.
N=1, but the only open office I am personally familiar with has driven down the office cost/employee stuck in them.
What has it done to productivity?
No effect as far as I can see, but other people have run the numbers and haven’t changed us back and are instead rolling out more open office space based on how their numbers went.
Given how miserable these are, I’d have to see the numbers to believe it.
I’m suffering just from being able to hear nearby cubes and get less done than when I can get quiet. I can’t be the only one who works that way.
If I don’t have something specific to accomplish a certain day, I can go to the office. If I need to get something done, I stay home. The 2 year old is less distracting than my coworkers.
This is most likely the real and only reason. Any of the claimed “benefits” are just bullshit; somebody in accounting gets an attaboy (leading to raises, promotions, etc.) for lowering an easily measurable expense in isolation. Like most corporate cost-cutting measures, it is myopic change that ignores measurable and unmeasurable effects in other areas.
That nobody who works in the open office space seems to like it, except the people who get to retain distinct offices, is just an added bonus for the petty among managers.
In our case, I don’t think it was myopic at all. I think it has worked out pretty well. Would people prefer to have their own offices? Yes. They would also like to have their own pony, too.
You are approaching the same logic that advocates of the minimum wage use, you know. “We could all have nice things if it wasn’t for those corporate fat cats going after their attaboys, raises, and promotions. If only some of that could be redistributed to the workers, the fat cats would be any worse off!”
Re the argument against being equivalent to minimum wage arguments.
I don’t agree. When cinsidering an office floor plan one should consider the type of work and the types of people who do it to maximize productivity.
The analogy is reversed. If you want more productivity out of your human asseys, you should give them a workspace tha maximizes that, cut down in meetings, and give them large vlocks of time to accomplish set tasks.
But the people in charge of designing these things do not consider those things because they simply don’t know how those people work and what they need.
These aren’t McDonalds workers here.
Do you give your automaton robot different parts than what the manufacturer mandates? No. You’d break the machine.
Stupid fat fingers. No I don’t use predictive text or autocorrect.
Hard no. You optimize value produced less cost to employee. Maximizing productivity no matter the cost is a great way to go out of business and then the jobs disappear. And I’ll ignore the fact that “maximizing productivity” leads to the kind of conditions that burns out workers.
That may be true at some places, but it is neither inherent nor specific to open offices
The working conditions of people in open offices are orders of magnitude better than McDonalds workers. We are talking about office workers moving around bits and bytes. They get to sit. They get to pick out their own clothing. They get to work in climate controlled environments. They get to go pee whenever the spirit moves them. (all generally, yes, some places are run by shitty tin-pot dictators)
Lol.
There is a dress code that only gets stricter as you move up the ranks.
The ‘climate control’ is to cook the whole building, then let the side facing the sun get even hotter.
The number of functional, unocuppied bathrooms is never sufficient to the number of people in the office, so it’s either wait or go walkabout.
so it’s either wait or go walkabout.
Not gonna lie, having an excuse to wander in your office is kinda a perk….
Also, unless your advocating that every employee gets their own office toilet… I don’t know how that calculation changes between open office or cubicle or what not.
That’s only true when you’re not on a full bladder seeking out the facilities to rectify the situation.
Interesting. I still think it would be interesting if some Managment Student did a study on it. Because a lot of the “Open Office” designs i see include those ‘Lounge work rooms’ that look like an awkward college commons room, and i wonder how efficient that really is when it starts coming to office cost/employee.
We have a number of small meeting rooms and a couple small phone rooms that aren’t much bigger than a booth. The meeting rooms are designed for actual meetings and work well. We don’t have any lounges that would look good on a glossy tri-fold brochure. Which isn’t to say that everyone everywhere does open floor plan right. Sturgeon’s law and all that. I think we are in the 10% not crap.
But I stand by the idea that “We could have nicer things if management wasn’t so greedy/lazy” is no more applicable here than it is in the minimum wage context. Something something Bastiat something unseen something.
I don’t know about other parts of the country, but around here, if you don’t want to work in an open office, there are many options out there that pay about the same as low-on-the-hierarchy office jobs. You can drive a bus, or work in a warehouse, or do landscaping, or clear ice and fix utilities in the bitter cold, or climb on roofs and torque wrench (I don’t know what an actual roofer does) or clear toilet paper clogs out of suburban household shitters.
You don’t get a door until you at least reach division director level around here, and not even all of them have offices. I’m not going to assume that open plans only corral the rank and file.
Look, I can’t really argue your point because I work at home on my own stuff. I know I must have very long uninterrupted blocks of time to get stuff done.
The only open floor plan I’ve experienced that worked without making me utterly insane was a data entry pool. We all had headphones if we wanted and it was quiet as a mouse otherwise.
When I was an admin, I was open air and fair game for everybody. I could not get one fucking thing done but I was expected to have things completed in spite of the incessant interruptions.
So I will defer the argument. My being open and available to everybody was a nightmare, even when it was my kids when they were little.
We don’t have any lounges that would look good on a glossy tri-fold brochure. Which isn’t to say that everyone everywhere does open floor plan right. Sturgeon’s law and all that. I think we are in the 10% not crap.
Nice. Whenever i would intervew at a place that was overly excited to talk about all the employee ameneties, i’d get worried. “Look i’m here to work and get paid, not enjoy myself and spend all day here”.
My last job was a mix of cubicle and open office. It was kinda open office, but everyone had huge desks, so you never felt cramped. Granted the office we were in was probably cheep enough that they weren’t worried too much about cost/employee.
But I stand by the idea that “We could have nicer things if management wasn’t so greedy/lazy” is no more applicable here than it is in the minimum wage context.
Yeah. though from a “Leadrship/Managment” perspective i do have a bit of respect for managers when they don’t work in an office when everyone else is working without one. It definatly makes it seem like they aren’t eschewing the “Little” people. Open offices will tend to get a manager to interact with his reports rather than only talk with them once a week, or only when they are mad. Caging yourself off leads to toxic management.
Minor quibble, Managers absolutely have to have a private space, even if it is not an office they sit in all day, because nothing is more destructive to morale than publicly calling someone on the carpet for a screw up.
I’ll agree to that, there should be private reprimanding. And i’ll say that one of the sickest feelings i ever had at work was in that open like office when the HR lady came got someone and then came back with him and his box and we all had to sit there and watch as he packed his desk…. And then to have her turn and ask another guy to come with her. Rinse, Repeat.
It was garbage.
I’m not saying, necessarily, that management is lazy or greedy, at least not any more than the rest of us. Managers, and accountants, are nevertheless self-interested like everyone else. Meeting the wrong incentives, or optimizing for the wrong metrics, may be an entirely rational decision on an individual basis that is still nevertheless poisonous to the business as a whole. It is up to managers and accountants, as much as it the rest of the employees, to be mindful of unintentional and higher-order consequences, both individually and when creating incentive structures for others.
And as to Bastiat, that is precisely my original point: the cost savings of the open office is the seen, the impact it has on employee morale and productivity is the unseen. I don’t need to hear every conversation that happens on our half of the floor, and I doubt most people around me need to hear my voice all the time, either. It can be difficult to focus on a task when there are lots of distractions, and open office spaces are full of distractions. Furthermore, the biggest alleged benefit of open office spaces, that is to say collaboration, is entirely mooted when people are jockeying for the choicest seats and you end up sitting next to people you don’t directly work with, while half your team is on the other side of the building or in another building because everybody is just getting crammed like sardines into whatever space is available.
My open office has a “soundproof” door that I can hear children and husband yelling through. If I need to get away, I go to a library. Yes, open office, but people have to be quiet.
Except that one librarian at that one library who yells across the (very large) open main floor.
Addressing participants of WEF on Tuesday, Thunberg scolded political inaction over the climate emergency.
“I’ve been warned that telling people to panic about the climate crisis is a very dangerous thing to do. But don’t worry, it’s fine. Trust me, I’ve done this before and I can assure you it doesn’t lead to anything,” Thunberg said.
I laughed.
I’m sure people have called it “dangerous,” but really it’s just dumb, dishonest, and counterproductive.
“Subjects who made only dietary changes had a fat loss of 69% of total weight loss, whereas subjects who added endurance training had a fat loss of 78% of weight loss, and subjects who also added resistance training lost almost exclusively fat (97%).”
https://twitter.com/gfj1979/status/1219759685190004738
So apparently low card + weightlifting leads to better body composition outcomes
So they conclusively proved that exercising and eating right are parts of a healthy weight loss regimen
Cardio doesn’t do as much for you like weight training. You want to lose weight? Lift weights. Stop cutting fat and start cutting carbs.
So, checking my loss with calorie restriction and exercise. I’ve dropped ~30 pounds, and based on the bathroom scale body fat percentage (which I’m willing to accept isn’t accurate, but should at least provide trend lines) I’m showing ~75% of weight loss being fat. No added endurance training, but I was already doing that anyways.
They didn’t control total calorie consumption across low carb vs low fat. This study is useless and doesn’t show what the authors claim. Given that it was published in 2010, this was late enough to be well known for any honest researcher to be the first thing that needs to be controlled when comparing different macro compositions.
This single study is flawed. This holistic review is far more up to date, including much larger and better controlled studies: https://sci-fit.net/ketogenic-diet-fat-muscle-performance/
I did not read it fully was saving for later… I generally favor lower carb diets but not keto… mostly balanced but certainly not 50% carbs. Never tried very low carb, but I have seen claims that it is easier to eat fewer calories that way for some.
I do not like the phrase holistic review myself.
On very low carb for a long time, you have to start counting calories to make sure you get enough, so as not to stall out. Generally, you use fats to do this (butter, mayo). It is easy to not get enough calories because you eat enough fat to keep you sated.
I hit this point. It was not fun, having to count calories again. then finding ways to come up with the deficit.
Filed under “Stuff already known”
Greta after studying state sponsored economics in Uni would create a Balroc.
She and Gulag Barbie could start up an eco-consultancy to guide us to a beter place.
Colonizing the moon does not look so bad now huh?
I don’t think those kind of ovens are carbon free.
Ovens? No, they compost.
Guess that’s why Cambodia is a net food exporter these days.
Oh, no you can’t grow crops on it, that would just be raping Gaia more! You have to let the wilderness return.
Speaking at a separate event on Tuesday, Trump appeared to launch a thinly-veiled attack against the Swedish climate activist. “To embrace the possibilities of tomorrow, we must reject the perennial prophets of doom,” Trump said.
The U.S. president did not name anyone directly during his speech, but he did encourage those in attendance to ignore environmental “alarmists” and their “predictions of the apocalypse.”
He’s going to have her disappeared by his death squad!
Nah, he’ll just spread rumors she has dirt on Hillary. The kid will commit “suicide” soon enough.
Double tap to the back of the head or hung in her closet with all the autopsy signs showing strangulation?
Both.
She was very determined.
Sadly, with the way she’s been treated by her handlers… this is a distinct possibility.
Lots of religious movements begin with a martyr so…
Speaking of which, did anyone link this yesterday?
(Fake but
truefunny.)It’s not a sham.
Schiff cited the editorial board, which has taken a staunch anti-Trump line since the 2015-6 election, as if its opinion ought to be considered compelling evidence by the Senate.
He said:
“On September 25th [sic], the Washington Post editorial board reported concerns that President Trump was withholding military assistance for Ukraine, and a White House meeting, in order to force President Zelensky to announce investigations of Vice President Biden and purported Ukrainian interference in the U.S. election.
The Post editorial board wrote: “[W]e are reliably told that the president has a second and more venal agenda. He is attempting to force Mr. Zelensky to intervene in the 2020 presidential election by launching an investigation of the leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden. Mr. Trump is not just soliciting Ukraine’s help with his presidential campaign; he is using military aid the country desperately needs in an attempt to extort it.”
Vindman (NSC) leaks to Ciaramella (former NSC) who leaks to Misko (former NSC, now on Schiff’s staff) who leaks to the Washington Post editorial board. and Schiff cites the editorial board in his testimony.
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/01/22/whistleblower_was_overheard_in_17_discussing_with_ally_how_to_remove_trump_121701.html
what a laughing stock our intelligence community has become.
That’s what you get when you replace the leaders with politically reliable types (leftist Obama bootlickers).
Trump should start tweeting that he needs no help defeating Biden, along with an endless series of clips of Joe being creepy & idiotic. “Who needs help beating this guy?”
Comme des Garçons called out for cultural appropriation after sending white models down the runway in cornrowed lace front wigs during Paris Fashion Week show
https://twitter.com/DionneGrant/status/1218837329797963776
What culture are they appropriating, exactly?
People who complain about “Cultrual Appropriation” don’t understand history – or culture.
From the shit these tools were wearing, they don’t know fashion either.
“Comme des Garçons called out for cultural appropriation after sending white models down the runway in cornrowed lace front wigs during Paris Fashion Week show”
What I get a kick out of is commercials for shows like “Marriage Boot Camp Hip Hop Edition. a significant number of the black women have long, straight blonde hair. But of course that’s okay.
That’s punching up and therefore stunning and brave, hater.
I’m halfway through Mein Kampf. No spoilers, please.
And they live happily ever after
It’s a cookbook!
Unexpected twist. Allowed.
Let’s just say there were oven involved.
Gave y’all twenty minutes and no one stepped up with “Epstein didn’t kill himself”. Disappoint.
The Jews did it.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/white-nationalists-arrested-ahead-of-richmond-rally-planned-to-kill-gun-rights-demonstrators-to-spark-civil-war/“> Just like in the movies
Three alleged members of a white supremacist group were plotting to murder demonstrators at Monday’s gun rights rally at the Virginia Capitol before they were arrested by the FBI last week, according to court documents.
The men were caught discussing their plans on a hidden camera set up in their Delaware apartment by FBI agents.
“We can’t let Virginia go to waste, we just can’t,” said Patrik J. Mathews, one member of the hate group “the Base” that promotes violence against African-Americans and Jews.
According to authorities, the 27-year-old former Canadian Armed Forces reservist also discussed creating “instability” in Virginia by killing people, derailing trains, poisoning water, and shutting down highways in order to “kick off the economic collapse” and possibly start a “full blown civil war.”
Mathews also discussed the possibility of “executing” police officers and stealing their belongings and remarked that, “We could essentially be like literally hunting people.”
“Virginia will be our day,” said 33-year-old Brian M. Lemley Jr., adding, “I need to claim my first victim.”
Serious revolutionaries, or drunk shit-talkers? I reserve judgement.
I wonder which one was the Fed plant.
All three? This sounds like another one of the usual FBI jobs we expected during the Obama years.
All of them. We have a lot of alphabet agencies.
Whichever one brought up the idea in the first place.
Guessing at least one each from the CIA an FBI.
That was my first thought.
All of them. Each from a different agency.
Whew. They caught the only three people that were planning violence. Or…
Monty Python Montreux Special 1971 – Rare Clip 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=57&v=pmB3307smI8&feature=emb_logo
And on that note, I am away. Public holiday tomorrow, the office was mostly empty. Most people took their work from home day today. I had to take it yesterday due to the roof people.
What Holiday is it?
Vlad the Impaler’s birthday?
My road is an ice sheet; slid off, stuck in a ditch. Happy freaking Thursday.
Any damage?
Scratched up the paint on the passenger side. Got lucky with my counter steering and just barely missed a hitting a large cottonwood.
Well that’s good. Paint’s easier to fix than drivers.
Thoughts and prayers.
You should have used a car?
That sucks
Fuck me. I have to take my kid to Children’s Mercy.
Fuck me
My wife wouldn’t approve. Sorry.
Seriously though, I hope everything ends up being alright.
My bad. Just going to the ophthalmology clinic. I say Childrens Mercy to myself to remind me I’m going somewhere far away, not to the eye dude around the corner.
Had to resort to CMH because the stupid eye docs around the corner couldn’t get my kid’s RX right, didn’t understand the problem and couldn’t fix it. So my kid still can’t see, waste of money, and she still has migraines I am ALSO taking her to a DIFFERENT doc at CMH to fix.
The problem was her glasses lenses were so thick and in exacrly the wrong material they should be and in the wrong size frames that they were distorting everything and casting auras. She needs soft contacts to see.
Not ONE of the previous 3 eye docs said a word that the lens construction and frame shame were the problem.
Noooooooo just get her thicker lenses with the high index plastic. That’s the ticket.
Can you tell how annoyed I am? Four years and hundreds of dollars and it wasn’t her RX. Ever.
Tens of thousands of gun rights advocates rallied in Richmond on Monday to protest the state’s Democratic legislature’s gun-control agenda. Critics raised fears beforehand that militant white supremacists could disrupt the rally, but the day ended peacefully with no violence.
DAMMIT!
Related?
Can someone explain the Flynn thing to me?
Russians. It’s just Russians all the way down. Except when it’s Ukranians.
Not me.
The FBI forced Flynn (by threatening to throw his kids in jail and selling his wife into indentured servitude, and I am barely kidding) into accepting a plea deal where he would admit he had been working for Turkey without following the legal requirements to register as an agent for a foreign power. Thing is Flynn didn’t even know that the people he was working with worked for Turkey, but he assumed if he pleaded guilty, the whole thing would go away. What he didn’t know was that the Obama admin holdovers had orders to destroy and punish him for not just resisting the Obama Iran deal, but for telling people how bad it was, and that this choice was a real bad one to make. So, after Flynn pled guilty, they demanded he turns states witness against one of his partners they wanted to nail too and in court admit he knew that they were working for Turkey, and he refused. He told the FBI that was not going to happen. So then the FBI faked his confession (by actually removing a word that made his statement exactly the opposite of what he said and presented that to the court) to throw the book at hi.
Flynn then changed lawyers. The new lawyers immediately demanded all evidence from government because they knew that the FBI was lying and trying to set him up. The case finally is reaching the point where these facts will all come out and it will end up showing how corrupt these fucking people are. The unelected bureaucracy, especially the Obama weaponized 3 letter agencies, are now led by some of the most evil and corrupt fucks ever to have lived. The whole impeachment and orange man bad phenom is about them trying to make sure their power and ability to hide their corrupt and criminal activity remains hidden from the public.
holy crap. you really think this will be proven in court docs?
Erm, the docs are being turned over, and the new lawyers have the FBI’s number, so at this point, I think these perps might try to stall and hope if somehow the left steals the election a dem president will help them prevail, but otherwise the FBI and the people still pushing for this conviction of Flynn have nothing to stand on. As I have stated before, unless we punish the people doing this stuff and expose them, we can kiss our republic goodbye. In this case, it looks like the good guys will win (although Flynn now being broke and his reputation being ruined, might not feel he won anything).
WOW. Thanks.
Obama is a piece of shit.
more details. And you have no idea how much of an understatement that comment about Obama is. The left is desperate to protect his legacy and themselves for foisting him and his criminal rule on the world, but there is no hiding how inept, corrupt, and defective the Obama years really were. The damage he did is directly responsible for orange man’s election and the crazy behavior by those that want to undo that.
I don’t know what the deal is with Flynn but I am getting tired of lots of people, including lots of soi-disant libertarians, accepting whatever the FBI says at face value. There is no excuse to not record interactions between agents and clients, law enforcement agencies not named “FBI” across the country do it routinely. People who should know better lap up the FBI’s excuses and misdirections because OrangeManBad when they should be demanding, no matter the outcome, that all interactions between law enforcement and the public are documented in ways that are not so trivially tampered with.
I’m of the opinion that if the FBI says it and does not produce an independantly-verifiable recording, it’s a lie by the FBI.
s/client/suspect, witness, or other individual/
Not sure where I got “client” from…
Yeah, this whole thing about how they take hand written notes, and then those notes are taken as fact, is complete bullshit. Who came up with that nonsense, Hoover?
The world is just fucking nuts…
It’s called “friends with benefits”.
We use labels as linguistic shortcuts, knowing that they couldn’t possibly convey the richness of the lived-in experience that they represent
I’d have started my advice a little differently.
What I don’t know is what to call this relationship!
You are their cum dumpster.
“I’ll take things I wrote to Penthouse Forum but have never really happened for $1000, Alex”
Six brothers living together? I’m not buying it.
slid off, stuck in a ditch
I hate when that happens.
Last time (last Feb, probably) a neighbor came by and dragged me out. Fingers crossed.
“What I don’t know is what to call this relationship!”
Trailer Park Boys, the not reality series?
That was sposed to be in reply to AlexinCT
So I have to go out today and I have to go in Trigger Hippie’s general direction (although I don’t know where he slid off the road). I am driving a very nice (to me) car now, but it is not as good in snow as my old junker Granny car (1996 Olds), whom I have sold.
I’m not looking forward to this.
What sort of article is this? My avatar is not at the top where it should be. FAKE NEWS!
MUST CREDIT HYPERION!!!!
Well, at least she is honest enough to admit that despite all their efforts to make it so, the dnc operatives with bylines still remain unable to control the news and the people. I bet had she managed to prevent orange man from winning the election they had rigged in her favor, that she would be hard at work to correct this problem….
We do have some well-off people who support Democratic candidates, there’s no doubt about that, but they’ve never bought a TV station. They’ve never gobbled up radio stations. They’ve never created newspapers in local communities to put out propaganda. That’s all been done not just by Murdoch and Fox, but by Sinclair and by the Koch brothers and by so many others who have played a long game about how we really influence the thinking of Americans.
What the actual fuck? Leftists have a lock on 90% of media, including that which purports itself to be “news”. The progjection is never-ending with these people.
Some people say “Long Game” others call it “Not acting like American public will get sick of your bullshit”
I read AOC’s book on Economics: A Watermelon Grows in Brooklyn.
Most excellent.
I don’t think it’s funny at all anymore that these fake papers keep getting published.
It’s pointing to a broken academic system gripped by ideology.
Boghossian is a liberal not unlike Weinstein who I hope has realized there’s no liberalism anymore and that he’s been existing within a progressive framework.
Come to the dark side Peter. You’re among friends here.
“It’s pointing to a broken academic system gripped by ideology.”
No, it’s not getting there. Outside of some STEM programs, it’s way past broken. It’s nothing at all anymore outside of far left activism.
STEM itself has been infected and marked for death so to speak.
Nothing beats the time I had a chat with a friend. He’s a professor of architecture – who helped establish a special link between his university with the people, schools and organizations who deal with Frank Lloyd Wright ( forger the details but he was privy to all sorts of neat things about Wright. I digress) and was talking about how SJW were infiltrating architecture. One time, he was sitting at the table with three architectural genius; soft-spoken men of impeccable manners (including incidentally my friend) plus a SJW. The SJW was spewing off all kinds of nonsense but they gave in. Why? He was just too forceful and loud. My friend isn’t the sort to get into such strenuous verbal altercations. But SJW, as we know, are. So they figured let him learn from his mistake.
I never followed up on the story but I’m willing to bet the person didn’t learn from the mistake and probably doubled-down.
I know architecture isn’t STEM.
I think there’s enough math and engineering in there to get an honorable mention.
“STEM itself has been infected and marked for death so to speak.”
Well, sure, they want to destroy Western culture out of envy. Just imagine the day when automobiles, commercial airliners, and bridges will be designed by woke intersectionals with no engineering skills. I’m stocking up on everything so I don’t have to leave the house ever again.
Keep an eye out for the acronym becoming STEAM. The A is for “Arts”, to slip in basically everything else so that it means nothing. I’m all for the arts, but it just ain’t the same thing.
Arts do not require a college education – they require apprenticeship to a master artist.
We’re lacking master artists due to the ravages of the 20th century, and academia isn’t healping.
For what it’s worth he was a key player in the reno work at St. Jospeh’s Oratory.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/st-joseph-oratory-renovation-2018-1.4692178
Cops: Muslim Sex Grooming Gangs “Didn’t Understand That It Was Wrong”
It doesn’t matter if they didn’t understand. String them up by their nads and let all and sundry throw stones from the boundary wall at them.
Same punishment for the cops that failed to arrest the rape gangs.
If there is an easement, they can pass thru the wall and throw the stone from closer.
I think there are some European countries where that is a valid defense now so….
The Costanza defense.
If I had known this kind of behavior was frowned upon… The previous country I lived in was OK with this sort of stuff.
Bullshit.
Exactly. Enablers are just as bad as perpetrators.
You know who else thought it was OK to sleep with young girls? It’s also why they don’t think it’s wrong.
If they didn’t think it was wrong, they wouldn’t be sneaking kids away from children’s homes.
They do know it’s illegal.
Charles James Napier is spinning in his grave.
Bullets soaked in pig Fat,
When Churchill said the Battle of Britain was going to be the country’s finest moment, I don’t think he quite realized how sadly accurate that statement was going to be. Then again, here we are throwing stones in this glass house of ours…
The Brexit proposal sent to the EU should include “And we get back the Duchies of Normandy and Aquitaine”
War criminal
In Africa and the Middle East, Trump proudly advocates plunder. In October, he said the United States should have taken Iraq’s oil to make sure we were “paid back” for the costs of our occupation of that country. In Syria, he stationed U.S. forces at oil fields, explaining that he viewed those fields as a revenue stream. (“$45 million a month? Keep the oil.”) He proposed a business arrangement to exploit Syria’s oil: “What I intend to do, perhaps, is make a deal with an ExxonMobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly.” Last Friday, in a Fox News interview, the president repeated that he cared only about the oil. “I left troops to take the oil,” he told Laura Ingraham. “The only troops I have are taking the oil.”
Two weeks ago, the United States killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike.
To deter retaliation, Trump threatened to bomb Iran’s cultural sites—an explicit war crime. “If Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets,” he tweeted, “we have targeted 52 Iranian sites … some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.” In an exchange with reporters, Trump dismissed legal objections to his threat. “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people,” he fumed. “And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”
Iraq’s Parliament, furious that Trump had killed Soleimani on its soil and without its consent, voted to expel American troops. But Trump refused to comply unless Iraq paid ransom. “We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there,” he told reporters. “We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it.” He threatened to “charge them [the Iraqis] sanctions like they’ve never seen before.” Later, Trump told Ingraham that Iraq would also “have to pay us for embassies.” When she asked him how he planned to extract the payment, Trump replied, “We have $35 billion of their money right now sitting in an account. And I think they’ll agree to pay. … Otherwise, we’ll stay there.”
Trump views the military as a mercenary force he can send around the world for hire. A Very Stable Genius, the new book by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post, describes a White House meeting at which Trump said American troop deployments should yield a profit. Trump told Ingraham he’s doing exactly that: “We’re sending more [troops] to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia’s paying us for it.” He recounted his business pitch to the Saudis: “You want more troops? I’m going to send them to you, but you’ve got to pay us.” And he proudly reported that the Saudis had accepted the deal. “They’re paying us,” he told Ingraham. “They’ve already deposited $1 billion in the bank.”
Ix-nay on that “What’s in it for us?” talk. It’s not that we’re necessarily opposed to warlordism (when the Right People are in charge), but you’re supposed to keep it on the down low.
Now do China.
… so he’s being honest about it, unlike his predecessors?
I’m sure Harvard would be eager to offer Greta a full scholarship, and waive the entrance requirements.
(If they haven’t, already)
She meets their requirements: she is a hard believer in the marxist bullshit.
I would put down good money that the ivy league will be out-bidding each other to get her on their roster.
Great idea, wrong execution. He should have gone with Bourbon.
Best take on Mondays fight yet.
https://mobile.twitter.com/byDavidGardner/status/1219818716172636162
El link-o no work-o..
Works for me
It’s Twitter. Sometimes the link works and sometimes it doesn’t. Worked for me this time.
Ya sorry I’m mobile to avoid work spying on me. So the mobile link might cause some issues.
My hockey team is requiring us to have volunteer hours this season. This week I volunteered to help disabled kids learn curling. It ended up me learning as much as the kids did. It was at a fancy curling club in Chicago. Full bar, wood paneling, leather sofas, lithos of guys smoking pipes and playing. It seemed to be the perfect Glibs hangout. We may have to take up curling as our official sport.
In.
How much beer did the kids put away? I assume you were teaching curling the proper way.
Bar wasn’t open. But they did store their kegs in the rink so you know it was nice and cold.
Joke I just made up:
What is the difference between curling and bowling? In curling, all frames are the beer frame.
Bar wasn’t open.
Wait, I don’t underst…oh, Chicago. That kind of thing wouldn’t happen in Wisconsin.
Too Canadian.
There were as many Canadian flags as American flags, come to think of it.
Even the American who curl are just pseudo-Canadians (WI and MN and probably the UP too).
Curling wasn’t already our official sport?
I thought it was Kvetching.
Snarking is the Glibs preferred pastime I think.
I always thought our official sport was orphan hunting.
I know architecture isn’t STEM.
I would prefer my roof to be designed by somebody who can calculate snow loads and wind forces.
Sorry, you’ll get the art major who can make the grounds blueprints look pretty but be a nightmare to drive on.
Why would you drive on blueprints? That would interfere with the road/tire friction.
Only when wet.
But I’ve been in many office complexes where you can tell it just looked pretty on paper, but no one factored in what it would be like to try to navigate when actually built.
Oh, you’ve been to the same hotel renovations I’ve been in.
I had a friend who was a Building Construction major, which was in the Architecture school. He hated the Arch classes – in one he had to build a chair out of paper or something like that. His was structurally stable but wasnt pretty enough.
I thought I wanted to be an Architect. Second choice was ME. Senior year in HS I went to a “camp” that the Architecture College hosted, and it was all about stupid arts-and-crafts things like the cardboard chair. Mentally switched to ME at that point, and just have a nice library of historical architecture to read for pleasure.
How many of those cardboard chairs would hold the fattest among us?
I’d rather my world be overengineered and never break than collapse under an unexpected load.
“What did you make this chair out of?”
“Steel filled with carbon fiber honeycomb.”
“It weighs a ton.”
“It can hold three tons.”
Still not rated for IT use.
It’s not my fault that LEAN is anything but.
My engineer friends use to tell me they hated architects because architects were always designing buildings that engineers couldn’t build.
My wife, who runs her family’s roofing company, is also not a fan for much the same reason.
You need an architectural engineer then. They know math (mostly).
Architects come up with the sweeping design of the building, or lampshades.
Oh and just ignore the software architects.
What about us Data Architects?
I always feel like putting my title in quotes. Same when I was a Data “Engineer”.
“I would prefer my roof to be designed by somebody who can calculate snow loads and wind forces.”
Patriarchal math, you racist!
Engineers design weapons. Architects design targets.
^^^THIS GUY GETS IT^^^
Mark Meadows✔
@RepMarkMeadows
Every time House Democrats reference Gordon Sondland, ALL of them should immediately be asked:
Why are you using the testimony of someone who admitted he had zero evidence, other than his own “presumption?”
are you implying that Sondland is wrong? Why shouldn’t we take his presumption on faith? In fact if you don’t it seems like you are not being impartial.
When Sondland wouldn’t play ball and deliver Orange Mans head on a platter, somehow harassment allegations came out then. For a guy who’s been in the limelight for years. Just a coincidence
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/us/Gordon-Sondland-sexual-harassment.html
Well, it’s presumed guilty until proven innocent, right?
Guilty until Proven Guilty.
There is no such thing as innocence.
You will go far in Cardassia, comrade.
Oh god! The number of the beast marked the beginning of the worst writing Heinlein produced, and yet…. MUST BUY!!!!!
The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes
Addiction is a hell of a thing.
Noted and marked. I can’t pass up anything written by the Old Man.
NOOOOOOOOOO!
The new mascot will be Transpeanut Trina who’s actually a cashew.
Ridiculous movie promotion.
I have no sadness in my heart for this ruthless Kapo of the neverending peanut holocaust.
Moral Panic
Surely the media and authorities realize they are only encouraging dummies by posting these PSAs, right?
If your kid burns your house down cause you failed to beat the “Don’t play with the outlet” into them, isn’t it kinda your fault…
There’s always that one kid in school who jabs the paperclip into the socket. Usually the kid who takes on all of the lunchroom dares. Somehow they don’t die from stupid. That kid from my school actually grew up to be an army ranger.
We drove the high school shop teacher nuts by bending a piece of electrical wire in a u shape and sticking it in an outlet to trip the breaker. He never figured out why so many of the breakers would trip only during our class.
I don’t see where the state gets involved there… OK, you’re one of them deplorables, aren’t you?
Bunch of fucking pussies. When I was a kid we just stuck a fork in it. When someone didn’t make it, it was just known as cleaning out the gene pool.
“Parents are being advised to watch for attempts to participate in the challenge – and to have conversations with their children and teens about electrical and fire safety, the report said.”
And don’t forget to talk to them about badorangeman.
Actually I have the ultimate idea. Put monitors in the plugs so if some naive brat tries this, it calls 911. Then the fire department shows up with the cops in tow. Cop shoots entire family because something something looked like a cell phone. Problem solved!
Think of it this way: Scarfing down Tide pods didn’t clear out enough of the little imbeciles, so they had to find an alternative….
^this^
I remember as a wee lad sticking a penny into an old light socket. Anyone who says a penny won’t go very far should’ve seen me shoot across the room.
My old man told me I was grounded.
I larfed.
I was too shocked to come up with a joke.
Ohm i pressed you came up with that one.
He’s just wired that way.
Only currently. The issue will be corrected shortly.
He probably just can’t resistor something.
It’s his only outlet.
Maybe it was just a phase.
You are lucky it was alternating and not direct, or you would be wrong…
Song of the day urges you to take your time on the way home
Virginia Senate passes red flag law with nothing resembling due process.
https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+sum+SB240
…any attorney for the Commonwealth or any law-enforcement officer may apply to a general district court, circuit court, or juvenile and domestic relations district court judge or magistrate for an emergency substantial risk order to prohibit a person who poses a substantial risk of injury to himself or others from purchasing, possessing, or transporting a firearm. If an emergency substantial risk order is issued, a judge or magistrate may issue a search warrant to remove firearms from such person.
original seizure is 14 days. then you get to sit in court while the filer justifies keeping your firearms for half a year. somebody gives you a gun: felony.
Hopefully the 90% don’t enforce the law.
The cops will enforce it. The only remedy is a large majority of citizens refusing to comply and voting these retards out of office forever. It will also take repealing any and all existing violations of the 2nd, or they will just continue to start again from there. Shall not be infringed or no 2nd, there is no in between, the left couldn’t make this any clearer.
The cops and prosecutors will enforce the new gun laws as add on charges to truly bad people and will eventually slippery slope it into general enforcement for everyone. They just can’t help themselves.
Truly bad people == anyone whose x girlfriend or neighbor just got pissed off at them.
First of all, once they have your guns, you will NOT be getting them back, ever.
“somebody gives you a gun: felony.”
Just the latest step on the way to ‘have a gun? Felony’. Once they’ve gotten away with this, it won’t be long. The left are moving at light seep towards full on tyranny. Once they’ve effectively nullified the 2nd, the first will fall quickly.
I expected no less, the idea that the march would change any minds was laughable. They’re bound and determined to jam this down people’s throats and they’ll just muss you up a bit if you don’t like it (or, you know, throw you in prison or shoot you).
Of course, the march wasn’t designed to change any minds. The organizers made it very clear that it was a rally, not a protest. Virginians are angry and balkanizing into tribes. The organizers asked for 10,000 volunteers to disarm and go onto the Capitol Grounds while everyone else remained armed outside the fence specifically to protect the volunteers from both Antifa and the governor. It’s extremely well organized and broken down into small teams led by captains.
The democrats are playing with matches around a gasoline soaked wood pile.
Criticizing the “Red Flag Law”?
that’s a ? for you.
HA!
The left want a system similar to Communist China where they have one party rule and can appoint someone like Obama as lifetime leader. Then they will make the Constitution a living document and hack it to pieces and then put in a china type social credit score system and control every minute aspect of your existence from cradle to grave. They’re not even trying to hide their intent any longer.
They’ve got bread and vodka, what the hell else do they need?
No one needs 23 choices of bread and vodka. The one state issued brand shall suffice.
When you do not know your audience:
I Went To The Dealer For Service And I Think I Feel Fine About It
Annual inspections are required in New York State, and I usually do this at my local dealer, since they are close to where I live and the service department is open 24 hours most days. This year, it came with an unpleasant surprise, or around $750 of necessary service work, which is right around the line where I might go elsewhere.
The work included things you would expect on an 11-year-old car with 68,000 miles on it: The serpentine belt had a crack in it and needed replacing, the coolant was dirty and needed flushing, ditto with the brake fluid, the fuel injectors also needed cleaning, as did the throttle body. I was told that everything except the brake flush was needed to pass inspection, something I’m still a little dubious about, given that inspections here are mainly focused on brakes, the steering system, lights, and safety features, but perhaps they were referring to the emissions inspection. I’m assuming they keep these things purposefully vague.
The comments destroy this guy.
“he coolant was dirty and needed flushing, ditto with the brake fluid”
IOW, this poor guy got a royal screwing and is too dumb to know it.
And he is continuing to pretend like it was okay.
This usually is what I see leftists do. No matter what evidence is presented to dispute the stupid shit they believe, their reaction is never to reevaluate, but to double down on the stupid shit they believe.
i can’t get the comments to load but i soooooo want to.
Step one: Know next to nothing about your subject matter.
Step two: Have an easily and inexpensively solved series of issues.
Step three: Make exactly the wrong decision on every single choice.
Step four: Throw a shitload of money at the problem.
Step five: Convince yourself you didn’t get fleeced, and write an article about it trying (and failing) to convince everyone else.
The saddest part is you likely won’t even make the money back from this article than you wasted getting bite-the-pillow’d at the dealer.
got them to load.
“you’re not one of us”
Next he will be writing an article about building a PC for Gizmodo.
All the former Gawker sites follow the same formula.
Did they charge him to change out his blinker fluid, too?
And a fill-up of flux in the capacitor.
Piston return springs
Marvellous.
Meh. If he’s happy, what’s the problem.
I’m more annoyed with the concept of inspections.
The blowup is he writes for a car enthusiast site and doesn’t know how to do the simplest of car maintenance, let alone that none of that work is needed for safety (except maybe the brake fluid, which they told him was not need to pass inspection!).
Wrong, he writes for Jalopnik.
Are the decent alternatives to Jalopnik? It has recently been infected with a very pro-union, pro-progressive political stance.
https://www.thedrive.com/
Fair amount of ex-Gawker writers.
Eh, Jalopnik keeps some bad company but it’s not a bad site overall.
I’m positively astounded – NJ requires no electric vehicle inspections.
It took them decades to remove the mandatory safety inspections and only do emissions testing. The union fought them tooth and nail, but the residents finally won. The safety inspections were awful. If you did the public inspections you had a better than 50% chance of failing and repeating the process. Almost everyone paid $50 and got them done by an independent shop.
Whycome democrats always need to explain away things that allow voter fraud (in their favor) as glitches?
Because, at this point, I’m convinced that without voter fraud, they’d not get elected in anywhere near the number of races they “win”
Just try to imagine how many elections Democrats might win if there was no voter fraud and a completely neutral media.
Because they want voter fraud. People complaining that he current crop of democrats got elected through illegal aliens voting might have some credibility. The entire corridor from DC down 66 through Manassas is like Central American of the North. And very few of those people are here legally. Those caravans we see on CNN must be on route straight for NOVA.
So it is about time we clean up those voter rolls and have voter ID.
Interestingly, VA Dems want to remove the voter ID requirement. I wonder why…
Tinder Adding Panic Buttons and Safety Check-Ins to App
Tinder is going to make it easier for its users to send out an alarm when their dates go beyond bad. The Wall Street Journal reports that the dating app will roll out new safety features including a panic button, check-ins that will send locations to friends and family, and the option to silently summon authorities to their dates. Tinder reportedly plans to introduce the features in an update before the end of January. “You should run a dating business as if you are a mom,” said Mandy Ginsberg, CEO of Tinder’s parent company Match Group, which is owned by IAC, The Daily Beast’s parent company. “I think a lot about safety, especially on our platforms, and what we can do to curtail bad behavior. There are a lot of things we tell users to do. But if we can provide tools on top of that, we should do that as well.” The tool will allow users to add a badge to their dating profiles showing they have installed the new features. “I liken this to the lawn sign from a security system,” said Elie Seidman, Tinder’s CEO. “It tells people I am protected, and that is a deterrent.”
The bitch did not look anything like her picture! She posted a pic from when she was 20 years younger and 200 lbs lighter! Nuke her!
Just an informal poll gleaned from conversations with women I’ve dated (and it’s not a huge number)
1) 1 was raped by a date.
2) 1 was subjected to a half-hearted attempted rape but was able to summon help.
3) All reported dates where they bailed early because the guy was behaving in ways that made them worried for their safety if they continued.
Tinder is one step above calling phone numbers written on a bathroom stall as far as getting laid. It’s not a frivolous concern.
You know what this farce in the Senate needs? Moar hypocrisy!
Let’s add glowing praise for a cop from the people that normally scream about police brutality all the time (no not us Liberatarians). This time it is the local lefty columnist who is gushing about Val Demings:
The quotes are just fucking depressing. Especially the new line of “It isn’t a criminal trial, so fuck due process”
Orange man MUST be stopped!
The president is engaged in this cover-up
The funds were not held up and the transcript of the call was released for all to see.
C’mon RS! Who you gonna believe? Schiff or your lyin’ eyes?
Facts suck. Believe Shiff!
Because it is well known that you can convince cops of your innocence by talking to them.
<a href="https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/darwin-competition-collaboration-evolutionary-biology-climate-change.html?via=features" My caricature of your fetishism of dog-eat-dog capitalism proves I'm smart and your dumb
Yet, like all humans, Darwin brought culture with him wherever he traveled. His descriptions of the workings of nature bear resemblance to prevailing thinking on human society within elite, English circles at the time. This is not a mere coincidence, and tracing his influences is worthwhile. It was, after all, the heyday of classical liberalism, dominated by thinkers like Adam Smith, David Hume, and Thomas Malthus, who valorized an unregulated market. They were debating minor points within a consensus on the virtues of competition. In an especially humble (and revealing) moment, Darwin characterized the principles underlying his thinking as naught but “the doctrine of Malthus, applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms.”
Fast forward a century and a half, and “survival of the fittest”—the expression social theorist Herbert Spencer coined to sum up Darwin’s thinking—is as much a cultural cliché as it is a scientific theory. Hell, your worst colleague at the office might even offer it as a justification for his one-upmanship. More than just a cliché, though, the supposed naturalness of competition has played a central role in substantiating the laissez-faire variety of capitalism the majority of the American political spectrum has championed for the past four or so decades. Indeed, any non-market-based solution to social issues usually falls prey to claims of utopianism, of ignoring the fundamental selfishness of the human species. Advocates for welfare programs, for instance, often run up against criticism that their policy proposals fail to understand to importance of “losing,” that they lessen the stakes of the competition innate to human social life. Similarly, collectively owned spaces or institutions (like communal land trusts or co-ops) are often presumed short-lived or inefficient, doomed to suffer the “tragedy of the commons” as the innate self-interest of each member leads to an overuse of collective resources—a thesis that has been debunked again and again since its first articulation by Garrett Hardin in 1968. To put it simply, we have let Darwinism set the horizon of possibility for human behavior. Competition has become a supposed basic feature of all life, something immutable, universal, natural.
Yet new research from across various fields of study is throwing the putative scientific basis of this consensus into doubt. Mind you, there have always been people, scientists and otherwise, who conceived of life outside a Darwinian paradigm—the idea of evolutionary biology is and has been a conversation among a mostly white and male global elite. Yet, even within centers of institutional power, like universities in North America, competition’s position as the central force driving evolution has been seriously challenged recently. In fact, criticisms have been mounting at least since biologist Lynn Margulis began publishing in the late ’60s.
——- This lack of agreement isn’t such a bad thing. Leaving the Darwinian consensus behind means a more capacious, diverse, and ultimately more rigorous science. The recent dissensus has opened up more room for important, heterodox voices like Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Kimmerer speaks of plants as highly intelligent beings and teachers, a sharp departure from the reductionist, utilitarian approach to plant and animal life that passed as scientific rigor within the Darwinian framework. Much of the recent research I have highlighted might count as what Kim TallBear, a scholar and enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, calls “settler epiphanies”—belated “discoveries” by settlers of Indigenous knowledge that was either ignored or outright suppressed by colonial land appropriation and attempted genocide.
Darwin’s legacy aside, though, one critical takeaway from all this is that we must learn to recognize the impulse to naturalize a given human behavior as a political maneuver. Competition is not natural, or at least not more so than collaboration.
Haha, SCIENCE strikes again! The lamb shall be waited upon hand and foot by the lion, because justice.
“Competition is not natural, or at least not more so than collaboration.”
This must be the stupidest thing I have ever read.
“This must be the stupidest thing I have ever read.”
While incredibly stupid, I’m sure they can top it soon enough.
You are right, and just fucking depressed the hell out of me…
What the fuck?
I’m afraid there’s not enough context without knowing what you’re enquiring about.
Where am I?
This is not my beautiful house!
His question is existential and evergreen. Context simply doesn’t matter.
Yes?
Totally agree.
Has there been a discussion of the Baseball HoF vote?
Jeter and Walker got in. Both had 1311 RBI, which I found amusing. Walker gets put in the special Canada wing, along with…ummm…is there any others?
Sorting this year’s vote receipients by WAR, they were 4th and 5th (Walker slightly above Jeter).
Bonds and Clemens were top 2 and not receiving votes for obvious reasons, Schilling was 3rd, just above Walker and got 70% voe, so will probably be in next year.
Adam Dunn got 1 vote, which is 1 too many, but he was hands down the best player I ever saw at AAA on the way up. I seriously thought he was going to kill a kid on the carousel just outside the right field foul pole in Louisville. Fortunately, he only spent about 6 weeks in AAA, so didn’t manage to pull it off.
In terms of WAR, Rafael Furcal was the best player on the ballot receiving zero votes.
Jason Giambi was best player to not receive 5% threshold to stay on ballot.
They need to evaluate Average WAR or WAR/year. Furcal played a long time.
Did Pete Rose make it in yet?
The Vet committee put in Ted Simmons. So, no.
Dunn may be the biggest disappointment of a free-agent signing during my years of White Sox fandom. I’m just thinking in terms of value for money, as the Sox’ free agent signings over the last 20 year’s have been mostly crap. If Dunn would’ve reached 500 homers, surely he’d be the lowest WAR player in the 500 club, yes?
David Ortiz, 541 HR, 55.3 WAR is the lowest in the 500 club.
Adam Dunn, 462 HR, 17.4 WAR.
It wouldnt even be close.
In terms of negative bWAR, Jeff Keppinger was actually worse in total with the White Sox than Dunn, although Dunn had the worst single season by a million miles.
Ahh, Keppinger – he was comically bad. More recent, and not a free agent signing, but Yonder Alonso last year was similarly brutal. It was made all the worse by the fact that they only traded for him in the first place in a futile attempt to lure Machado here.
Manny’s way of saying “He’s my friend/Brother-in-law, but he sucks.”
It’s a traveshamockery that Lou Whitaker continues to be overlooked. 7th best WAR in the history of the game at his position and he has never been even close to getting voted in.
He hasnt been elibible for 5 years. Not sure if he is Vet eligible yet, may start next year.
I read that as edible.
It is clearly a typo, maybe that is what I meant.
Looks like 2023 is his next chance, that is the next time the “Modern Baseball (1970-1987)” Committee elects someone.
Punishment for forgettting to bring his uniform to the all-star game.
Bonds and Clemens were top 2 and not receiving votes for obvious reasons
Stupid reasons. They should be in, because I guarantee that there are other PED users currently in the hall.
One step closer to my ideal flying situation.
Containerization revolutionized commercial shipping. Why not do the same for flying? Let people buy cubic footage and then simply stack those people crates into the planes and go for it.
I think you are on to something your holiness! This gives us options to work with…
You may have been exposed to fake news about a UMC church expelling the oldsters to appeal more to millennials and Gen Z Methodists. Fortunately, CNN is here to debunk this Trumprussian propaganda.
To be fair, getting rid of the old bastards was the only way to kill off the annual lutefisk feed.
I don’t see a thing in there about age, kick the oldsters out!
That’s some nice precedence setting there Minnesoda appeals court
The backstory is that a farmer tried to expand his feedlot. The Minnesoda Pollution Control Agency gave him the green light. But before he could do it, some environmental groups sued saying that the MPCA hadn’t considered the impact of the green house gases emitted by the cows. And a court agreed and made the agency go back and study that. The agency still approved it, but now any new feed lots will still have to study the greenhouse impact.
What a load of bullshit.
They are just trying to be noxious.
This whole thing stinks!
This is your green economy for ya: a shitton of stupid fucking people siphoning a shitton of value and money to provide absolutely no fucking value at all and in the process driving the cost of everything, but especially basic necessitates, off the charts. You need more poor people depending on government handouts, you. Cause beggars are easier to please and keep under control than people that can take care of them selves.
Women, minorities, sexual deviants hardest hit
Women have had an especially strong voice in opposing AB5 and similar laws under consideration in New York and New Jersey. The American Society of Journalists and Authors, which has filed a lawsuit to challenge AB5 on grounds it is unconstitutional and discriminatory toward journalists, has argued that the law is particularly harmful to women, people of color and the LGBTQ+ community.
“In a shrinking media landscape where hiring executives are still mostly white and male, AB5 places additional restrictions and burdens on women, people of color and the LGBTQ+ community by forcing many of us to seek staff jobs,” said Los Angeles freelance writer and author JoBeth McDaniel, chair of ASJA’s First Amendment Committee, in a statement. “Many journalists choose to freelance because we encountered discrimination, harassment and bullying in staff positions. Others — such as parents, caregivers and the disabled — need the flexibility of setting their own schedules and workloads.”
Maybe this is just a way of poking them in the eye with their own stick, but I doubt it.
Bullshit.
Don’t rob these people of their ability to make themselves into victims in a society where victimhood is the biggest qualifier of social status, Rhywun. It shows a lack of empathy….
I originally read that as ABS and was trying to figure out the acronym.
American Bible Society?
Societies of Black Students?
Aircraft Braking System?
Alternative Business Structure?
Address Book Synchronization?
Auto Body Services?
Adult Basic Skills?
Annual Base Salary?
Apple Business Systems?
Afghan Banana Stand?
Acute Bitching Syndrome?
Then I clicked the link. Oh A-B-five…
Correction : Association of Black Students
American Bonanza Society
Brexit pays off….
The withdrawl act became law. But I’m not sure whether there’s a deal or the details of it.
Britain moves from subject to vassal state of the EU.
In recent years, a growing number of women have flocked to self-employment. Given the glass ceiling and gender pay gap in many companies, some women find they earn more as independent workers than in a traditional job. For those juggling caregiving and a heavy load of unpaid household work, running a business from home instead of commuting is often the only way they can get everything done.
Good for them, but that’s not gonna fly with the hive masters.
One man now holds the cards in T-Mobile/Sprint deal
This whole thing annoys me. A massive decision comes down to a judge who probably 0 experience in economics or business.
Interesting side fact, average monthly cell phone service prices have gone down by 27% over the last 10 years. Cell phone taxes have increased by 27%. The wrong people are being sued.
Good news?
Two days to cover: “Don’t shoot!”
The officer who shot them was highly criticized for his actions on a call that turned out to be a false home alarm.
In the era of cellphones, I don’t understand why anyone would want a centrally monitored alarm that automatically dispatches the cops. Especially someone with children or dogs that could be there when you aren’t. My alarm system is monitored by wife and I through instant alerts and live camera feeds to our cell phones. I can just as easily call the police as a central operator, though that’s an unlikely scenario.
Control.
In her speech at the globalist meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the EU chief said that Europe needs “credible military capabilities” in order to combat crises in the future.
The claims stand contrary to those previously made by French President Macron, one of they key movers in the development of an EU army, who said in 2018 that the continent needed its own military to “protect ourselves” from the United States of America. President Trump shot back at the claim at the time, calling it “very insulting”, and reminding France that the U.S. already massively subsidised European defence.
Ms von der Leyen’s latest statements in Davos confirmed the fears of many Brexiteers, who have long warned of the possibility of the creation of an EU army, a belief that has long been derided in the UK by europhile Remain campaigners, who labelled the idea a “dangerous fantasy” during the 2016 Brexit campaign. …
“Germany and France are the driving forces in defence. We’re moving even further ahead with our close partner France”, she boasted.
In November the European Union announced 13 new joint military projects including new warships and a swath of new electronic warfare systems, bringing the total amount of joint EU army projects to 47.
Last month Fabrice Leggeri, the head of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), said that the force which is now comprised of approximately 750 troops is set to expand to a force of 10,000 “civilian troops”, who “will be able to deploy to an EU member-state and exercise executive powers such as carrying out border controls”.
“We don’t have a military army, but we will have, let’s say, civilian troops wearing a European uniform. And for certain functions carrying weapons,” said Leggeri.
European Countries… you shoud RUN from this woman and the EU as fast as you can. Particularly you Eastern European countries. Unless you want to fall under another foreign countries boot for another 50 years.
Why do Americans pay to defend Europeans again? If I could get Donnie to do one thing, it would be to shutdown all foreign bases and recall all US troops. Let everyone defend themselves.
“We don’t have a military army, but we will have, let’s say, civilian troops wearing a European uniform. And for certain functions carrying weapons,” said Leggeri.
How reassuring.
I suspect it could be well used for internal repression. The Belgians want to Belxit? Send in European troops from Spain to convince them they’ve made a mistake. Ditto for the other countries that get cold feet. It’s a page right out of China’s playbook.
Spanish Troops have only a 50% batting average at suppressing the low courntries’ desires for independance.
You’re right, Spain wouldn’t be the best choice in that scenario. Maybe the Greeks could do it.
No one suspects the Spanish Inquisition.
But they are pretty good at taking on the Hordes of Abuelas de Barcelona
:lights Swiss signal:
What could go wrong?
King County, where Seattle is located, announced on Wednesday that it’s implementing smartphone voting for an upcoming board of supervisors election.
King County’s 1.2 million residents can use their cellphones to vote in the election, which begins on January 22nd and continues until 8PM PT on February 11th.
The program is a collaboration between King County Elections; the county’s conservation district; mobile-voting nonprofit Tusk Philanthropies; the National Cybersecurity Center; and Democracy Live, a technology firm that develops electronic balloting.
“It will be easier than ever for voters to access their Conservation District ballot and cast their vote,” said Julie Wise, King County director of elections, in a statement. “Here at King County Elections, we are always looking for ways to improve access and engage our voters and this election could be a key step in moving toward electronic access and return for voters across the region.”
Electronic voting is just such a bad, bad, bad idea.
https://xkcd.com/2030/
Text VoteDem to 45034
Electronic voting *could* be done well.
It won’t be.
There will be a “glitch” that favors democrats…
Electronic voting is unnecessary and an invitation to hacking.
Feature, not a bug.
/DNC’s Chinese spy employees.
So is a centralized paper ballot that are only ever in the hands of a small group of government functionaries. What’s your point?
Paper ballots at least provide a physical record.
Electronic provides nothing tangible and will only serve to erode public confidence further. Some would argue that’s not a bad thing.
A physical record in the hands of a motivated party with no chain-of-custody log is of 0 value in any other legal or any cryptographic system.
I’m not saying electronic voting would solve these problems. I’m saying that our current paper ballot system is *exactly as bad as* a poorly designed electronic voting system.
And by the way, give any comp-sci or info-theory graduate student worth a shit a week and a pad of paper, and they can come up with an electronic voting system that is, at minimum, provably more secure in at least one parameter and no less secure than our current paper ballot system.
I would argue that a lack of faith in the voting process would be a VERY BAD THING. Given the fact that, at this point, it really is faith in the process as opposed to the process being worthy of respect, we are basically Wile E Coyote running on air just before he realizes where he is. If you think living in a high trust society that does’t deserve it is bad, try looking at a low trust society that does deserve it.
I personally like a combination. Electronic voting on site that prints out a paper ballot with a barcode encoding your results AND a printout of who you voted for. The scanner reads the barcode, election audits/recounts can sort by printed results and make sure they match the barcode results.
It is impossible to spoil a ballot.
There are still a lot of fraud that can go on, but it is an improvement over today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
Mornin’, Glibbies. Morning reading and commenting done, I must go de-ice the Zippicar so I can take my kid to the doctor. Of all the days to have an appointment, it had to be when the streets are slick as snot. No, I’m not going to cancel. I worked too hard to get it.
Drive safe and carpe diem!
Stay away from hills when possible. The highways are fine, but the neighborhood streets are for shit and not getting better anytime soon.
31st & Broadway. Possibly 49th & Main to go to Dick Blick for some retail therapy.
My concern is navigating the curvy hilly back country road my kid’s high school is on.
Also, getting out of my driveway which is a pretty steep hill.
Yeah, you might be in for an adventure. Sorry, no way to sugar coat it. I’m rooting for ya!
King County, where Seattle is located, announced on Wednesday that it’s implementing smartphone voting for an upcoming board of supervisors election.
King County’s 1.2 million residents can use their cellphones to vote in the election, which begins on January 22nd and continues until 8PM PT on February 11th.
It was only a matter of time.
What could possibly go wrong?
“Someone must have hacked the election!”
“Why do you say that?”
“The winner was Boaty McBoatface.”
Foreseeable consquences are foreseeable. Magically a few hundred extra votes appear and the whole thing would require such painstaking digital forensics to verify that any investigation is far too sensitive and would take so long as for The Narrative to completely destroy it’s credibility before it could publish any results. I mean, it’s not like I’m paranoid about voter fraud or anything (I really like PILF as an acronym).
Sounds like a perfect opportunity for Russian hackers to install a puppet board of supervisors.
Creeeepy. Yesterday I put on a hair metal song (I’m not saying which one), and then let youtube run. This was the third song to play. Any guesses on what YT played in between those two?
And any guesses on what my choice was?
RATT.
Nope.
Every Rose Has A Thorn
Nope.
You strike me as a Nelson kind of guy.
Meow.
This does not make sense.
You let autoplay happen?
*kernel panic*
*dumps core*
*logic block instantiated*
*rebooting*
I thought I’d patched all those errors out of my system. Next you’ll tell me you let it play those Bloomers ads too.
How else are you gonna do your part to bleed bloomer dry?
Compromise his security detail so they do the dirty work instead?
I was in the sonic shower and didn’t want to get my PADD wet, alright. It’s not like I’m using voice control or anything.
Kingston Trio – Tom Dooley
Nope
This?
No, but that choice would have been approved.
Had to be this.
https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
Thought-crime
Democrats in Connecticut’s State Senate have proposed creating and funding a new department within the state police focused specifically on “combating hate crimes and violent right-wing extremism.”
Not all violent extremism, just right-wing extremism. Antifa, the radical left-wing anarchist group, which has said that “violence is necessary” for their activism, would apparently still have free reign in the state.
“Unfortunately, people who entertain hateful beliefs … are protected as long as [those beliefs] don’t result in hate-crime actions. That’s what we’re talking about,” said Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney.”We want to be more aggressive in enforcing our laws and identifying likely sources of potential domestic terrorism acts against religious institutions and ethnic institutions.”
Looney or mendacious?
Fuck you. Thank goodness people who have hateful ideas are protected. Anything short of it would be utter tyranny.
Yes.
Tyrannical piece of shit who has no respect whatsoever for freedom of speech or thought.
So, typical lefty?
Biden just lost the election.
“We talk about China as our competitor? We should be helping, and benefiting ourselves by doing that,” Biden said during a campaign event in Iowa. “But the idea that China is going to eat our lunch, it was like I remembered debates in the late 90s, remember Japan was going to own us? Give me a break.”
“The idea that we have a serious problem facing us now that’s different, and it’s dealing with the whole idea of cyber war, underground cables that go across the Atlantic that allow us to control everything from satellites to shipping,” Biden told the audience. “We have to be prepared to modernize those, keep ourselves way ahead of the game to make sure that they are not able to be screwed with.”
Biden continued, “So, the idea we’re gonna cut the defense budget significantly, we can cut it some, but we don’t need standing armies, we need to be smarter than we’re dealing now into how we handle this.”
To be fair, I’m not sure he even knows what words are coming out of his mouth.
He didn’t have a lot of brains to work with before, and the last bit appear to have gone past the mush stage, liquefied, and drained out through the eye.
He doesn’t, but neither did he just lose the election. He was never going to win the election to start with. The nomination, however, is his. The dem establishment will see to it and Hillary might be his VP candidate. I think it will be Warren, but Lizzie might fall on her tomahawk one night in an apparent suicide.
“So, the idea we’re gonna cut the defense budget significantly, we can cut it some, but we don’t need standing armies, we need to be smarter than we’re dealing now into how we handle this.”
I really don’t know what this is supposed to mean.
“…it was like I remembered debates in the late 90s, remember Japan was going to own us?”
He’s off by more than a decade on this.
That’s what I was thinking. Yes, the panic was real because of all the real estate in NYC they were buying, but it was mid 80s.
Like Mitt Romney?
I wonder if Romney bears ill will towards senile Joe for that comment….
Ya’ll need to contemplate what a Biden presidency will look like. Imagine the Clinton admin all over again, only with Warren as VP, Hillary as SOS again, and Obama on SCOTUS. If that doesn’t scare the fucking shit out of you, I got nothing.
“Unfortunately, people who entertain hateful beliefs … are protected as long as [those beliefs] don’t result in hate-crime actions. That’s what we’re talking about,” said Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney.”We want to be more aggressive in enforcing our laws and identifying likely sources of potential domestic terrorism acts against religious institutions and ethnic institutions.”
“You know, Ethnic Cleansing gets an undeservedly bad rap. Some people really do just need to be eradicated, in order to improve society. The needs of the many outweigh the freedom of the few.”
underground cables that go across the Atlantic that allow us to control everything from satellites to shipping,” Biden told the audience.
*nods slowly*
Given the way the system works and the current state of identity politics I’ve long been waiting for this.
Miami PD suspends white officer who begins identifying as ‘black’ male
Ah, the Bee. Hitting home runs lately. Wait, what???