Today's Oy

Because god is an asshole cult leader who will passive-aggressively fuck up every relationship you're in just so he can claim you for his own.

That's not a god - that's a psycho boyfriend.

Today's Meme

Seems like a lot of very "alpha" guys

are very hung up on some very

un-alpha stuff

Today's Meme

Quick reminder:

If your position is that kids should be beaten because you were beaten and you turned out OK, then I've got news for ya, bubba - you did not turn out OK.

Today's Bad Meme

You finish big, you look up and address the crowd:

Are you not entertained!?!

The New American Dream

... is hoping you can survive another day without being brutalized by the cops, bankrupted by the healthcare system, or gunned down by some asshole with a gun.

No, Skeezix

Women are not farms.

And they think "toxic masculinity" isn't a thing.

More On Guns

Gun Freaks keep cycling thru various memes, and today it looks like "The Nazi death camps were a direct result of the Jews giving up their guns."

On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars

Bernard E. Harcourt, Columbia Law School

Abstract
Say the words "gun registration" to many pro-gun Americans and you are likely to hear that one of the first things that Hitler did when he seized power was to impose strict gun registration requirements that enabled him to identify gun owners and then to confiscate all guns, effectively disarming his opponents and paving the way for the Holocaust. One of the more curious twists in the historical debate, though, is that the most vocal opponent of this argument is also pro-gun. It is the National Alliance, a white supremacist organization. According to them, "German Firearms legislation under Hitler, far from banning private ownership, actually facilitated the keeping and bearing of arms by German citizens by eliminating or ameliorating restrictive laws which had been enacted by the government preceding his." So which pro-gunner should we believe?

Following Germany's defeat in World War I, the Weimar Republic passed very strict gun control laws in an attempt both to stabilize the country and to comply with the Versailles Treaty of 1919 – laws that in fact required the surrender of all guns to the government. These laws remained in effect until 1928, when the German parliament relaxed gun restrictions and put into effect a strict firearm-licensing scheme. These strict licensing regulations foreshadowed Hitler's rise to power.

If you read the 1938 Nazi gun laws closely and compare them to earlier 1928 Weimar gun legislation – as a straightforward exercise of statutory interpretation – several conclusions become clear. First, with regard to possession and carrying of firearms, the Nazi regime relaxed the gun laws that were in place in Germany at the time the Nazis seized power. Second, the Nazi gun laws of 1938 specifically banned Jewish persons from obtaining a license to manufacture firearms or ammunition. Third, approximately eight months after enacting the 1938 Nazi gun laws, Hitler imposed regulations prohibiting Jewish persons from possessing any dangerous weapons, including firearms.

The difficult question is how to characterize the Nazi treatment of the Jewish population for purposes of evaluating Hitler's position on gun control. Truth is, the question itself is absurd. The Nazis sought to disarm and kill the Jewish population. Their treatment of Jews is, in this sense, orthogonal to their gun-control views. Nevertheless, if forced to take a position, it seems that the Nazis aspired to a certain relaxation of gun registration laws for the "law-abiding German citizen" – for those who were not, in their minds, "enemies of the National Socialist state," in other words, Jews, Communists, etc.

Here, then, is the best tentative and bizarre conclusion: Some of the pro-gunners are probably right, the Nazi-gun-registration argument is probably wrong. What is clear, though, is that the history of Weimar and Nazi gun laws has not received enough critical attention by historians. What we really need now is more historical research and reliable scholarship.

Not Darwin

... but not wrong either ... if it suits your need to slag the other side.

This came across on one of my feeds on some social media platform or another, to poke fun at MAGA Conservatives.

It would seem it popped up originally as a snarky slam on "Woke", but it's pretty interesting how "both sides" are using this to denigrate the other.

Keeping it Both-Sides-y helps push people away from engaging in anything political, which helps the cynical manipulators stay in power, so Paranoid Mike says there could be a very conscious effort afoot to come up with memes that are generic enough to apply to Woke or MAGA or anything you feel needs to be slammed.

Charles Darwin predicted a sub-species of humans “will deny biology” and “attempt to undo the centuries of human development by rewriting history.”

No, this isn’t a real Charles Darwin quote about what it means to be ‘woke’

"Great is the power of steady misrepresentation," Charles Darwin once said. That’s perhaps true in the case of a quote attributed to the famed naturalist that periodically appears on social media. 

PolitiFact recently published a story on what it means to be "woke," but a March 15 Facebook post suggests Darwin has it covered. 

"WOKE explained by Darwin," reads the post, which contains some typos. "At some stage, the Human Species will divide. Whilst most will continue to evolve, a minority of those lacking the intellectual capacity of thought, will develop as a sub-species. Being easily lead, form into Packs attempting to control the majority. They will deny biology, attempt to undo the centuries of human development by re-writing history, and gradually revert to their Primate Origins. They will expect all to conform to their point of view without question." 

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

While this reads like a contemporary and barbed criticism of people who are "woke," we found no credible sources to corroborate that Darwin said this. 

It doesn’t appear in his well-known book "The Origin of the Species," or "Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands," or "The Voyage of the Beagle," or "The Descent of Man," or his autobiography, or "The Expression of the Emotions In Man and Animals," or a series of essays about natural selection, or "The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms." Searching these and other writings we could find online, we found nothing like what appears in the Facebook post. 

We didn’t turn up any other evidence searching more broadly online. The quotation doesn’t appear in the University of Cambridge’s Darwin Correspondence Project site, though it does make an appearance on several meme sites, and in one case, someone said he was explaining supporters of former President Donald Trump. That, of course, is also baseless — not to mention Darwin died 64 years before Trump was born.

We rate claims that this is an authentic Darwin quote False.

"Don't be fool enough to swallow every little

rhetorical turd that floats by on the internet."

-- Abe Lincoln

Today's "Conservative" Thing

I honestly don't understand what "conservatives" find so terribly wrong about that kinda thing - unless it's all part of some weird self-hatred syndrome, which makes it a projection of their own inner demons (?)

Is that why it seems so important for them to impose limits on people? Are they saying they can't possibly control their own potentially vile behavior, so they need to build a societal mechanism that imposes limits - by proxy - on themselves?

In the immortal words of Stan Marsh:

I'm A Bad Person

Sometimes, I just cain't help myself.

A Special Meme

This showed up on one of my social media feeds:

"I never cared..." being the operative phrase.

Classic non-acknowledging acknowledgement of an abusive gaslighter.

He still doesn't care about anyone but himself - but now he seems to be feeling defensive because he's been called out for being an uncaring asshole. And of course he doesn't like it, but instead of stopping for a little reflection and self-examination, he externalizes it by getting hostile and aggressive.

And like others have pointed out, he's adopted the technique of turning it around so he can claim to be the real victim.

This shit is rife across the intertubes. 

It's almost like somebody's out there actively recruiting these assholes, trying to radicalize them for some odd unimaginable political purpose.

Today In History

On this day in 2003:

A fire at a concert in a Rhode Island, nightclub kills 100 people and seriously injures almost 200 more . The cause was traced to a pyrotechnics display which which set fire to the soundproofing foam on the ceiling.

Thanks a lot, Green New Deal.

Come At Me, Bro

If you're still on board with Cult45, you have no way to troll me effectively, because it's all but certain there's nothing in your opinion that can be identified as factual, or logic-based - which makes it impossible to respect the intellect behind that opinion.

Your MAGA hat, and your big red Xs, and your 4Chan QAnon baloney, and your DumFux News bullet points all demonstrate that you and I are simply not morally compatible.

Say your worst - it's meaningless - it's nothing - it's balloon juice and sail boat fuel.

hat tip = @JohnPavlovitz

It's A Wonderment

Quick note to all my lovely Trolls:

You seem to be among a whole big bunch of people who can't quite master certain elements of the English language.
eg:
"your" and "you're"
"lose" and "loose"
"there" "they're" and "their"
et al

These difficulties with Language Arts don't make you inferior as a person, of course, but it does make it harder to see you as particularly knowledgeable in the fields of Economics, GeoPolitics, History, Immigration Law, Climate Science, and the US Constitution when you post lengthy screeds online from an anonymous account.

Today's Fitness Goal

Stay alive long enough to see any member of the Trump family having to face the consequences of their actions.

That Keke Challenge Thing

My youngest just sent me a FB link that purports to show the dangers of online viral challenges.

Here's a compilation - and think maybe half of them are flim-flammed, but I dearly love the creativity no matter what is and what ain't "real".

It always brings this to mind:

Today's Poe

Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a stirring defense of Donald Trump’s chief of staff, General John Kelly, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said on Friday that it was “unpatriotic in the extreme” to offer irrefutable video proof that a four-star general lied.

“It is unpatriotic enough to accuse a four-star general of lying,” Sanders told the White House press corps. “But to make available a video that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that that general lied is unpatriotic bordering on treasonous.”

Poe's Law:

Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers or viewers as a sincere expression of the parodied views.[1][2][3]

Overheard Today

Ivanka Trump is a feminist in exactly the same way Steve Bannon is a black Dominican rabbi.

hat tip = @rmasher2

Today's Internet Theme

Eventually, we'll hear about somebody quitting a job at the White House so they can spend less time with their family.

--thirty-blue million people online

Outwardly Cranky

Gary, who graduated high school with a smokin' 2.0 GPA, is complaining loudly about how Majeed (a Neurologist) wants to steal his job.

Ever notice how a lotta these job-stealing immigrants are coming from countries where they help kids with the cost of college and shit?

I wonder if that might work here.

hat tip = Vicki W-E