Scavenging Is Illegal | delicioustacos: "I saw the first one right after Easter, on a garbage truck. “SCAVENGING IS ILLEGAL.” A picture of some poor fucker bent over a trash can trying to scrounge up a couple bucks worth of bottles and cans for a beer. They’ve finally done it. They have made a sign that would literally make Jesus Christ puke. Even the little crossed out baby sign on the dumpsters isn’t as bad. That one is trying to help people. You don’t have to throw out your baby, just take it to the firehouse. Also, what part of “Yard Waste Only” don’t you understand. But this one might as well be a huge middle finger flipping off a hobo and read “FUCK THE POOR.”"
Scavenging Is Illegal | delicioustacos: "They’re campaigning against people who have to live off trashpicking. Stop collecting cans, you miscreants. Get a real job. You could be the CEO of Apple if you applied yourself. Why? Of all the things on Earth, this hurts no one, and it doesn’t seem like there’s even any money in it. You chop your arm off and call 911 in L.A., it’ll take 45 minutes for them to show up. They will ask you if any city property was damaged. But if your car is on the wrong side of the street at 8:00:01 on Thursday, or at 9:15 after the street sweeper has gone by, a fleet of their Dodge Neons will materialize like Romulan War Birds uncloaking to give you a HUGE ticket. That makes sense, in a twisted way. The city needs dough."
Does Red Meat Clog Your Arteries After All? | Mark's Daily Apple: "The initial association between TMAO and cardiovascular disease in humans is just that – an association. Causation is not established, and it may even be that cardiovascular disease or some other common event increases TMAO as a response to injury or disease. An increase in serum TMAO is, for example, a marker of certain kidney injuries (PDF). It could merely be correlation or even reverse causation. We simply don’t know."
...You know what else raises TMAO? Fish. That’s right – heart attack-inducing, artery-clogging, linked-to-every-disease-state-known-to-man fish actually contains TMA, the metabolite that converts to TMAO in the body. TMA is what gives fish the “fishy smell,” and when people eat fish, urine TMAO increases. Strangely, the latest research shows that fish is consistently associated with better cardiovascular health, not worse (despite the TMA content and effect on TMAO levels)."
...You know what else raises TMAO? Fish. That’s right – heart attack-inducing, artery-clogging, linked-to-every-disease-state-known-to-man fish actually contains TMA, the metabolite that converts to TMAO in the body. TMA is what gives fish the “fishy smell,” and when people eat fish, urine TMAO increases. Strangely, the latest research shows that fish is consistently associated with better cardiovascular health, not worse (despite the TMA content and effect on TMAO levels)."
Ales Kot Readies For His "Suicide Squad" Run - Comic Book Resources: "I don't really see people as good or bad. Our actions define us, continually, because where we live is not the past or the future, but always the present."
Survey of More Than 15,000 Cops Finds Most of Them Oppose More Gun Control - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "The law-enforcement support site PoliceOne.com has released the results of a massive survey in which "more than 15,000 verified law enforcement professionals" were asked 30 questions about current gun control proposals. The results may surprise you. "Contrary to what the mainstream media and certain politicians would have us believe," writes Police One Editor in Chief Doug Wyllie, "police overwhelmingly favor an armed citizenry, would like to see more guns in the hands of responsible people, and are skeptical of any greater restrictions placed on gun purchase, ownership, or accessibility.""
Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
Karen De Coster » The Police State Hates Tinted Windows: "In fact, in Aurora (IL), events are held where the voluntary slaves can show up and have their windows checked by the bullies – for free! – and thus know whether or not they need to have the tint removed. That reminds me of my Neighborhood Watch group that holds an annual “Fingerprint Festival” where all the gleeful serfs show up at the neighborhood park to get their free hot dogs and partake in an ice cream social while they get voluntarily fingerprinted by the local police department as a way of showing their obedience to their Masters. I wish I was making that up, but alas, this is my neighborhood’s annual celebration of freedom."
"Yeah, that's the point, it's funny."
Stoya on Why Las Vegas and Megachurches Are the Pinnacle of Human Achievement | VICE Canada: "During this January's Adult Entertainment Expo, I sat in a club at the Hard Rock while Taio Cruz's "Hangover" played. The song celebrates habitually drinking too much and is incredibly catchy. I perched on the back of a velvet couch with a glass of prosecco in hand and entertained myself by trying to guess which of the women tottering by in barely functional shoes were bachelorette parties and which were fellow sex workers. Aside from the near-uniform garments that did virtually nothing to protect their bodies from the elements, both ends of this spectrum seemed to have the common aim of making people feel good. Humans tend to like doing things that make us feel good. Some of us like to feel good by having sex for fun, getting drunk, or dancing around to physically palpable bass. Some of us like to feel good by eating things that are a delightful combination of sugar, salt, and fat or educating ourselves and using our intellect to do things that we think are for the betterment of humanity. Others enjoy feeling morally superior through abstinence and sobriety."
Applies to men & women, actually. [Which the author cops to at the end of the piece, actually.]
"What A Woman’s Refusal To Cook Means
Cooking is not hard – making a healthful, tasty meal has never been easier. Between modern kitchen appliances, supermarkets, farmers’ markets, car ownership and the wealth of information on the internet, making your own meals is fairly simple. The only thing that cooking requires is the desire for something better, and the will to make it happen. This is what I hear when a woman says she does not cook: “Everything that can be bought, should be bought.”
After all, she’s not used to giving up her time to do things for others, except within the confines of her job. She will do anything for her boss, but make a slight request of her as her man, she will blow up and call you a misogynistic asshole. You’re basically as bad as one of those Iranians who stone women to death for getting raped.
“I’m not your slave, I’m not cooking for you.“ ...If I was already preparing some food, and I had a girl over and she asked to have some, I’d have no problem throwing in another couple eggs or slices of bacon. Flip the script, ask her to make you something, and suddenly you’ve turned back the clock to those dark days when uh, women didn’t get free birth control from the government, and couldn’t fuck around on their husband and expect to keep the kids. She actually will equate cooking for you with being your slave.
“I can’t be bothered to take my health seriously.” Healthy, satisfying, affordable – pick two. The only way to have all three is to cook your own meals. When a woman eats most of her meals out, she’s compromising somewhere. Usually, she’s eating food that she’s been brainwashed into thinking is good for you, like Yoplait and oatmeal cookies, food that’s actually stuffed with sugar, refined carbohydrates and oils cooked up in a chemistry lab. She’s always straddling the line between starving herself and getting fat, because her diet leaves room for nothing else. In a time when restaurants serve such fattening meals, the argument for cooking at home has never been stronger. Yet she can’t be bothered."
"To be fair, many of my criticisms of single women can be levied in equal measure against men... And for every point I made above, the woman who cooks merits the equal and opposite compliment. With such obvious benefits to preparing your own meals, the fact that she doesn’t is disconcerting. Thankfully, there are women who do cook, and even for those that don’t, some are apt to change. I’ve known a few women who knew nothing about cooking when single, but became great cooks once married..."
Funny - Qualities of the Prince |: "One of the best ways to illustrate how insaturated feminization has become in society is to flip the gender script on certain gender-specific dynamics. As funny as all this was, it serves to show that women live and operate in gender assumptions that they simply take as normalized conditions. Were a Man to publicly expect the terms and demands for his own provisioning and intimate access that women demand without an afterthought, he’s instantly accused of misogyny at worst, comedy at best."
Three key lessons from the Obama administration's drone lies | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "For years, senior Obama officials, including the president himself, have been making public claims about their drone program that have just been proven to be categorically false. The evidence of this falsity is so conclusive that even establishment sources are using unusually harsh language - including "lies" - to describe Obama's statements. McClatchy's national security reporter, Jonathan Landay, obtained top-secret intelligence documents showing that "contrary to assurances it has deployed US drones only against known senior leaders of al-Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified 'other' militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan's rugged tribal area." That article quotes drone expert Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations as saying that "McClatchy's findings indicate that the administration is 'misleading the public about the scope of who can legitimately be targeted.'"
In his own must-read article at Foreign Policy about these disclosures, Zenko writes - under the headline: "Finally, proof that the United States has lied in the drone wars" - that "it turns out that the Obama administration has not been honest about who the CIA has been targeting with drones in Pakistan" and that the McClatchy article "plainly demonstrates that the claim repeatedly made by President Obama and his senior aides - that targeted killings are limited only to officials, members, and affiliates of al-Qaida who pose an imminent threat of attack on the US homeland - is false.""
Three key lessons from the Obama administration's drone lies | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "Beyond the obvious harms of having the president and his administration continuously lie to the public about such a crucial matter, Zenko explains that these now-disproven claims may very well make the drone strikes illegal since assertions about who is being targeted were "essential to the legal foundations on which the strikes are ultimately based: the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force and the UN Charter's right to self-defense." Marcy Wheeler uses the documents to show how claims about drones from other key officials, including Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, are also unquestionably false. Both Landay's article and Zenko's analysis should be read for the details, but I want to highlight the three key points from this:
(1) The Obama administration often has no idea who they are killing...
(2) Whisteblowers are vital for transparency and accountability, which is precisely why the Obama administration is waging a war on them...
(3) Secrecy ensures both government lies and abuses of power...
Blood Money, Kill Lists, Favors for Favors: Deep Inside the CIA's Targeted Killings | Danger Room | Wired.com: "DR: Whose idea was it to pay blood money to Pakistanis for the release of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, and what was the broader impact of the Davis episode on CIA’s relationship with Pakistan? MM: It’s funny, many people have claimed to be the first to come up with the blood money idea. It certainly was discussed both among Pakistani and American officials, and both Pakistani ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani and General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the Pakistani spymaster, were instrumental in the arrangement. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal the Raymond Davis episode still is in Pakistan. When I travelled there last year, I heard far more intense anger about the Davis affair than about the Osama bin Laden raid. For many Pakistanis, it seemed to confirm all the conspiracy theories that the CIA had deployed a secret army into Pakistan to sow violence."
Blood Money, Kill Lists, Favors for Favors: Deep Inside the CIA's Targeted Killings | Danger Room | Wired.com: "DR: What are the rules for “signature strikes,” the strikes in Yemen and Pakistan that target military-aged males and not specific, known terrorists? MM: It’s hard to know the specific rules, because all this remains classified. But I’ve been told that strikes are carried out based on “patterns of activity,” and can be authorized even when the CIA does not know specifically whom they are targeting. Signature strikes are probably the most controversial aspect of the targeted killing program. It’s my understanding that, for instance, a group of males can be targeted based on accumulated evidence that they are engaged in some kind of “militant behavior,” and one example that is often cited is a group of people with guns heading from Pakistan to Afghanistan."
"Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you’re just a reflection of him?” - Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes
Duane Ludwig discusses working with Team Alpha Male, leaving active fighting behind - Bloody Elbow: "I was always the type where I would train till I was dead tired. I had to. There was no other way for me. If I left the gym with energy, then I must have been doing something wrong. "
Former Tennessee legislator "drove 90 MPH while masturbating out window" - Boing Boing: ""At over 90 miles per hour, he had his penis out [the window]... he was masturbating... and that's when it got really, really bad. I wouldn't look over any more, and I wrote his tag number down on my hand, which I believe he noticed, and he exited very quickly.""
Brad Paisley & LL Cool J Will Solve Racism Now - The Superficial - Because You're Ugly: "If you haven’t heard by now, the Internet was handed a goddamn golden goose yesterday when Brad Paisley released his latest song “Accidental Racist” featuring LL Cool J. (If that seems weird to you, LL Cool J stars on a CBS police procedural making him technically white.) A self-pitying tune lamenting Brad’s inability to love the Confederate flag and the South without being thought of as a racist. Fortunately, his spirits are lifted when LL raps into say he’ll forgive slavery – yup – if Brad won’t think he’s trying to shoot him just because he’s wearing gold chains. So needless to say, it cuts right to the very core of racial tensions in America, except not at all, Jesus fucking Christ, who thought this was a good idea?"
Religion is destructive.
Two more babies stricken with HERPES after ritual oral blood sucking circumcision in New York City | Mail Online: "Two more infants have been infected with a deadly herpes virus in the last three months after undergoing a controversial religious oral circumcision in New York City. The latest cases bring the count to 13 infants since 2000, two of which suffered brain damage and two died from the virus which can rapidly spread throughout its body. The ultra-Orthodox Jewish practice of metzitzah b'peh requires a practitioner to orally suck the baby's penis to 'cleanse' the open wound following its circumcision, making them susceptible to the virus."
Internet Ranting and the Myth of Catharsis | Psychology Today: "The idea that “venting” anger has a beneficial cathartic effect is well entrenched in modern culture. Belief in the value of venting has manifested in the online world in the form of “rant” sites (e.g. Rant Rampage) where people not only get to freely express their vitriol, they can also read and comment on rants left by other venters. However, decades of research have shown that venting, far from releasing anger, actually makes it worse. Not surprisingly, a recent study has shown that online ranting seems to increase anger and is associated with anger-related problems. Ranting may be problematic because it associated anger with aggressive behaviour. On the other hand, expressing anger in a constructive and non-aggressive way can actually be beneficial."
Fun With Logic: Guns | The Blackdragon Blog: "Okay. Let’s be logical and rational for a minute and walk through this. Let’s say we had banned all assault weapons and made them illegal to purchase. Just one problem. The Portland shooter didn’t purchase his assault weapon; he had stolen it from someone else. Same deal with the Sandy Hook shooter; he stole the gun from his mother. Banning assault weapons doesn’t make the millions (and there literally are millions) of assault weapons people already have instantly vanish. Want proof of this? Connecticut already had an assault weapons ban. Hm. Therefore making assault weapons illegal at the federal level wouldn’t have changed a thing. Both of these shootings would have still happened."
Fun With Logic: Guns | The Blackdragon Blog: "So what do we do now? Do we we make it “illegal to steal guns”? Do we have the cops bust into everyone’s home and make sure they don’t have any assault weapons a crazy person might steal? That’s just assault weapons. What about handguns? The deadliest shooting incident by a single gunman in U.S. history, the Virginia Tech massacre, was done by a guy with two little handguns, one of which was a Walther P22, one of the weakest handguns you can buy. So should we ban all handguns too? I’m not making a joke here. I’m very serious. What exactly should we do and how exactly would it work in the real world?"
Cognitive Dissonance on Gun Rights - Reason.com: "In political debates, it seems fair to say most of us think we operate as follows: First, we study the issues. Second, we reach conclusions based on the best arguments and evidence. Then we seek out those who share our conclusions and the reasons for them. Finally, we make common cause with the like-minded.
Unfortunately, research suggests people often do precisely the opposite. To a much greater degree than we would like to think, we choose up sides first. Then we align our conclusions with what our side thinks about a particular issue. Then we adopt the arguments that best support the conclusions our side favors—even if we dispute those same arguments in other cases."
"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world." - C.S. Lewis
The Gay Sex Club Next to the Vatican Is the Saddest Place on Earth | VICE United States: "Last month, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica discovered that the Vatican had paid $35 million for an apartment block housing the Europa Multiclub, which calls itself the “number-one gay sauna in Italy.” The media used the story as another example of the Catholic Church being so obviously gay that they should just come on out and admit it. As a former Catholic schoolboy who believed in God till I saw Hugh Jackman in The Boy from Oz, a Broadway musical about Liza Minnelli’s first gay husband, I wasn’t surprised. I remember my school’s baseball coach sexually assaulting students and my first-grade teaching assistant nearly losing her job after she had an alleged lesbian make-out session with a PE coach—Catholics and shady sex shenanigans go together like red wine and wafers."
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