This is from a Reddit post entitled “Casting a Fire Ant Colony with Molten Aluminum,” which is apparently a thing people do.
People go to such great lengths for the sake of art. I screencapped a few comments discussing the ethics of the project.
Greg Abbott hosted a forum on his website a few days ago with some policy advisors, and according to Joe Deshotel at Burnt Orange Report, his answers regarding regarding healthcare for the millions of Texans who lack health insurance in the present moment were less than mind-blowing:
To sum it up, Abbott does not support expanding Medicaid or creating and operating our own health care exchange, yet wants more flexibility from the federal government. If you can not afford health insurance, or you don’t have enough to put away in a Health Savings Account, check out the federal government and see what they have to offer! In the meantime the number one campaign issue will continue to be “repealing Obamacare,” and it says so right on his website.
Is anyone surprised by this? You shouldn’t be.
Do you need a reason to have a GIF of SVU’s Captain Cragen pulling a gibbon out of what appears to be a basketball?
No. No you do not need a reason.
The people who are trying to redefine “religious liberty” as the right to force others to reshape their lives around the personal beliefs of a particular subset of conservative Christians either never intended the term to apply to anyone but themselves (and no longer try very hard to hide it), or they really haven’t thought this through.
If you don’t follow John Kenneth Muir’s blog, you are doing yourself a disservice. In honor of today being Friday the 13th, he has a list of 13 reasons why he loves the venerable slasher franchise.
For my part, I do not “love” the Friday the 13th movies in the slightest, nor would it be entirely accurate to say I “like” them. It’s more that I recognize their cultural impact and importance.
Mr. Muir makes a couple of observations that stood out to me. After noting multiple instances of hidden, surprisingly brainy references, like a child reading Sartre’s No Exit during a throwaway scene in Part 6, he devotes a whole item of his list to Ginny Field from Part 2.
Ginny Field (played by the awesomely-named Amy Steel) was perhaps the only character to genuinely outsmart Jason—which shouldn’t be that hard, one might think, but whatever. A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Nancy probably owes her level-headed handling of Freddie Krueger to Ginny Field’s clever ruse against Jason.
I would hardly call the Friday the 13th series a triumph for women in film, and a few Ginny Field-type characters really don’t make up for the hordes of stupid these movies throw at the screen. It’s also unfortunate that Ginny Field stands out as one of the few heroines who doesn’t get killed in a sequel (like Alice from the first Friday the 13th or the aforementioned Nancy).
– As long as they’re not atheist cats: A colony of feral cats in Brooklyn keeps moving into an outdoor nativity scene, presumably drawn by the warmth of the lights. They also reportedly push baby Jesus out of the way, confirming what we knew about cats all along.
– Caveat emptor: Hoping to get his kid a sweet Xmas gift, a man paid $750 for an XBox One….photograph:
[Peter] Clatworthy, 19, of Bilbrough, UK, who intended to give the XBox One to his four-year-old son for Christmas, admits he was conned, because the listing clearly stated it was a photo of an XBox One Day One edition console. However, he decided to buy it since the item was listed in eBay’s video games and consoles category.
“It said ‘photo’ and I was in two minds, but I looked at the description and the fact it was in the right category made me think it was genuine,” he told the Nottingham Post. “I looked at the seller’s feedback and there was nothing negative. I bought it there and then because I thought it was a good deal. It’s obvious now I’ve been conned out of my money.”
Although eBay has promised to take action against the seller because misleading listings are not allowed, it may not help him because the Xbox One is reportedly sold out in the UK, SWNS reported.
Oops.
– Holiday stress? A 38 year-old man in China, reportedly fed up after 5 hours of shopping with his girlfriend, responded to her refusal to stop shopping by jumping off a mall balcony and falling seven stories to his death. The statement of the mall representative seems to place quite a premium on holiday stress:
A spokesman for the shopping center says no one below was injured in December 7 incident, and that the man died instantly upon impact.
“This is a tragic incident, but this time of year can be very stressful for many people,” the spokesman said.
– This barely counts as news anymore: Police arrested an 18 year-old for allegedly stealing part of Paul Walker’s car while the tow truck was at a stop light, after he posted a picture of his bounty on Instagram.
At least this tendency to advertise such escapades on social media might free up police resources to work on matters other than petty theft……like robbery:
Just before robbing a burger joint, two unnamed teenage girls thought it would be oh so cool to pose for a quick selfie — dressed head to toe in their bad-to-the-bone burglary get-up … all while holding a nearly 12-inch knife.
You can probably guess what happened next (Hint: the answer begins with “a” and ends with “rrest.”)
– The Inevitable Headline: Ever since I vowed to never learn anything about the “flesh-eating drug” known as krokodil, I have dreaded the day that those words would appear in the same headline as the word “genitals.” That day has arrived.
The following comment (on Ragen’s post) may explain everything about Santa Claus, including the asinine Fox News racial dispute:
Considering Santa’s not real, he can be whatever the hell race we want him to be. I personally believe Santa’s a Time Lord, and his sleigh is really a TARDIS. How else could he possibly deliver all those presents in one one night without a little wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff?
I covered up the identifying info, but the commenter is welcome to claim credit if they want—or I’ll give credit upon request. I’m pretty flexible and occasionally a pushover 🙂
At present, Canada, Russia, and Denmark are sort of engaged in a dispute over who actually has territorial sovereignty over the North Pole.
Fox News may have assured us that Santa Claus is white (sarcastic whew!), but they’re clearly missing the larger point here: no matter which way you slice it, Santa Claus is not American.
Denmark may have delicious breakfast pastries, but we all know that they are a bunch of socialists whose policies would mildly inconvenience those in America’s highest income brackets—in today’s political environment, that is of course synonymous with evil.
If Santa is Russian, that means we were allowing a Soviet agent unfettered access to U.S. airspace for decades. Someone should impeach Obama for that.
If Santa turns out to be Canadian? Well, Canada ain’t America, is it?
Is Santa Claus getting a visa every year to come into the U.S.? I could do a FOIA request to find out, but instead I’m just going to declare that he isn’t because freedom.
Fox News needs to get on the case of this taker who’s coming to this country illegally in order to give handouts to people who can’t even be bothered to work full-time jobs.
Thanks to my wife buying a new Subaru with built-in satellite radio and a trial subscription, I was able to get a device for free to put in my 9 year-old clunker (by comparison) of a car. The radio arrived in the mail today.
That’s right, folks.
Shit’s about to get Sirius.
(NOTE: I have not been feeling very verbose in recent days, so much of my blogging activity has consisted of quoting extensively from other people’s work. This post will be no different.)
Via ethanham.com
Emily Conyngham has an excellent post at Open Salon entitled “Seven Steps to Becoming a Superior Writer.” Note that she did not say a good writer, or even a successful one, but a superior writer. Presumably, the sort of writer who always wears turtlenecks and emits self-importance that way that some of us emit perspiration. But I digress—she might be as big of a smartass as me, if not bigger. Here are a few enjoyable highlights:
1. If at all possible, arrange to be born in a small town, raised with traditional values, which you can laud as building your backbone. The insular environment can be reworked to other purposes; you escaped in the nick of time, with only your wits and a battered hand-me-down suitcase, as soon as you could save bus fare from your job shoveling pig swill. It does not hurt to have been poor, or at least poorer than your stupid neighbors. You can mock those gomers later, when you’re a degreed city dweller.
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3. Hold grudges. These are precious fuel. Hopefully, you were tormented by the other children for being different. You should Never, Ever forget their cruelty, especially that of Homer Finkelheimer, who will don a different disguise and appear in Every Single Thing you write. Your repeated mutilations of his sorry carcass will become the art for which you will be famed. To be a “Finkelheimer” will become part of the common lexicon, synonomous with the nether regions of the male anatomy.
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