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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

"Having a low opinion of yourself is not modesty. It’s self-destruction." - Bobby Sommer

"What's the saddest drug-related tragedy that DEA head Michele Leonhart has ever seen? Botched drug raids in which innocent people were killed? Mass incarceration of poor people caught with drugs and the devastation it inflicts on their families and communities? The rise of violent drug cartels who profit from prohibition? No, no, and no. Leonhart's "lowest point in 33 years in the DEA was when she learned they’d flown a hemp flag over the Capitol on July 4.""



 "I’d already made my first mistake. It went into my mood like a drop of dye clouding into clear water. Did you catch it? When I called myself an idiot, I put a drop of poison into myself. It’s the little things, adding up. It sounds silly, I know. That one word, thought up like sharp banter between trusting friends, might not mean anything — might not seem so bad. I am not my trusting friend. When my brain is in a certain way, I can’t trust that what it tells me is a joke. It might be an accusation, a realization, a warning, because depression lies. Because depression lies, my ability to trust, my own self-esteem, isn’t like a rock in a storm-tossed sea, it’s like a beach, withering and widening with the season.

The words we say to ourselves matter. The language we use when thinking about and talking to ourselves in our heads? It matters. We’re people and we hear ourselves. Talking shit about ourselves puts us down, has an impact on our mood and our abilities as surely as our mood and our abilities has a capacity to make us think and talk differently about ourselves. 

It’s all happening in the same brain, right? How would you feel about someone who called you an idiot? How would you feel if they followed you around, questioning your every move, doubting your every tactic and gesture, reminding you, “Yeah, you can say that, but remember that it doesn’t mean anything coming from a loser like you.” That is What It’s Like sometimes."



"Those parents are letting their toddler crawl all over a piece of art by Donald Judd (act like ya know him) estimated to be worth $10 million dollars. The woman confronted the parents who didn’t really give a turd (SHOCKED!) and the mother even told the woman “you obviously don’t know anything about kids.” Well, I do know something about kids, because I’ve got two of them. I know only the child of two assholes would do such a thing. Look, art is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, so the fact that those Ikea shelves are worth millions of dollars is absurd -- but that’s not the point. The point is to teach the kid to have respect in public places and for the property of other people. "




"The worst part of Lawson’s death is that it is going to give anti-smoking activists one more thing to be smug about. “Well, you know the Marlboro Man died from smoking.” Yeah, and you are going to die from me setting you on fire with my Zippo, you smug bastard.  I’m not a smoker but I do want to live in a country where you can kill yourself anyway you damn please. This is America and having the freedom to make stupid life choices is why our ancestors did lots of hard work we fortunately don’t have to do so much anymore. And if you need something positive to focus on, just think of all the disaffected fat high school girls who are a little less fat today thanks to Marlboro."


Priorities. - Bjørn Lomborg
"No, climate change does not put "the world economy at risk", but more than a billion people already struggle for survival today. This year's World Economic Forum in Davos is yet another example of global summits that declare to be "committed to improving the state of the world", but end up talking about extremely expensive and ineffective climate policies instead of focusing on the well-being of hundreds of millions who manifestly suffer today from lack of food, basic health care, quality education and access to markets. These problems we could address today at low cost with high impacts.  Global warming on the other hand will turn into a net cost after 2070, likely constituting a loss of about 1.5% of global GDP in 2100....

The world's poor however need cheap energy to emerge from poverty. No wonder India's Finance Minister said he would not sign on to a treaty at this point, when renewables remain highly expensive. In order to solve the climate problem, we need to innovate down the cost of renewable energy through investment in green R&D, so India and China will want them too. This will do much more to tackle long-term global warming and do so much cheaper. With money and attention left over, the global summits should then consider a bigger focus on less media-hyped but often much better investment cases for helping the 1.2 billion people who live on less than $1.25 per day, the 842 billion people who suffer from hunger today, and the millions who die from easily curable, cheaply preventable diseases."





"“Bitch” is a common insult, but no one really thinks about what it means. The interesting thing about the word “bitch” is that its meaning is different depending on the sex of who you’re insulting with it. Female bitches are typically combative, mean, miserable and bossy; in other words, they’re masculine. Male bitches are typically catty, passive-aggressive, whiny and gossipy; in other words, they’re feminine. So when you attack someone by calling them a “bitch,” you’re accusing them of failing to live up to the ideal of their sex."

 Via Funsui

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