Today's Philosophizing

Game Of Thrones is ridiculously popular - partly because a large portion of the audience is willing to embrace the idea of basing an entire government on the awesome image of a small odd-looking naked woman emerging from a house fire of suspicious origins.

And really - if you've been following this election cycle on American TV, you're prob'ly not all that surprised.

Today's GIF

Grist:

The temperature spiral that took the world by storm has an update. If you think the heat is on in our current climate, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

To recap, University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins wrecked the internet a few weeks ago with a revolutionary new way to look at global temperatures. Using a circular graph of every year’s monthly temperatures and animating it, Hawkins’ image showed planetary heat spiraling closer to the 2 degrees C threshold in a way no bar or line graph could do.

Let's see ya cherry pick that one, DumFux News. 

Today's Stoopid

Limbaugh's really starting to flame out and spiral in - he's on the down-slope of the bell curve - so the topics of discussion (as well as the level of the discussion itself) have to get weirder and farther out in order to keep his audience of diehard dead-enders tuned in.

“Don’t doubt me on this. A lot of people think that all of us used to be gorillas, and they’re looking for the missing link out there. The evolution crowd. They think we were originally apes... If we were the original apes, then how come Harambe is still an ape, and how come he didn’t become one of us?”

The View From Out There

ThinkProgress:

Today's Tweet

Who says romance is dead?

I teared up. pic.twitter.com/aBYAS9fo0L

— Sex Talk (@SexTaIk) May 31, 2016

Bloody Bill Kristol's Trial Balloon

Bloomburg reports:

Two Republicans intimately familiar with Bill Kristol’s efforts to recruit an independent presidential candidate to challenge Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have told Bloomberg Politics that the person Kristol has in mind is David French -- whose name the editor of the Weekly Standard floated in the current issue of the magazine.

French is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to the website of National Review, where French is a staff writer, he is a constitutional lawyer, a recipient of the Bronze Star, and an author of several books who lives in Columbia, Tenn., with his wife Nancy and three children.

Reached in Israel late Tuesday afternoon, Kristol declined to comment on his efforts to induce French to run. The two Republicans confirmed that French is open to launching a bid, but that he has not made a final decision. One of the Republicans added that French has not lined up a vice-presidential running mate or significant financial support.

Today's Pix

Today's Tweet

@aquintinilla
Compassion for service disabled #Veteran
is treatment
and support;
NOT punishment. pic.twitter.com/yukdSHtvHs

— Amphitrite Plays (@Pamela_O_Plays) April 24, 2016

Today's Today

It's said that every one of us is unique; that we all see the cosmos differently, and exist in it in our own way.  Some of those differences are slight and some are vast; but different, and personal and one-of-a-kind. So in a very important way, every time somebody dies, an entire universe dies with them. 

We should prob'ly keep that in mind when we're fixing to kill somebody; when we're sending people out to kill our "enemies".  

Remembering that all those universes are connected and intertwined - one with all the others, without even knowing who those others are - we're asking those people to kill part of us, and part of themselves as well.

And on the continuing theme of personal responsibility - holding ourselves ultimately accountable for our own actions:

You don't have much of a war 
if nobody shows up to fight

World War Something --Marc Wilson:

At some point, we have to start to wonder - what was all the fuss about?  Politics?  The color scheme of a flag?  Imaginary lines on a paper map?   

I See You And I Love You Still

Still --Alanis Morrisette

I am the harm which you inflict
I am your brilliance and frustration
I'm the nuclear bombs if they're to hit
I am your immaturity and your indignance

I am your misfits and your praised
I am your doubt and your conviction
I am your charity and your rape
I am your grasping and expectation

I see you averting your glances
I see you cheering on the war
I see you ignoring your children
And I love you still, and I love you still

I am your joy and your regret
I am your fury and your elation
I am your yearning and your sweat
I am your faithless and your religion

I see you altering history
I see you abusing the land
I see you, your selective amnesia
And I love you still, and I love you still

I see you averting your glimpses
I see you cheering on the war
I see you ignoring your children
And I love you still, and I love you still

I see you altering history
I see you abusing the land
I see you, your selective amnesia
I love you still, and I love you still

I am your tragedy and your fortune
I am your crisis and delight
I am your profits and your prophets
I am your art, I am your bytes

I am your death and your decisions
I am your passion and your plights
I am your sickness and convalescence
I am your weapons and your light

I see you holding your grudges
I see you gunning them down
I see you silencing your sisters
And I love you still, and I love you still

I see you lie to your country
I see you forcing them out
I see you blaming each other
And I love you still, and I love you still

I see you holding your grudges
I see you gunning them down
I see you silencing your sisters
I love you still, I love you still

I see you lie to your country
I see you forcing them out
I see you blaming each other
I love you still, I love you still, I see you

Songwriters
MORISSETTE, ALANIS / SHEARER, JOEL