Warty Wednesday Hugelinks

by | Apr 6, 2022 | Daily Links | 291 comments

Another week is come and gone. Soon we will be dead. The inexorable cruelty of thermodynamic processes rot us from the inside out, the eternal stillness of the grave beckons us, our inner fatasses lie to us and tell us that we need to relax, and the government wants us to cut off our balls and eat heart-healthy and carbon-neutral whole grains and polyunsaturated fatty acids. So rejoice, bros, and enjoy fighting the Long Defeat for a few more years, glorying in the chance to defy these womanish and gay enemies by getting jacked and tan and eating, I dunno, raw beef hearts or some shit.

Job opening at some place I’ve never heard of, and which sounds rad and based

As the Director of Audience Development you’ll help deepen Reason’s connections with our unique community, grow the audience, and lead the effort to maximize the reach and impact of content and communications being created across Reason. You will evaluate the effectiveness of existing audience development activities and work with the Reason team to develop new strategies, build plans, and implement marketing and engagement activities to engage existing audiences and bring in new ones.

 

I’m not saying it’s aliens

The bombshell Freedom of Information haul includes reports on the DIA’s research into the biological effects of UFO sightings on humans.

And this includes burns, heart problems, sleep disturbances – and even bizarre occurrences such as “apparent abduction” and “unaccounted for pregnancy”.

 

Matzo is serious business

A key member of Naftali Bennett’s Yamina party has quit the Israeli coalition government after a row about unleavened bread during Passover, in a surprise move that leaves the prime minister without a parliamentary majority.

 

The more they deny it…

The claim is completely false, according to Guttenberg, who clarified in an email to The Associated Press that “the Waunakee Community School District does not have protocols for Furries, nor do we allow disruptions in our school and classrooms.”

 

Which one of you was this?

The FBI interviewed him and says he didn’t think the female passenger was uncomfortable with him masturbating and he thought “it was kind of kinky.”

 

War? War? C’mon, war! War war war war war war war! War???

That essentially means doing more of what we’re already doing. We could send still more arms, more quickly—say, 500 switchblade drones instead of 100. All types of weapons should be on the table for transfer, except for nuclear weapons (obviously) and missiles of a range that could strike Russia. Biden should rethink his ban on sending Soviet-built MiG-29s fighter jets, which Ukrainian pilots know how to fly. Yes, some of those pilots could fly one across the border, but if this didn’t happen—or even if it did once or twice—would Putin be moved to push the button? Seems unlikely.

 

This is fine and was completely unpreventable and could not have been prevented and is fine

Marley knew the pandemic was wreaking havoc on people’s lives. But she didn’t expect that its impact on learning would be so profound, even when students returned, with excitement, to campus.
She is far from alone. The Chronicle recently asked faculty members to share their experiences with student disengagement this academic year. More than 100 people wrote in to describe a disconcerting level of disconnection among students, using words like “defeated,” “exhausted,” and “overwhelmed.”

 

We’re not quite to the point where sending tanks to Harvard Yard is seen as the moderate position, but this is progress

The upshot is simple: The idea that in our society, after high school the ordinary trajectory is to attend another four years of school has become arbitrary, purposeless and even absurd. Botstein noted, “America has a more elaborate educational system that spreads over more years, reaches more people, and ends up with results for the entire population that are worse than those countries with educational systems that are explicitly not democratic and on the surface offer fewer opportunities for advanced education.” This model, he argued, is hardly what we would choose if asked with no experience how things should go. He argued that the model of high school we currently use is from a time when teenagers were on average less intellectually mature than they are now. Botstein proposed instead that childhood education can stop at 10th grade and that the education kids get during that year be a richer one than kids typically get today even going up through 12 grades.

 

As is this

IUP, as the public university here is known, mirrored the state pattern. Its fall student head count of about 9,300 was down 12 percent since 2019. Federal data shows enrollment peaked in 2012 at more than 15,500. That’s a 40 percent decline in a less than a decade, battering the university’s finances.

 

That’s all. Now go lift some weights, or get punched in the face, or bang a floozy, or eat a steak.

 

About The Author

Warty

Warty

291 Comments

  1. Tres Cool

    whaddup doh’

    • UnCivilServant

      You’re awake?

      Isn’t this supposed to be your sleeptimes?

      • Tres Cool

        Its nearing that. Knowing Im off tonight keeps me up past bedtime a bit.
        I went in an hour early yesterday, came home an hour early today so my internal chronometer is off. Its DST all over again.

  2. Rat on a train

    The Reason job posting needs to allow comments.

    • Compelled Speechless

      They forgot to list the multiple choice question you have to answer to work there:

      ENB is really good at:
      1) Journalism
      2) Making sandwiches

      It’s a trick. The correct answer will get you disqualified.

      • Count Potato

        There is a correct answer?

      • Compelled Speechless

        Rumor has it she’s the Lebron James of slinging tuna salad onto bread.

    • Tonio

      We should flood them with applications. Be sure to mention that you know how to change a tire.

      • Gender Traitor

        And I know how to make sammiches! ?

      • Tonio

        Ha!

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I LOL’d just because I know how pissy ENB would get just hearing about that.

      • TARDis

        Wait. You can change tires and make sammiches? ^Keeper^

        Plus you have a stable job and like play the drums or something?

      • Gender Traitor

        All that and so much more! ?

      • TARDis

        :insert Archer meme here:

      • Tres Cool

        She knows how to pump a basement!

        /insert euphemism here

      • Tres Cool

        Hobbies- hair gel and doing my coiffure like Flock of Seagulls, cocktail parties, manicures, and tiny dogs.

      • Tonio

        Electric stand-up scooters.

      • Tres Cool

        Im not saying Robbie is a closeted gay, but I bet if I kicked him in the ass 10 cocks would fall out.

      • Compelled Speechless

        If keeping farm animals up your ass is gay, I’ve got a lot a of things to sort out……

      • Name's BEAM. James BEAM.

        He amputates ’em afterwards? Yikes.

      • Tres Cool

        He isnt (((jewish))). Im sure he knows how to *lowers glasses* ……TIP

      • Tres Cool

        You know what Jeffrey Dahmer used to cut up his victims, right?
        A jig saw.

        /exits Stage Left

      • Bobarian LMD

        GAMBOLING.

      • Rat on a train

        collections of Agile Cyborg poetry

      • Tres Cool

        Fuck you. You’re going to make me cry before I go to bed. I miss him.

        Agile Cyborg
        September.9.2015 at 8:28 pm
        Drink Founder’s like fucking water, babe. Under the spreading oaks in the groves next to my sweet bowl and certain things.

        Agile Cyborg
        September.9.2015 at 9:24 pm
        Slip her some of your artistry jizz spilled on a scrap of paper and ask her to lick it. She will fall to the call of Quincy. The rays of the future fall into the prescribed narrows of a gliding tower resonating with the shriek of our digital survival, Quincy. Our atoms will crave the network canyons and living like a homeless duo amoung the silicone and future nanocords will enable us to pull the metal woman into a feverish forelong.

      • Shpip

        Slip her some of your artistry jizz spilled on a scrap of paper and ask her to lick it. She will fall to the call

        Maybe that dude on the Southwest flight should’ve tried this.

      • DEG

        I miss Agile Cyborg.

        I’ll have some Founder’s tonight in his honor.

      • robc

        If he had come over to join us, I am sure he would have a regular spot for his work.

      • MikeS

        IIRC he came over for a few days and didn’t find it to his liking.

      • l0b0t

        I’m putting Postrel and Fruit Sushi down as my references.

  3. Compelled Speechless

    “The FBI interviewed him and says he didn’t think the female passenger was uncomfortable with him masturbating and he thought “it was kind of kinky.”

    The article doesn’t state if Louis CK will be released in time to make the show he was flying in for.

    • Pope Jimbo

      That’s the problem with SouthWest, you always end up sitting next to a jerk.

      • Compelled Speechless

        Unless you’re the jerk. That’s why I always bring a carry on sized bottle of lotion and a ball gag. Set those on your tray table and everyone assumes you’re the pervert on the flight and no one else even tries to whip it out. Sometimes it backfires and you get invited to join the mile high club. Win win.

        On a related note, I still can’t get a single airline to respond to my requests to put glory holes on the lavatory doors. Prudes.

      • Tonio

        I’m working on a story you will enjoy.

      • Compelled Speechless

        Can’t wait! I hope it’s depraved.

  4. Count Potato

    “unaccounted for pregnancy”

    LOL

    • Tonio

      Or maybe, just maybe, vag-persons who get pregnant out of wedlock will grasp at any excuse.

      • l0b0t

        Telegony… the (now discredited) idea that if a white woman has vaginal intercourse with a black man, but then many years later, has a baby by a white man,. the baby could come out mulatto.

      • Tonio

        Damn. Talk about your taint of miscegenation.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Ummm… it isn’t your taint that knocks up women Tonio.

      • Nephilium

        Discredited?

        Are you a biologist?

        (Alternatively, how do you know what that baby identifies as?)

  5. Count Potato

    “Antonio Sherrodd McGarity is accused of masturbating four times in the seat next to a female passenger.”

    She didn’t say anything the first three times?

    • Nephilium

      She was done after the first three times.

      • Compelled Speechless

        His three to her one isn’t bad. Better than what my wife gets.

      • Tres Cool

        I tell her the same thing.

        /heeeeyyyyyyooooooh

      • Compelled Speechless

        Not cool Tres. You should change your name to Tres Not Cool. ????

      • Tres Cool

        So much for the “speechless” part.

        Gonna come up on stage and slap me now ?

      • Name's BEAM. James BEAM.

        Well, not your face, anyways.

      • Compelled Speechless

        We’re going to have to switch roles, because the way your talking to me right now has already made me the Rock….if you catch my drift ?.

      • Tres Cool

        If you want it prison-style Ill just pin your neck to the mattress and go in dry.

        #FreshFishOnTheLine

      • Compelled Speechless

        You really know how to make a girl (or whatever I identify as during this lurid affair) feel special.

      • Tres Cool

        I’ll kiss ya like I missed ya.

        ($20 extra)

      • Compelled Speechless

        No kissing and no eye contact. I don’t want this turning gay.

    • Bobarian LMD

      He failed to up his game. She got bored.

    • MikeS

      Not only did she not say anything, she took pictures of him doing it and waited until he fell sleep to complain.

  6. Count Potato

    “That essentially means doing more of what we’re already doing. ”

    How about we just stay the fuck out of it?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Don’t read the comments.

      • Tonio

        Except the one by someone named Ozymandias. Epic, epic butt-hurt replies to that.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Really?

        Got to go check that out.

    • Tonio

      They are long on whining about Putin’s use of the word Nazi, but the word “Azov” does not appear in the article.

  7. Aloysious

    Hmmmmm… bang a floozy or eat a steak.

    Choices, choices.

    Oh yeah. Iced Earth. Haven’t listened to that band in a while.

    ?

    • Tres Cool

      “Now go lift some weights, or get punched in the face, or bang a floozy, or eat a steak.”

      Why not all at once ?

      • Aloysious

        Priorities, man!

        Have you seen the price of steak and floozies these days?

      • Ted S.

        Whoops, I meant to link this tweet directly as a response to the “lift some weights” comment.

      • Aloysious

        Now I want to buy artificially simulated steak-like product.

  8. wdalasio

    I read the TOS job posting as “We hate our audience. Can you help us replace them with a new one?”. Their audience is probably more vocal about their wants and expectations than 95% of publications’. It’s just that they find their audience’s wants and expectations “icky”.

    • Gender Traitor

      They still have an audience??

      • Bobarian LMD

        Their remaining audience is pretty icky.

      • Tres Cool

        I do wonder how many TOS people lurk here reading our comments.

      • juris imprudent

        our unique community

        Yeah, I did not know unique was a synonym for miniscule.

    • Compelled Speechless

      You mean what the audience wants like actual libertarian writers and points of view instead of a bunch of mega progs who think that ware and debt are bad but it’s like, no where near as important as setting buildings on fire for racial justice or making sure dudes who think they should be chicks forcing their way into whatever bathroom they fluid towards at the moment?

    • Certified Public Asshat

      They want us back.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Good luck with that.

      • Compelled Speechless

        I’ll go back the second they rehire Shikha Dalmia. What a towering intellect and they just let her go.

      • Tundra

        Kind of on a Gurus kick this afternoon.

  9. Shpip

    He argued that the model of high school we currently use is from a time when teenagers were on average less intellectually mature than they are now.

    Does anyone who has had contact with actual teenagers over the last century actually believe this?

    • Sean

      Tik Tok videos grow intellectual maturity. It is known.

    • Tonio

      Yeah, 150 years ago teenagers were getting married at 15-16 and heading West to clear land and start farms.

    • kbolino

      Forget it, he’s rolling.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      Not for a second, this current generation of Yoots is mind dulled to a great extent, Sometimes I feel like a Martian trying to explain shit to them

    • invisible finger

      So intellectually mature that they need safe spaces within 10 feet of their person at all times.

    • Raven Nation

      As far as I can tell, calling teenagers more mature means “college students have adopted most of my leftist positions AND they know more about sex than I did when I was their age.”

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      They know more about kinks than I ever did at that age. That doesn’t make them mature.

    • rhywun

      I own a few HS textbooks from the mid 20th century and I can assure you they are way more rigorous than anything that came later.

  10. Bobarian LMD

    using words like “defeated,” “exhausted,” and “overwhelmed.”

    We know the teachers are fucked up, but what about the students?

    • kbolino

      Teachers feeling defeated, exhausted, and overwhelmed is also known as a good start.

      I have not decided whether they or “medical professionals” are worse, but both have edged out police for top spot in most despicable profession, no small feat, since 2020.

  11. one true athena

    Well, Reason, unfortunately for you, Knockoff Slate is a pretty crowded niche, so good luck ‘expanding your user base’ if that’s what you want to be.

    The school one is just infuriating. “Gosh, whycome keeping kids from learning for a year or two means they weren’t learning? I am shocked and appalled!”

    • kinnath

      Slate isn’t even Slate any more

      • Bobarian LMD

        Slate was useful maybe 10+ years ago.

      • Raven Nation

        The only reason to ever read Slate was Hitchens.

      • Tonio

        I miss him.

  12. TARDis

    Now go lift some weights, or get punched in the face, or bang a floozy, or eat a steak.

    Are you my new supervisor?

    • Bobarian LMD

      Embrace the ‘and’!

      • TARDis

        ^actual management material^

      • one true athena

        Lift a floozy who’s punching you in the face while eating a steak?

      • TARDis

        It could work. She punches you with one hand and feeds you with other. Hopefully the ratio isn’t 1:1.

  13. wdalasio

    The wife and I just took delivery on a Pit Boss 1150 Pro Series pellet grill & smoker. With the gas grill and Weber, the base set-up is complete. I’m going to have to give her dibs on using it, because she’ll give me no end of grief if I don’t. But, I’m looking forward to making some real barbecue. Eventually, I want to work my way up to a smoked porchetta.

    • Tundra

      Niiiiiiiice.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      If I may make a recommendation, don’t use the Pit Boss pellets. They’re too soft and ash up the grill badly.

      Traeger pellets are ok, but if you can get Green Mountain Grill brand, they’re very good.

      • Tres Cool

        Im perpetually hard for a Traeger, but I just can’t spend $1500 on a metal can that heats stuff.

      • slumbrew

        Fuck Traeger

        That is all.

      • l0b0t

        Wow, that cat comes off as an extremely self-important douche.

      • slumbrew

        So much so that I now have an extremely negative view of the entire company.

        It’s impressive, really.

      • wdalasio

        Gah! We got 40 pounds of the Pit Boss pellets when we bought the grill. Well, I guess the Dirt Devil will get some use.

        But, it looks like Tractor Supply carries Green Mountain. I love Tractor Supply!

      • MikeS

        I love Tractor Supply!

        ^ this guy gets it ^

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        TSC is great, but check out Rural King if there is one near you. Basically a much larger TSC with a firearm department. Their business plan has been to buy up abandoned Kmart’s in the south.

      • Gender Traitor

        Yup! That’s exactly where the one near Dayton is. You can still smell the stale popcorn by the entrance.

      • Tonio

        Feline Pine and other sawdust-based cat box fillers are essentially the same product. Don’t know how prices compare to the pellets marketed to the grill market.

      • Tulip

        Protip: don’t recycle it from the litter box.

    • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

      Very nice. I bet you can’t wait to get some of that meat in your mouth.

      I’m still using a 55 gallon drum as a smoker. Got it from Jesse. It works well enough, but it’s difficult to control the temperature. Maybe someday I’ll upgrade.

      • Tres Cool

        “Got it from Jesse”
        “I bet you can’t wait to get some of that meat in your mouth.”

        Are we even doing phrasing around here?

      • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

        OK, Mr. Perpetually Hard.

      • Bobarian LMD

        Jesse specializes in putting meat in the can. And a drum is just a large can.

      • Tonio

        [high-fives JR and Bobarian]

      • Tonio

        …and TC

      • wdalasio

        My brother made one out of an old refrigerator. But, I don’t have nearly his ingenuity.

        But, hey, I did manage to replace a break light. So, I probably have Robby beat.

      • pistoffnick the refusnik

        55 gallon drum as a smoker. Got it from Jesse.

        Did the drum originally contain lube?

      • Name's BEAM. James BEAM.

        Did the drum originally contain lube?

        PCBs. Close enough.

  14. JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

    I have a hard time reconciling the news about college enrollment declining with the fact that last year my daughter got rejected at nearly every place she applied even though she had close to 4.0 GPA. For the most part she was only applying to UC and Cal State schools.

    • Tundra

      Too pale?

      Not woke?

      • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

        She is pale, but I don’t think she checked the box, or she checked decline to state. Her only extracurricular activity was gymnastics and diving, so I’m guessing the admissions office saw that and said “rich white kid”.

      • invisible finger

        To college admins, Decline to state = WHITE AS HITLER

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I have heard that they are quietly downrating female applicants because of the female/male imbalance.

    • Tres Cool

      She just needs more FedGov loans. Self-pay doesn’t make them any money when you run the long game.

      • invisible finger

        College, car dealership, same thing.

    • one true athena

      yeah those schools are wildly oversubscribed, esp because they eliminated scores. My kid was waitlisted at UCSD this year. They had 6000 spots but 140,000 applications.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      Blessing in disguise?

      • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

        In the long run maybe it is. She seems to enjoy where she is and she’s doing very well.

    • rhywun

      Not “diverse” enough?

    • Rat on a train

      Which Cal State because those have traditionally been for the top half of high school graduates?

      • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

        Rejected at all the coastal UCs, San Diego State and Cal Poly SLO. I think she actually would have qualified for a guaranteed spot in a UC, but that would have meant Riverside or Merced. Accepted at SF State, SJ State and Hawaii. Hawaii actually was offering enough of a discount that it was competitive with the California schools, but in the end she decided to stay closer to home, which suited us fine.

    • Gadfly

      The California university system receives the greatest number of applications (seven of the top ten schools for most applications received are in California), so that is literally the worst place to apply (outside of the Ivy Leagues) if you actually want to get accepted. It’s not at all representative of the wider scene (but in this, it is very representative of California).

    • MikeS

      Michael Dougherty
      @MJDorty

      This was probably before the game!

    • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

      I guess they should be glad we’re not throwing them into internment camps yet.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      That’s not racist at all.

    • Homple

      Too bad they didn’t keep Chechens out of Boston back in 2013.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Boom

      • Compelled Speechless

        Somebody grab Scruffy’s pressure cooker. We don’t need a repeat of his last Boston reenactment.

    • rhywun

      I’m surprised they haven’t been banned from tennis yet.

      They don’t get flags, though.

      • grrizzly

        I would say that the Russians are too good to be banned from tennis. But they are even better in figure skating and they were banned there right away.

      • l0b0t

        Sweet! HG is one of those bands that I forget all about until I hear them and realize how much I really do like them. Ditto Drivin’ N Cryin‘.

      • TARDis

        Agree. They are bands you really like, but don’t know why exactly.

      • robc

        I saw DNC for the 2nd time a few years back (I guess 10 now?). The first time was about 1988 in Atlanta.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      LOL

    • rhywun

      Oh lord, those pics. I think that lizard has every trendy cause covered.

  15. DEG

    – and even bizarre occurrences such as “apparent abduction” and “unaccounted for pregnancy”.

    Getting hit by a bus is kinda obvious.

  16. Pope Jimbo

    This winter a buddy and I were talking in the fish house about how fish must feel after being caught and then thrown back. We started with a near death experience, but then decided it was more like an alien abduction.

    We decided that when the fish got back it would tell all its buddies about how it was. The would tell all their buddies about how they were just out looking for food when all of a sudden an alien grabbed them with a lip probe and hauled them up into the sky. Then they were manhandled by some strange creatures and thrown back in the lake.

    What made us giggle is that if the fish were complaining about lip probe technology on them, it makes you wonder exactly how and why “anal probes” work. Just like a greedy fish chomping down a minnow with a hook in it, those hillbillies probably bear more than a little responsibility for their probing.

    Then we started talking about what the “tackle” shop back on Planet X must look like. “Hey do you have any of those AssBlaster 12″ rattlers?” “Yup we got some. But we are out of black because that seems to be the hot color now”

  17. DEG

    At the risk of drugs falling out of my ass: Whistleblower who handed Hunter’s abandoned laptop to congressmen and DailyMail.com reveals he has 450 gigabytes of DELETED material including 80,000 images and videos – and has fled to Switzerland fearing retaliation from White House

    (I cut and pasted the Daily Fail’s headline instead of coming up with my own summary)

    The source who distributed Hunter Biden’s laptop to congressmen and media has fled the US to Switzerland, saying he fears retaliation from the Biden administration.

    Jack Maxey gave DailyMail.com a copy of the hard drive from Hunter’s abandoned laptop in the spring of 2021.

    He also gave copies and material from it to the Washington Post, New York Times, and Senator Chuck Grassley in his role as ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee – but he claims they all sat on it for months.

    For the past two weeks, Maxey has been in hiding in Zurich, working with IT experts to dig out more data from the ‘laptop from hell’.

    Maxey, a former co-host of ex-Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon’s podcast the War Room, claims he and his colleagues have found ‘450 gigabytes of deleted material’ including 80,000 images and videos and more than 120,000 archived emails.

    He said he intends to post them all online in a searchable database in the coming weeks.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Wow

      If true, that explains the political shifts over the last couple of weeks.

  18. Pope Jimbo

    Well of course he’s not being charged. It would be silly to think that there was anything that could have been done to prevent Amir Locke’s death.

    I seriously wonder if they decided to announce this now because the weather is so sucky. Hard to get your riot on when it is sleeting/snowing.

    The Minneapolis police officer who shot and killed Amir Locke in February will not face criminal charges, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said Wednesday.

    In a joint statement, the prosecutors cited “insufficient admissible evidence to file criminal charges” against officer Mark Hanneman under a state statute that gives officers wide discretion to use deadly force if there’s a threat of death or great bodily harm given what the officer knew at the time.

  19. mexican sharpshooter

    Now go lift some weights, or get punched in the face, or bang a floozy, or eat a steak.

    Or? Try and.

    • Warty

      I specifically used the boolean OR, not XOR.

  20. Pope Jimbo

    Good news from the prairie

    Despite drought conditions that affected much of Minnesota last year, farm profitability improved for the second year in a row, after seven years of economic struggles.

    “Surprisingly enough, I think for most folks this was the second highest profitability for farms on an inflation adjusted basis for Minnesota.” said Pauline Van Nurden, an Extension Economist at the University of Minnesota Center for Farm Financial Management, discussing a survey comparing farm financial data collected since 1996.

    All farm types in Minnesota saw positive net farm income for the second year in a row.

    • Pope Jimbo

      And it gets better and better for the rural welfare recipients (aka farmers)

      The Minnesota Senate unanimously passed legislation Thursday that provides financial relief to farmers who were hit hard by last summer’s drought.

      The $10 million bill includes $7 million for grants of up to $5,000 for livestock and specialty crop farmers. There’s also money to reimburse the Rural Finance Authority for drought relief loans that have already been processed.

      So to recap, farmers did good business last year despite a drought. Now us taxpayers are going to shower them with even more money.

  21. The Late P Brooks

    grow the audience

    “Why Elizabeth Warren is the Best Choice for Libertarian Voters”

    • Compelled Speechless

      With that headline they might want to try cutting into the Babylon Bee’s turf.

      • TARDis

        She’s the candidate for people who have given up hope.

      • Compelled Speechless

        I don’t know. From that last slate, it would have been pretty hard to accurately predict who would have brought the apocalypse on the fastest.

      • TARDis

        The new people are calling it some kind of reset or something.

        That’s good feminine wording, right?

        Like a gang-bang is a slumber party.

  22. The Late P Brooks

    “Unions Are the Ultimate Expression of Libertarianism”

    • kinnath

      Exchanging negative rights for positive rights is a net gain.

  23. The Late P Brooks

    He argued that the model of high school we currently use is from a time when teenagers were on average less intellectually mature than they are now.

    What complete and utter bullshit. Decades of infantilization and pandering to the lowest common denominator have taken a heavy toll.

    • Tres Cool

      He has to keep that job somehow, right ?

  24. Winston

    https://mobile.twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1511660488068767755

    Sean Penn on Sean Hannity saying gives nukes a chance. What a world we live in.

    Then again Penn was an idiot when he was an an “anti-Imperialist” so why am i surprised ?

    And if you excluded those who opposed the draft, the Communists, the proto-woke and those who hated Republicans then how many actual anti-war people are out there?

    • pistoffnick the refusnik

      …how many actual anti-war people are out there?

      *raises hand*

      • Compelled Speechless

        Why in the actual fuck is anyone putting a microphone in front of either of these quarterwits and asking them what they think about anything other than their Paw Patrol character? You can count the combined number of times that they’ve been correct about an issue on one hand.

    • kbolino

      And if you excluded those who opposed the draft, the Communists, the proto-woke and those who hated Republicans then how many actual anti-war people are out there?

      Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo, …

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Hey Penn, you fucking moron, that’s the entire point of nuclear weapons. You can’t use them or everybody dies. It’s meant to be a deterrent by design.

      People much smarter than you at the Pentagon spent decades trying to figure out how to use nukes without instigating TEOW and they couldn’t figure it out, what makes you think you have it all worked out?

  25. Winston

    https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/im-dysfunctional-youre-dysfunctional?s=r

    I had not thought to connect therapeutic culture to Woke culture, but now I see the fit. Both use the moral dyad, in which one person can have either agency or feelings, not the two together. Those with agency are the oppressors, who cause all of the suffering in the world. Those with feelings are the oppressed, who have no causal role in their own suffering.

    Once you claim an identity on the oppressed side of the moral dyad, such as “black woman” or “high-functioning autistic” or “not heterosexual,” the next step is to insist that your feelings depict your reality and may not be questioned. Regardless of what the Florida law actually says, some people feel hurt by it. Therefore, according to the therapeutic culture, it follows that employees of Disney are right to protest when their company fails to issue sufficient condemnation of the law.

    Unfortunately, as Lukianoff and Haidt point out in The Coddling of the American Mind, the Woke approach approach is the opposite of best practices for mental health. People ought to try to see themselves as agents able to make the best of our circumstances, rather than regard themselves as pure victims who can only cry out in rage and anguish.

    They’ll just grow out of it…

  26. Ownbestenemy

    Looks at what I’ve paid for backyard so far versus what is left in cash….I am really hoping I miscounted my starting cash.

    I triple checked every time I handed over cash on agreed days and I’m $650 short.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Either way it’s my fuckup. Do I pay it out of my bank or tell wife we either did a piss poor job counting out job funds or I accidently slipped the team an extra 650

  27. kinnath

    A bit of good news

    Judge acquits federal defense contractor on Jan. 6 charges

    Matthew Martin, a Trump supporter from New Mexico who believed that the election was stolen, went to trial before a federal judge.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Love how news likes to throw out “with a top-secret security clearance ” like that is something special and dangerous

    • Compelled Speechless

      It’s pretty sad when we see a political prisoner being released after being held for trespassing for 15 months as good news.

      • kinnath

        Yes it is

  28. Winston

    https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/31/left-covid-lockdowns-mind-autopsy/

    For two years the left has championed policies of surveillance and exclusion in the form of: punitive vaccine mandates, invasive vaccine passports, socially destructive lockdowns, and radically unaccountable censorship by large media and technology corporations. For the entire pandemic, leftists and liberals – call them the Lockdown Left – cheered on unprecedented levels of repression aimed primarily at the working class – those who could not afford private schools and could not comfortably telecommute from second homes.

    Does the left even care about the working class anymore? Or do they call them a bunch of racists?

    All of this unmasks the Lockdown Left’s blue-city provincialism. Its adherents drink high-quality coffee and enjoy bike lanes, but have revealed themselves to be as narrow-minded, clannish, mean-spirited and faith-based as any group of small-town “deplorables” might be. If you don’t agree with the consensus in Cambridge, Brooklyn, Bethesda, or Berkeley, then you are very obviously insane. End of story. For this set, Covid vaccines have become a fetish, a talisman to wave against the specter of “contagion”; while lockdowns and censorship are treated as purely technical, apolitical interventions. Prominent left intellectuals have embraced the weaponization of solidarity and made it into a lifestyle via their obsessive masking, scolding, and hiding. They pretend to care for society while actually applauding deeply anti-social and scientifically ungrounded policies like the indefinite shuttering of schools.

    Pluralism and tolerance everyone…

    • kbolino

      Does the left even care about the working class anymore?

      The mainstream left seems to have shifted the definition of “working class” to exclude the conventional proletariat (resource extraction, agriculture, refining, manufacturing) as well as skilled tradesmen, and put in their place service workers (baristas, cashiers, retail and warehouse employees, etc.) and email jobs.

      • Compelled Speechless

        Like most things nowadays, the definition of “working class” is fluid to suit the needs of whatever they need it for at that exact moment.

      • kbolino

        Yes, and it will change again someday no doubt.

        Not that Marx’s “original” definition was any less self-serving.

      • Compelled Speechless

        No, but at least he wrote down the definition so you could debate it. That’s the whole game now. The left is only winning arguments by putting the goal posts on the back of a pickup truck.

      • kbolino

        Motte-and-baileyism is very effective on many people, in no small part because they’ve been trained to remove their ordinary defense mechanism of pattern recognition, via such tactics as “stereotypes are bad” and “the slippery slope is a logical fallacy”.

      • Winston

        And liberals fall for it with their “progress is inevitable” and “change is always good” mindsets.

      • kbolino

        Indeed. “The right side of history” has also been a very effective conditioning device.

      • Winston

        Worked well for the Communists…

      • Compelled Speechless

        Which part worked well for the communists? No purported “communist” nation has managed to survive even a century. Complete societal collapse less than every hundred years doesn’t strike me as a good business plan. I guess if your only goal is to reach the top of a society with no concern for sustaining it, then yes, things like their propaganda were very effective.

  29. Tulip

    Prices keep going up. $5 for a 5lb bag of potatoes.

    • Winston

      Change is always good, I thought?

      • Tulip

        I said that when? The people in your head are not on this site.

    • Name's BEAM. James BEAM.

      I’m the food shopper in the family, and I’ve taken to buying at Costco Business and breaking down bulk items to save some dosh. Lots more beans, pulses, rice, pasta and flour in 10kg bags, as well as bulk dried potatoes.

      • slumbrew

        dosh… 10kg…

        Wait a second… you talk like some kinda furriner…

      • Name's BEAM. James BEAM.

        I am “some kind” of furriner.

  30. Tulip

    It’s not warm or sunny, but I’m still enjoying the first mojito of the year while I watch birds fight over territory.

    • MikeS

      We have a winter storm moving in! Yay!

      #neverendingwinter

      • TARDis

        Pray it’s not called Putin.

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      The AFT president has portrayed her trip as a humanitarian mission at the invitation of the Polish Teachers Union ZNP to distribute money and educational materials to help the children of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion.

      Whose side are the Polish teachers on? They should have sent the AFT president to the Eastern front.

    • Gadfly

      Socialists have always been better at asking good questions than providing good answers.

    • kbolino

      Not having enough children

      • Winston

        Waiting for how wanting kids, not wanting kids or teen pregnancy to be some sort of sexuality…

      • kbolino

        Dig deeper, if you dare, I assure it’s there.

      • Winston

        Not at all surprised…

    • Compelled Speechless

      My god these people are sooooo boring and they have no idea.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      A lot of those sound like “I’m an asshole”

      • Compelled Speechless

        Narcissist, asshole. Same thing. Fight Club needs to be required view for all children coming of age. If nothing else to teach them Tyler’s most important lesson:

        “You are not special. You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We’re all part of the same compost heap. We’re all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”

      • kbolino

        The problem with Tyler Durden’s philosophy is that it is only valid for some people: roughly speaking, average and below-average men. Most women, children, and above-average men do not experience life that way. The most that one could hope to be gained from watching and understanding Fight Club is empathy for its depicted demographic. A tall order, still.

      • Compelled Speechless

        I agree. I don’t really think it required viewing. I do think people need to disabuse themselves of the notion that they are somehow special, different or particularly valuable to anyone outside their immediate friends and family as young as possible.

    • EvilSheldon

      One exists, the other does not?

    • MikeS

      The U.S. agency said SpaceX donated 3,667 terminals and the internet service itself, while USAID purchased the remaining 1,333 terminals.

      I wonder if the money from the ones they bought even cover the ones he’s donating. Plus no charge for the internet service. I’m pretty neutral on this.

      • Draw Me Like One of Your Tulpae, Jack

        I think it’s generous of Elon. I wish he had figured out a way to do it himself, but I guess he figured USAID would have the logistical infrastructure already in place.

        On a good note, it looks like Congress pretty much cancelled funding for international “COVID relief”, which USAID was managing. On our monthly call, there were a heap of disappointed faces.

  31. The Hyperbole

    DAILY QUORDLE ROUNDUP
    #72
    Men’s Division
    Champ(s)
    l0b0t 17

    Grumbletarian 18
    Rat on a train 18
    rhywun 18
    Teds’S 19
    TARDis 19
    The Hyperbole 20
    grrizzly 20
    Grummun 20
    Bobarian LMD 21
    kinnath 21
    Ghostpatzer 22
    Sean 22
    Tundra 22
    Raven Nation 22
    JG43 23
    Trshmnstr the terrible 24
    Not Adahn 25
    Name’s BEAM, James BEAM 25
    The Other Kevin 26

    Chump(s)
    MikeS *17

    Women’s Division
    Champ(s)
    one true athena 24

    Rhywun was about to pull the coveted chump to champ play when I0b0t crushed it and dashed all the 18er’s hopes. MikeS scores a 1,000,017. One true athena returns to her throne atop the highly competitive Women’s Division.

    • MikeS

      17! I tied for first!

    • one true athena

      thank you, thank you everyone, it’s been a lot of work and struggle and y’know you just have to do the time in training and I want to give a shout out to my mom for always being there for me and all my Sisters of the Glibs for being such great competitors

      • TARDis

        Is your real name Lia?

        /Runs away

    • Ownbestenemy

      Seems like a secret list building exercise to control us. I don’t trust Hyoe

    • Raven Nation

      I’m maintaining my place right in the middle of the curve.

  32. Winston

    https://www.webmd.com/sex/allosexuality-what-it-means

    Anyone who feels sexual attraction for other people is considered allosexual, while people who rarely or never experience sexual attraction are considered gray- or asexual.

    Allosexual people may have any sexual orientation. The word was coined by the asexual community to help reduce the assumption that allosexuality is “normal” and asexuality is “abnormal.”

    Oh dear…

    Am I the only one who thinks this sounds like a bunch of people who are trying to fund the “trauma” in not getting sex all the time in High School?

    • kbolino

      Am I the only one who thinks this sounds like a bunch of people who are trying to fund the “trauma” in not getting sex all the time in High School?

      Maybe. It’s also about reifying fanfiction, mindless hedonistic consumerism, and turning mean-girl politics up to 11.

      • Compelled Speechless

        I hereby propose that we rename woke politics to mean-girl politics henceforth. Who’s with me?

    • l0b0t

      I thought an Allosexual was someone who cheated on their battle-axe of a wife with a series of waitresses, while trying to walk the fine line between resistance and collaboration.

      https://youtu.be/OtQxugFYQqs

    • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

      I thought an aloesexual was anyone with a penis who masturbates. Anyway, some people have way too much time on their hands. And other stuff.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      A god awful concert though…

      Ian was completely stoned and/or drunk, and I think they were on the 52nd drummer. They went through them faster than Spinal Tap.

      • MikeS

        I had that one cued up, then switched up and went for my favorite…not realizing there were rules. Also, you’re not my supervisor!

      • Tundra

        Lol.

        Rules.

        Good one.

        One more.

      • l0b0t

        That was fun, but I will confess to being a bit disappointed that it was not the Good Feeling with which I was familiar – https://youtu.be/KhedKAhHqK8

      • Tundra

        Sweet.

        Loved that album.

  33. The Late P Brooks

    What is the difference between demisexuality and the Socon views on marriage?

    Don’t know, don’t care.

  34. Gadfly

    Job opening at some place I’ve never heard of, and which sounds rad and based

    Are you trying to get us to troll them?

  35. Gadfly

    War? War? C’mon, war!

    I am more pro-war than most people here I think, but Russia committing war crimes in no way should change the calculus of the US on whether to get involved. And while I do think the case for involvement was strong at the outset, the fact that Ukraine has Russia on the retreat currently means the case for the US getting involved is weaker than it has ever been.

  36. Gadfly

    Federal data shows enrollment peaked in 2012 at more than 15,500. That’s a 40 percent decline in a less than a decade, battering the university’s finances.

    Good news. The universities got fat with the cash of debtors and taxpayers, and they could use a diet.

  37. Draw Me Like One of Your Tulpae, Jack

    I’m supposed to go into the office on the 18th to get my work laptop updated. I forgot which floor my cubicle is on.

    But it will be the last time I see my cubicle, as I’m officially a remote worker now.

    • rhywun

      I need to become one of those, if push comes to shove.

    • Hyperion

      I guess I’m supposed to go get my desktop. I ain’t been in there in more than 2 years and am not going back. Even if I wanted to get it, I don’t have anywhere to put it. And wer’e supposed to start using the VPN now and so the desktop becomes a moot point.

  38. Hyperion

    “I’m not saying it’s aliens”

    All of our ‘organizations’, every last one of them are a fucking joke now.

    Let me be clear about this, here’s some ‘SCIENCE’ for you, Pentagon and NASA – THERE AIN’T NO FREAKING ALIENS!

    And if there are, it doesn’t matter one fucking bit anyway because we can never meet them and very likely can never even communicate with them. The distances are impossible, the Pentagon employ any sciency like people who understand math, what about NASA?

    The nearest star to here is 4.1 light years away. The fastest rocket we have ever built will take 80,000 years to get there. If it could carry that much fuel, and it can’t. Anyways, that star is a volatile red dwarf which constantly rerupts in life killing radiation flares. So, no, we’re not finding any aliens there. And we can’t go there anyways. Now, I think science is cool and all that, but this is just stupid. Defund NASA and the Pentagon now, they’re idiots, and let real scientistS speculate on the sciency stuff. We’ve been talking about this Fermi Paradox all these years, when the answer is so simple, BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO FUCKING FAR AWAY, DUMMIES!

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      They always trot out the aliens when they’re trying to distract from something else.

      Last year it was strange things that moved at impossible angles and accelerations over the ocean. I found out what it most likely is. They’re using a laser interference system to superheat air into plasma balls. They can move that ball around in ways that anything which has mass cannot do. It also shows up on radars. In other words, it’s a radar decoy system meant to confuse the enemy. They were testing it and providing a cover story of aliens.

      • Hyperion

        That sounds legit. And here I thought they were just delusional or drunk, or both. But what sort of reasonable person sees something they can’t explain and immediately assumes it’s aliens? People are just dumb, public school has worked exactly as planned.

  39. MikeS

    So glad I heard about these guys from you fine folks.

    IJ is on the case:

    Police take an oath to protect and serve the public. But in Brookside, Alabama, a top-down scheme pushed by its police chief, mayor and council has prioritized something else instead: generating money. Hundreds of people tell similar stories about being pulled over for dubious reasons and charged with bogus violations. Many motorists were left stranded on the side of the road when their cars were towed without justification, often at night and with small children.

    The town prosecutor and judge rubber-stamped these abuses, and in turn, Brookside’s revenue spiked by over 600% in two years, with fines and forfeitures coming to fuel nearly half the town’s budget. Yet still, that was not enough for the minds behind Brookside’s policing racket. Police Chief Mike Jones, who recently resigned, declared the 600% increase “a failure” because the town could be raking in more cash with “more officers and more productivity.”

    • slumbrew

      That’s fucking enraging.

      Man, I love IJ. Just did their survey and I _never_ do those things.

  40. Winston

    https://brownstone.org/articles/this-is-not-normal-and-no-one-should-accept-it/

    As a consequence, the entire body of citizens, as a manifestation of civic spirit, gave up freedoms and rights that were not relinquished even by the citizens of London during the bombing of the city in World War II (London adopted curfews but never locked down). The imposition of health as a legal obligation was accepted with little resistance. Even now, for many citizens it seems not to matter that these impositions utterly failed to deliver the public health outcomes that were promised.

    The full significance of what transpired over the last two years may have escaped our attention. Perhaps without realizing it, we just lived through the design and implementation of a new political paradigm—a system that was for more effective at controlling the population than anything previously done by Western nations.

    Under this novel biomedical security model, “the total cessation of every form of political activity and social relationship [became] the ultimate act of civic participation.” Neither the pre-war Fascist government in Italy, nor the communist nations of the east, ever dreamed of implementing such restrictions.

    • Hyperion

      “Neither the pre-war Fascist government in Italy, nor the communist nations of the east, ever dreamed of implementing such restrictions.”

      Someone dreamed of it a couple thousand years ago. I guess you can only envision it if you get exiled to Patmos.

  41. Gadfly

    In case this video hasn’t made the rounds here yet (I’ve been busy lately): how to properly measure yourself. Seems appropriate for a bro post, imo.

    • slumbrew
      • Gadfly

        LOL.

        I think this new version is a good iteration on the joke, though.

  42. grrizzly

    Only Ukrainian/globalist propaganda is allowed on Twitter.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Russia Today is/was more pro-free speech than any of the major tech companies.

    • Hyperion

      Elon may soon mess up their script, we can hope anyway…

    • Urthona

      Never trusted the Ukraine’s claims, but how credible are his?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Ritter is definitely suspicious of any Western claims and he may give Russia too much credit, but he comes off as a very sane person in interviews, unlike the DC regime’s raving, frothing at the mouth, loons.

      • Hyperion

        “Ritter is definitely suspicious of any Western claims”

        Sounds like a smart man to me, especially with this current illegitimate regime in DC.

      • Not an Economist

        The one tweet stream I saw, Ritter was giving Russia far too much credit. He basically claimed things were going as Russia planned. I’ve seen far too many pictures of stuck trucks for that too be true. From what I can tell, he is one of Russia’s propagandists, with no more connection to reality than DC.

    • rhywun

      I am not qualified to judge the veracity of any news coming out of that part of the world right now, so I am doing the only reasonable thing for me which is completely ignoring it.

      • MikeS

        #metoo

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        That is probably the best course.

        I remain highly suspicious and doubtful of anything the admin desperately wants me to believe.

  43. Hyperion

    “We’re not quite to the point where sending tanks to Harvard Yard is seen as the moderate position, but this is progress”

    “Why do we assume that people need four whole years of further education after high school?”

    Becuse 12 years isn’t enough to completely indoctrinate someone into Marxism, you have to be sure, you know, to save democracy.

  44. Ownbestenemy

    I would say 70% of the backyard was rockscape and generally unusable. Now it’s 90% turf with a nice extended patio and soon to be built firepit and bench

    https://pasteboard.co/r4m8KiFQpB2l.jpg

    • slumbrew

      That looks sweet!

      Totally worth the extra $650

      :-/

      • Ownbestenemy

        Heh…pretty sure we used some petty cash for something…I’m thinking cash tips during Christmas to the services…trash folk and another purchase. Didn’t update amounts on the ledger

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Noice!

    • Tundra

      Super nice!

    • Hyperion

      Nice! Are you near Tuscon, that looks familiar…

      • Ownbestenemy

        Nice try Fed…wait..im the Fed. Vegas

      • Hyperion

        Well, all that SW desert stuff looks alike to me…

    • slumbrew

      Are the ubiquitous cinderblock walls in the area to keep out critters or just “something that will survive the heat”?

      • Hyperion

        Those are probably the supports for the anti-scorpian drone launching platforms.

      • Ownbestenemy

        There is a 25 foot drop behind that wall but yeah, most fencing out here is with those blocks.

      • rhywun

        Desert critter regions are a “No” from me, dawg.

      • Ownbestenemy

        In the 5 years we have lived here I have seen one Tarantula Hawk and one scorpion. I think the dogs and cat keep the critters away. That and we don’t live completely like pigs leaving food sources out.

      • MikeS

        Had to look up Tarantula Hawk. They sound fun!

        They are one of the largest parasitoid wasps, using their sting to paralyze their prey before dragging it to a brood nest as living food; a single egg is laid on the prey, hatching to a larva which eats the still-living prey.

      • slumbrew

        Nooooope.

      • Hyperion

        When I lived in Simi Valley, everyone had a wall like that around their sand lot, people only had grass on the front lawn because sprinklers. The walls did not keep out the tarantula, scorpian, or rattle snake.

    • DEG

      Nice!

  45. Hyperion

    Just finished work for the day. Early night, was until almost 2am yesterday…