Slouching Towards Oblivion

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Raising My Hand


An asshole like Trump will always call you an asshole because he's trying desperately to hide the fact that he's the asshole, while knowing with some certainty that you're not.

And now he calls us "enemy".

The Passing

Today's Podcast

The Adventures Of The Cornfield Resistance


click here



Glad That One's Over

Like a man who's had a thoroughly unsatisfying breakfast, and sees no great prospects for lunch.

John Oliver:




However, Vox begs to differ:
To get help making sense of all these upheavals and tragedies, I reached out to Harvard psychology professor and polymath Steven Pinker. A cognitive scientist and linguist, Pinker focused his study of human nature on our propensity for violence — and conversely, cooperation — in his 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. In the book, Pinker meticulously documented a steady decline in violence over the past several centuries, which, he writes, "may be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species."
In August, he told me the world is still in a more peaceful period than at any other time in history. (You can read the whole conversation here.) A few days ago, I reached out to him again. I wanted to see how Pinker was looking back over the year that was 2016 — if the election of Trump, and all the global violence that followed, had changed anything. The email conversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity.
But then again, these things run in cycles - and we're only just now entering the Trump Era - so there's always a fair chance for the whole thing to go straight into the shitter after all.

Friday, December 30, 2016

Today's Joke

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat on a lake below. She shouted to him:

"Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be an Obama Democrat.

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "And you must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well, madam" said the man, "You don't know where you are; you don't know how you got here, and you don't know where you are going. You've risen to where you are, due to practically nothing but hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem for you. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault."

hat tip = FB friend Bill D, via quora.com

It Is To Laugh




Turnabout's Fair Play


It seems at first blush I'd be exposing myself to the Hypocrite charge, but that presupposes Obama and Trump are the same and that fits perfectly into the False Equivalence fallacy.

Point being that Obama didn't have any of it comin' because it was all just a buncha made-up bullshit, while it looks like practically everything Trump's taking flak for is either true or has a pretty high probability of being true.

The GOP lost their minds and set the rules that are getting them bitch-slapped right now, so they don't get to whine about how unfair they think it is.

Karma's a motherfucker.

More Bad News

Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková will NOT destroy the earth this time around, so our long global nightmare will continue for (probably) another 5.25 years - until it comes back around.


Of course, with "President" Chaos in the White House, the odds improve greatly for the end to come a little sooner.

Sleep well.

Commerce Marches On

From WaPo today:
A new law in Michigan will prohibit local governments from banning, regulating or imposing fees on the use of plastic bags and other containers. You read that correctly: It’s not a ban on plastic bags — it’s a ban on banning plastic bags.
--and--
Bans and restrictions on the use of plastic bags are widespread in other parts of the country and around the world. The rationale is simple: Plastic bags are infamous non-biodegradable sources of pollution — although they will eventually break down into tiny pieces, scientists believe this process can take hundreds of years, or even up to a century, in landfills.
--and--
The new Michigan law was met with praise from the Michigan Restaurant Association for this reason.
“With many of our members owning and operating locations across the state, preventing a patchwork approach of additional regulations is imperative to avoid added complexities as it related to day-to-day business operations,” said Robert O’Meara, the association’s vice president of government affairs, in a statement.
Threaten the Cookie Cutter Cost-vs-Profit Structure, and the Rent Collectors will punish you.


And what was that about a powerful remote Central Government imposing its will on the noble local folk?

2016 In Review

So, looking back -
Death
Death
Death
Death
Brexit
Death
Death
Death
Death
Trump
Death
Death
Death
Christm...nope, wait - Death

Serious, fuck off already

hat tip = @Bristol52

Today's Quote


Arendt also coined "the banality of evil" - referring to how great atrocities can be traced back to the small seemingly unimportant steps taken by ordinary people who believed that were doing nothing wrong. Kinda like when the Trump transition team (eg) asks for the names of people at the Dept of Energy who attended Climate Change seminars.

We have to maintain an awareness of the Logical Fallacy of The Slippery Slope, but we must also remember that slopes do exist; and they can get pretty fucking slippery in a big fucking hurry.

Let's try to watch what we're doin'.

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Once More From The Top

Test for truth:
The presence of Confirming Evidence
--and--
The absence of Conflicting Evidence

Test for bullshit:
The absence of Confirming Evidence
--or--
The presence of Conflicting Evidence

Today's Meme

Be the reason someone smiles today

Or the reason they drink

Whatever works the best for the most

Today's Quote

Not being loved is a simple misfortune. The true fatality is to not know how to love.
--Albert Camus (from a Spanish translation)

Obama's Farewell

Organism

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Today's GIF

And here we have a great look at what we laughingly refer to as The Press here in USAmerica Inc, during the Trump Era.

Today's Tweet



Tuesday, December 27, 2016

The Trump Charity Thing

Fahrenthold and Rindler have been looking pretty hard for confirmation of Trump's claims to being generous.  Not much has surfaced.

Here are the first few pages of what they've found - the rest can be gandered at WaPo, and they have a nice breakdown of the timeline and various other tasty bits.





And shouldn't we be hearing some slight murmur from the Press Poodles about Trump's tax returns?

Today's Pix

















A Silly Thing

Wait for it.

Today's Tweet



It seems it's never what it seems. 

Snow Play










Monday, December 26, 2016

Equal Rights Now


hat tip = @rmurwin

Winning At A Very Steep Price


He says near the end of the interview that the best thing the Bushies did was to split and give him the room to get his thing going, so I don't see him doing it, but I'd dig the fuck outa Obama becoming the Troll In Chief, making life miserable for Trump.

Lost Another Good One

I was never a big fan - except for Kissing A Fool (that's one of the all-time great tunes) - but George Michael died yesterday and there just has to be a place on the short list for this one great album from way back in 1990.


PS) The Boomer Death Wave is underway now - we can expect 2 million of us to die every year for the next 10-20 years.

Fuck your bucket list - get out there and do shit.

On Swamps And Alligators



It's hard to miss Gingrich's deft use of the passive voice. He is a master at getting the listener to think he's just talking about stuff in very general non-threatening terms, and that he's far above any of the mundane power-grubbing shenanigans that go on down there in the swamp.

And that's what Trump needs him for - Newt's role is to teach the Trumpkinites all the Media Relations tricks they need to normalize the shit storm.

The point that really stands out for me: Gingrich saying Trump can use a very broad application of the Presidential Pardon in order to get around the fact that he plans on ordering people to do things that're obviously illegal.

Let that one percolate for just a bit.
The bearer has done what was done in the name of the king and for the good of the state. --Richelieu
I guess when Newton Leroy Gingrich read The Three Musketeers, he concluded that Cardinal Richelieu was the good guy(?)

We are so fucked.

Today's GIF


@StreetArt360

Today's Tweet

Today's Quote

Carl Paladino's 2017 Wish List (partial)
1. Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford. He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to Valerie Jarret, who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a jihady cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her.
2. Michelle Obama. I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.
So, I guess that's another shining example of Middle Class Economic Angst that Hillary failed so miserably to address(?)

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Yeah But It's Christmas

Today is a very special day for me, but that doesn't mean I stop thinking.


When your theism is outwardly silent, my atheism will be as well. Merry Christmas.

Today's Tweet

Pushing Back

On Christmas Day In The Mornin'

Cat Lord does not suffer fools. Maintain proper feline decorum or be punished.