Today's Pix

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One Way Or Another

If you install lightning rods on your church, how do you then expect your congregation to put their faith in what you're preaching?

But if you don't, and your church gets zapped, maybe that's god saying, "Get with the science, you stupid fucks."

Of course, no matter how it fails, faith will endure as long as believers insist on maintaining the requisite level of deliberate ignorance.

And a good preacher - like any good grifter - will always be able to deflect and change the subject so the questions that lead to uncomfortable conversations are put off long enough to be forgotten again.

He, Robot

There's always that moment in the sci-fi stories when people worry that the machines have become sensate and self-aware - and of course that's the dramatic conflict.

And also too of course, it's "just a story". 

Sure hope we're not talking 'bout memory that's institutional or machine-genetic or some weird sci-fi thing that can make it real.

Today's Tweet

Grit

The best demonstration of grit, persistence and self-confidence in less than one minute pic.twitter.com/QjDnsHliZv

— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) March 31, 2019

Today's Today

This year, April 2nd marks the day when American women start their Income Year - as compared with American men, who always start their Income Year on Jan 1st.

Privilege is not a system that makes your life easy. It's a system that doesn't put artificial obstacles in your path that make it harder for you to reach some proximate equality with people who're supposed to be your peers.

Oh Darn

Repubs have been working overtime trying to spin the Barr Memo into something they can call gold - and it just ain't gonna happen.

Bloomberg:

In terms of substance, the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was good news for Donald Trump. Not as good as Trump claimed. Not, perhaps, as good as Attorney General William Barr suggested in his summary of the case. Overall, though, the story of Mueller’s probe surely looks better for Trump now than it did 10 days ago.

But the politics? There the news is all bad for Trump. A week after Barr’s summary – and after some pretty successful spin from the Trump team that produced a lot of favorable coverage – there’s been no reaction at all from the electorate.

On March 22, the day Mueller’s report was delivered, FiveThirtyEight estimated that Trump’s approval rating was at 41.9 percent and his disapproval at 52.9 percent. By March 31, he had inched up to 42.1 percent approval and stayed flat at 52.9 percent disapproval. It’s possible that the mix of polls or random fluctuations are masking a small improvement. It’s also possible that the news has been slow to reach those who pay less attention to politics. But those theories are increasingly difficult to buy as the days go on and the story fades. Nor are polls about the investigationshowing any radical shift toward Trump. So it seems likely that Mueller’s report isn’t changing many minds.

Here’s why that’s bad news for Trump. His approval rating is the second-worst of any president on record after 801 days in office, which is where Trump was on Sunday. Only Ronald Reagan, at 41.1 percent, was worse. Trump is dead last in disapproval rating. No other president was over 50 percent. He’s also last in net approval (that is, approval minus disapproval) at -10.7.

Today's Quote

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it - and a moral code that glorifies it.

-- Frederic Bastiat

Today's Tweet

This may well be exactly what the tweeter says it is. ie: "White people + cocaine".

They look like they're just happy and having fun - but to be safe, maybe we should back it up with a Clinical Consult, to see if we need to adjust this guy's meds to prevent the kind of seizure thingie he seems to be having.

White people + Cocainepic.twitter.com/dGYItWXGFA

— YS (@NYinLA2121) April 1, 2019

In Brief

You made a decision to go to the circus. And now you're disappointed to see a clown acting the fool?

A Thought

And possibly a parenting tip:

Maybe gamers get so totally absorbed in their games because the rules are consistent, they make sense, and can be learned - unlike - you know - in real life.