Relaxed Focus: "I want a Bitcoin gift certificate. That’s a glamorous gift card. You can use it to buy hit men or drugs."

Thursday, December 12, 2013

"I want a Bitcoin gift certificate. That’s a glamorous gift card. You can use it to buy hit men or drugs." - John Waters

"I always give books. And I always ask for books. I think you should reward people sexually for getting you books. Don’t send a thank-you note, repay them with sexual activity. If the book is rare or by your favorite author or one you didn’t know about, reward them with the most perverted sex act you can think of. Otherwise, you can just make out." - John Waters

She'll need some gym time, a given for a comic book flick, but that actually kind of works. Diana of Themyscira. Yep. - Gal Gadot cast as Wonder Woman in Batman/Superman film:

"Warner Bros. Pictures confirmed Wednesday that Gadot, 28, has been cast to play Diana Prince, and her superhero alter ego Wonder Woman, in director Zack Snyder's upcoming Man of Steel follow-up. The as-yet-untitled movie, scheduled for release July 17, 2015, features Henry Cavill in his second stint as Superman (and Clark Kent) and Ben Affleck, who's making his movie debut as Bruce Wayne/Batman. Gadot, a model and 2004 Miss Universe contestant from Israel, starred in three movies in the Fast & Furious franchise — including this year's Fast & Furious 6 — and also had supporting roles in Date Night and Knight & Day."

Watch this: Gal Gadot / Wonder Woman:
"She won the Miss Israel beauty pageant in 2004 and joined the Israeli Army in 2005, where she served for two years as a sports trainer in the Israel Defense Forces. That’s fantastic experience to have for someone who is going to be playing one of the most powerful female superheroes!"

Crime and Punishment in a Free Society - Reason.com:

"Don’t accuse me of utopianism. I don’t foresee a future of new human beings who consistently respect the rights of others. Rather, I’m drawing attention to the distinction between crime and tort — between offenses against the state (or society) and offenses against individual persons or their justly held property. We’re so used to this distinction, and the priority of the criminal law over tort law, that most of us don’t realize that things used to be different. At one time, an “offense” that was not an act of force against an individual was not an offense at all. What happened? In England, the early kings recognized that the administration of justice could be a cash cow. So they grabbed on and never let go. As a result, the emphasis shifted to punishment (fines and imprisonment) and away from restitution (making victims or their heirs as whole as possible). Liberty-minded people should regret this change. Yet again, the ruling elite exploited the people. It needed wealth to buy war materiel and allegiance, so it took it by force from the laboring masses, and corrupted the justice system in the process."

Of course - Richard Kadrey's Damn Tumblr:

"A 2008 NSA document said that online games were a “target-rich communication network” where spies could “hide in plain sight”. At one point there were so many spies operating in Second Life that a “deconfliction” group was suggested to stop the CIA, FBI and Pentagon from spying on each other, reports the New York Times. NSA and GCHQ spies ‘operated in games including World of Warcraft and Second Life’"

I eagerly await the commercial where the guy walks in, shuts off her show and sends her out for a beer. Because equality.

More accurate.

Opinion: Finally, a nation legalizes pot - CNN.com:

"Today, Uruguay became the first nation to make recreational marijuana legal for adults and to regulate its production, distribution and sale. In the year and a half since President Jose Mujica announced the proposal in June 2012 as part of a comprehensive package aimed at fighting crime and public insecurity, a strong coalition of LGBT, women's rights, health, student, environmental and human rights organizations joined forces with trade unions, doctors, musicians, lawyers, athletes, writers, actors and academics under the banner of Regulacion Responsable (Responsible Regulation) to support the initiative..

People will have four ways to access marijuana: medical marijuana through the Ministry of Public Health, domestic cultivation of up to six plants, membership clubs similar to those found in Spain and licensed sale to adults in pharmacies. The bill was approved in the Chamber of Deputies in late July and passed in the Chamber of Senators today with 16 out of 29 votes. Why marijuana, why now and why Uruguay? The following three simple reasons have a lot to do with today's outcome: Because it's the smart thing to do. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity, and Uruguay knows this. For 40 years, marijuana prohibition simply hasn't worked. Billions of dollars have been spent on repression, but marijuana use has only gone up -- along with the number of lives lost to failed policies...

The tens of thousands who have died in Mexico's drug war -- estimates in 2012 ranged from 60,000 to 70,000 over six years -- Central America's globally high homicide rates and the United States' racially driven mass incarceration are but a few examples of the human cost of the war on drugs. But rather than closing their eyes to the continuing problem of drug abuse and drug trafficking, Uruguay's leaders have chosen responsible regulation of an existing reality. Because the winds are changing, and they're starting to blow in that direction."

You still need to work out and to stop shucking crap food down your pie-hole. Annals of Internal Medicine | Are Metabolically Healthy Overweight and Obesity Benign Conditions?: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis:

"Conclusion: Compared with metabolically healthy normal-weight individuals, obese persons are at increased risk for adverse long-term outcomes even in the absence of metabolic abnormalities, suggesting that there is no healthy pattern of increased weight."

#5 is brilliant - The 11 Most Sexually Depraved Things the Roman Emperors Ever Did:

"2) Hiring Anal Sex Experts

No judgments on anal sex here, but putting professional anal sex experts on the imperial payroll is a bit much. "On retiring to Capri [Tiberius] devised a pleasance for his secret orgies: teams of wantons of both sexes, selected as experts in deviant intercourse and dubbed analists, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions." In case these pros were somehow not up to the tasks Tiberius put them too, he had a sex library full of illustrated works so he could just point to what he wanted...

4) Sister-Fucking

Say what you want about Caligula, but he was really, really good at incest. "He lived in habitual incest with all his sisters, and at a large banquet he placed each of them in turn below him, while his wife reclined above." His sister Drusilla was his favorite, having had sex with her when he was but a boy, and when they were grown, he simply took her from her legal husband for more fun. His other sisters, he was somewhat less fond of, and thus he only often prostituted them. So he wasn't just a sister-fucker, but a sister-pimp. Fun!..

5) Sex Rest Stops

Here's an idea you've probably never had to make those long road trips more enjoyable: Set up stops full of prostitutes along your way! And when you do, thank Nero. "Whenever he drifted down the Tiber to Ostia, or sailed about the Gulf of Baiae, booths were set up at intervals along the banks and shores, fitted out for debauchery, while bartering matrons played the part of inn-keepers and from every hand solicited him to come ashore." Better than vending machines, that's for sure."

Universal Pre-K: Mozart for Babies All Over Again? - Reason.com:

"In his op/ed column, Kaine repeated the standard arguments: “Pre-K is good for the economy”; “early learning programs make it more likely that children will do well in elementary school”; and so on. It would be nice if we had an experiment somewhere to test the validity of those claims. We do. It’s called Head Start. The United States has spent more than $160 billion on that early education program for at-risk children. The results are amazing — as in amazingly poor. In 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services reported on a congressionally mandated study of approximately 5,000 3- and 4-year-olds who were randomly assigned to either a control group or a group that had access to a Head Start program. It found that “at the end of kindergarten and first grade . . . the Head Start children and the control group children were at the same level on many of the measures studied.” Last year, HHS issued the results of another randomized study. It, too, found that Head Start produced “little evidence of systematic differences” in children’s elementary school experiences through third grade.""

In Afghanistan, People Died for No Good Reason - Reason.com:

"The past is gone. Any action is future-oriented. The right question is, What would be the consequences of continued military occupation? Additional killing and dying will not bring back the dead or restore lost time, nor will it make the losses worthwhile.

What good is there to show for that loss and shattering of life? Nothing. Afghanistan remains a violent place, nominally ruled by a corrupt and repressive propped-up government that will remain precarious no matter how long the U.S. military stays. President Karzai regularly gets bags of CIA cash, the illegal drug trade thrives with official connivance, and stoning is about to be introduced as the penalty for adultery.

It would be wrong, however, to say they were for no reason at all. Many Americans in and out of government have garnered immense wealth and power thanks to U.S. policy in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. War is a racket. American forces should be withdrawn at once, for the sake both of the Afghan people and of the U.S. personnel, who are abused by America’s rulers. We can only hope that Karzai refuses to sign a new agreement with the Obama administration, so that this long nightmare can come to an end."

Heh - Women Still Prefer a Male Boss:

"Women are more likely than men to have a preference, with higher proportions expressing preferences for each gender of boss, though women choose a male over a female boss by a 13-point margin."

The Heart of the Matter: Patriots and Authoritarians:

"At one point during the inquisition inquiry, a Labour MP named Keith Vaz actually asked Rusbridger, "Do you love this country?" Unsurprisingly, Rusbridger assured Vaz that he does. But I wish Rusbridger had gone further. He might usefully have taken a page from the CIA's "Admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations" playbook (yes, they really do teach this, and yes, it really is effective), and assured Vaz that he obviously loved this country more than Vaz does. In doing so, Rusbridger would have usefully accomplished at least two things. He would have: (i) shifted the focus from his supposed lack of patriotism to Vaz's actual lack; and (ii) provided a teachable moment about the difference between patriotism and authoritarianism. Authoritarians don't love their country. They worship the state. These are not the same thing. I would have loved Alan Rusbridger to point out the difference to the goose-stepping parliamentarian, and by extension to anyone else ignorant of the difference."

Glenn Greenwald Interview - Glenn Greenwald Quotes - Esquire:

"If you work for MSNBC or for CNN or whatever, you’re basically nothing more than an employee of a large corporation, and in order to thrive in large corporations, the attitude you need is somebody who gives power what it wants rather than looking to subvert it or to be antiauthoritarian. Antiauthoritarians don’t succeed in large corporations. They get expelled by them.

I think the real Obama reveres institutional authority. He believes that it might need to be a little more efficient, but he has zero interest in undermining the powerful, permanent factions that have run Washington...

Eisenhower laid out the challenge fifty years ago, right? That these institutions are becoming more powerful than democratically elected leaders. And there hasn’t been somebody since who’s been willing to embrace the existence of that danger, let alone take it on. The promise of the Obama candidacy was that he would make Washington work for different interests. And that’s exactly what didn’t happen. When people perceive that things have gone dramatically wrong enough, that’s when it will happen. "

A religion I could get behind. Bo Burnham wins, ladies & gents.

"Who needs a thousand metaphors to figure out you shouldn't be a dick? -- You shouldn't abstain from rape just because I think that you want you to. You shouldn't rape because rape is a fucked up thing to do. It's pretty obvious. Just don't fucking rape people. I didn't think I had to write that one down for you. -- I sent gays to fix overpopulation. Boy did that go well. -- You shouldn't abstain from pork because you think that I want you to. You can eat pork. Because why the fuck would I give a shit? I created the universe, you think I'm drawing the line at the fucking deli aisle?"

You can learn anything online - Sex Parties in NYC - The 12 Rules to Surviving a NYC Sex Party

In/funny/well done, Bateman.

"You have fucking royalty? ... living out some Dungeons & Dragons fantasy land bullshit with kings and princes... Do you have wizards & fairies, too? ...this stone age, bow down to this Renaissance festival... they're a superior bloodline to you? You boot licking fucking supplicants... Miss America is a figurehead, but we don't have to buy her a hundred fucking castles on the taxpayers dime."

This Girl’s Reaction to Her Friends’ Engagements is - BroBible.com:

"This girl gets it. This girl definitely gets it. People fawning about engagement rings are odious. I'm all for you being engaged and happy and in love and set in a course to go down on in life, but LOOK AT MY RING people are terrible. Engagement rings are filthy, terrible baubles that only exist because dozens of decades ago women weren't allowed to hold jobs so if their man were to leave them they would have something to sell to support themselves for a bit. That's a fact. Now that we have jobs for everyone, they should be banned. The people who scream when they see one are even more wretched OMG HE BOUGHT YOU A THING. YAYYY."