Fussin` java poor townfolk.
***
Some classic Carlin:
The American Dream
---------------------------------------------------
In spring rain
A pretty girl
yawning
– Issa
-------------------------------------------------
Anybody capable of casting a vote for Donald Trump is an enemy of science, an enemy of reason, an enemy of morality, an enemy of humanity, an enemy of democracy, an enemy of my country, an enemy of me.
Elon Musk: "His legions of devotees are fanatics and, let’s face it, a bit stupid."
- Brett Stephens
"If you're always right, you're not learning. If you're never failing, you're not reaching. The objective is to be right. The objective is to succeed. But if you're always winning, you're undershooting your potential."
- James Clear
A Very Important Description From The Inside On How The Republican Party Became The Nazi Party
It Didn’t Start with Trump: The Decades-Long Saga of How the GOP Went Crazy
Electricity is really just organized lightning.
- George Carlin
Would you rather write, or would you rather have written?
When dreaming of the destination overwhelms the journey it takes to get there, you’re in trouble.
6 Brutal Lessons Calvin And Hobbes Doesn't Spare
7 Moments Of Philosophical Genius In Calvin & Hobbes
| “I can be moving or I can be still, but still is still moving to me.”
- Willie Nelson, “Still Is Still Moving to Me” (1993)
|
General Mark Milley's Scathing Resignation Letter to Trump the Traitor
A Recap of Long-Time Republican Assholery
A Great Inflation Explanation - John Oliver
Mad about inflation? Blame your local officials.
I'm Fed Up With Democratic Emails
US Power Company Assholes at Work
The Dystopian Myths of Red America (Republicans believing in bullshit)
Absolutely Everything We Learned From the Jan. 6 Hearings
|
This is what's in a banana.
Water is much simpler. It's dihydrogen monoxide and is a major component of acid rain.
Chemophobia is a serious case of scientific illiteracy.
|
Elon Musk, Mars, and Globalism
|
In April, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said emissions must peak by 2025 to avoid catastrophic consequences.
Now this inaction is driving some scientists to engage in civil disobedience, while others are striking against the IPCC, calling for a halt of further reports until governments mobilize. It’s a dire situation that’s taking a toll on the mental health of scientists, and raising the question of what climate advocacy scientists should engage in as politicians imperil the planet.
The climate scientists are not alright
|
John Oliver - Critical Race Theory
So, look, by this point, it should be pretty clear the debate around Critical Race Theory is both very loud and very, very dumb. But unfortunately, it is important to engage with it. Because if we don’t, the endpoint we’re heading toward is that honest discussions of race will be shut out of public schools, even as some parents fuck off to voucher academies where their kids can learn a version of history that’s basically antebellum fan fiction. And I’m not saying that discussions on race will always be comfortable for everyone in the classroom, but think about it like this, when was learning and growing as a person ever comfortable? The thing to do here isn’t to run from those discussions or pass laws banning them. It is to learn how to have them better. Because for generation after generation, we’ve told schoolkids fairy tales about race in this country. And maybe it’s time we stop doing that. Because all it’s done so far is get us to the point we’re at right now, with full-grown adults insisting America can’t be racist because we elected Obama twice, that racism will go away if we just don’t mention it, and that Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech wasn’t an aspiration we have yet to fulfill, but some kind of magic spell that ended prejudice then and there.
Liberal Principles Exist for a Reason
Carving out exceptions for assholes doesn't work
Virtue signaling on the left is absolutely out of control. We shouldn’t imagine that we’re getting away with this or that it doesn’t matter; people notice it and they hate it. They notice when a character is jammed into a movie just to score diversity points. Corporate social justice statements are manipulative and empty. Activism from celebrities and athletes is sometimes just image-enhancement. The Oscars and Emmys are unwatchable parades of self-importance. Perhaps the biggest thing Hollywood could do to fight climate change would be to shut the fuck up about it.
The language thing is absolute poison. Words and phrases like “latinx”, “whiteness”, “lgbtqia2s+”, or even — God help us — “uterus-haver” make the speaker sound ridiculous and make the listener feel dumb. The speaker is also obliquely calling the listener a bigot and signaling their membership in a group that nobody wants to join. It’s pretentious and high-handed, and — again — everyone notices. There are ways of being welcoming and inclusive without sounding like an Orwellian robot that fell into a puddle.
-- Jeff Maurer |
|
On the origin of totalitarianism... Where does MAGA get its power?
"The masses’ escape from reality is a verdict against the world in which they’re forced to live."
-- Hannah Arendt
|
Can We See What The Other Side Sees? Most pro-lifers aren't bad people.
Justice Alito's Invisible Women
How Science Gets Done (Sometimes it can be gnarly - an article about COVID, droplets, and aerosols)
"Uncertainty is the prerequisite to gaining knowledge, and frequently the result as well." -- Edith Hamilton
Stupidity protects people from an awareness of their own stupidity.
Acceptance of uncertainty is a big deal. "Ignorance more frequentyly begets confidence than does knowledge." - Charles Darwin
Why Stupid People Think They're Amazing
I’m sympathetic to the idea that social-media companies should try to honor the spirit of the First Amendment, even if they aren’t legally bound by it. But the idea that Twitter is a good forum for speech is silly. Trying to communicate a thought in 240 characters isn’t speaking. It’s blurting. You don’t use Twitter for persuasion. You use it for insults and virtue signaling. A healthy free-speech environment depends on people talking with each other. Twitter is a medium for people to talk at others. The best thing that could happen to Twitter isn’t an acquisition, by Musk or anyone else. It’s bankruptcy.
-- Bret Stephens |
If Putin isn’t stopped in Ukraine, the Baltics are likely next
Five charts explaining why inflation is at a 40-year high
On the far side of a stretch of railroad tracks, two elderly women had been killed in their house. One lay in the doorway, another in the kitchen. Both were bundled in heavy winter coats. Neighbors said that they had been sisters, both in their seventies. Their small house was filled with hardcover books, and they did not own a television; it was impossible not to imagine their quiet, literary life together before it was annihilated. In the only bedroom, two narrow mattresses were pushed together and covered by a single blanket.
-- From "Collecting Bodies in Bucha" in the New Yorker |
Know this: oil companies are raking in huge profits while sitting on nearly 10,000 unused drilling permits.
Some Ukranian-Russian History
| "Will Smith Did a Bad, Bad Thing" - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Excerpt:
Some have romanticized Smith’s actions as that of a loving husband defending his wife. Actually, it was the opposite. Smith’s slap was also a slap to women. By hitting Rock, he announced that his wife was incapable of defending herself - against words. This patronizing, paternal attitude infantilizes women and reduces them to helpless damsels needing a Big Strong Man to defend their honor lest they swoon from the vapors. Worse than the slap was Smith’s tearful, self-serving acceptance speech in which he rambled on about all the women in the movie, "King Richard", that he’s protected. By using these women to virtue signal, he was in fact exploiting them to benefit himself. But, of course, the speech was about justifying his violence.
Young boys - especially Black boys - watching their movie idol not just hit another man over a joke, but then justify it as him being a superhero-like protector, are now much more prone to follow in his childish footsteps.
The one bright note is that Chris Rock, clearly stunned, managed to handle the moment with grace and maturity. If only Smith’s acceptance speech had shown similar grace and maturity - and included, instead of self-aggrandizing excuses, a heartfelt apology to Rock.
|
There’s an exquisite power embedded in fame, formality and fashion. It has a way of blinding people from the thuggery right in front of them.
- Robin Givhan
Some people, their whole lives, are just injustice collectors. They’re going to find new injustices every day. That’s what they do, and that’s what they are.
- Lorne Michaels
The truth about gas prices and oil production - The Washington Post