Not everyone can afford to be picky about potential employment.

I was talking to a friend about a company that treats its employees poorly and he said “Well, they chose to work there,” and I wanted to give him a lecture about how sometimes people have to choose between a shitty job and the streets.

Hell, not even the fucking Nazis themselves claimed that they weren’t deliberately operating death camps. Here’s Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz:

Technically [it] wasn’t so hard—it would not have been hard to exterminate even greater numbers… The killing itself took the least time. You could dispose of 2,000 head in half an hour, but it was the burning that took all the time. The killing was easy; you didn’t even need guards to drive them into the chambers; they just went in expecting to take showers and, instead of water, we turned on poison gas. The whole thing went very quickly.

And here he is, after his trial, four days before his execution:

My conscience compels me to make the following declaration. In the solitude of my prison cell, I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity. As Commandant of Auschwitz, I was responsible for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the ‘Third Reich’ for human destruction. In so doing I have inflicted terrible wounds on humanity. I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done. I ask the Polish people for forgiveness. In Polish prisons I experienced for the first time what human kindness is. Despite all that has happened I have experienced humane treatment which I could never have expected, and which has deeply shamed me. May the facts which are now coming out about the horrible crimes against humanity make the repetition of such cruel acts impossible for all time.

Doesn’t really sound like the statement of a guy who was trying to claim it didn’t fucking happen, or that it was anything but a deliberate crime against humanity.

“Test Post, Please Ignore,” and that guy who took increasingly elaborate pictures of himself taking the previous picture of his camera were high points for me.

Blame it on the bossa nova!

Trump abandoning NATO, Russia going on the war path, and full-blown nuclear World War 3 would probably be bad for business.

Russia would never threaten China with nukes, because 1) China ALSO has nukes, and 2) China has been the only thing keeping Russia afloat recently.

But it would have to be a scorched earth kind of invasion. The kind that pisses off basically everyone, because it leaves every single Russian, military, or citizen, dead. They’d have to come in, take everything, and kill everything. Take the land.

First of all, if you’re being invaded by an army planning to genocide your entire population, then you have no reason not to use every weapon in your arsenal. If the options are A: China kills 100% of your populace or B: Launch nukes and even 1% of your populace survives whatever follows, then B is the most rational choice.

Secondly, there’s no reason to assume that states will make rational decisions to begin with. I’d say the current state of affairs in Ukraine is a very good example of that in action. So even if China wasn’t planning to genocide all of Russia, even if it was some kind of “benevolent” invasion where they were going to tiptoe around the flower beds, gently pry Putin out of the Kremlin, and basically leave everything the same except that now Russians pay for groceries with renminbi instead of rubles… there’s still every reason to imagine that Putin and his top brass would still launch nukes on the mere principle of the thing.

So no, let’s not glibly plan for a fast forward on nuclear Armageddon, thank you very much.

I didn’t even consider how many people with cardiac issues must be looking at that screen.

“Shrunken SUV” or “Took a normal 2- or 4-door and injected it with experimental growth hormones.”

I swear I see one once a week that would make sense and carry the same number of people and stuff at half the overall vehicle volume.

Qi users need not apply.

It should probably be written “Lesbian GOP candidate.” That seems to follow the secret unwritten rules of word order a little better.

Me: Yeah, whatever he said it’s probably not good.

“But I really, I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” he said. “That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version, it’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s healthy, beautiful woman.”

Me: OH, FUCK!

Majority of Americans: Support policies X, Y, and Z.

Democrats: Put policies X, Y, and Z into their platform.

Republicans: Extreme socialist Demoncrabs want to destroy America!!!

During his speech, Spectrum reports that McConnell called the Walz-Harris ticket “the far left of the Democratic Party.”

“And by the way, that’s most Democrats today,” McConnell said, according to Spectrum.

Oh, no! Harris and Walz are representing the will of the majority of the people! Whatever the fuck is to be done about democracy?!

Tampopo. It’s like if instead of protecting a small village, The Magnificent Seven was about helping a lady open a nice little ramen shop, but also the movie was about half directed by Monty Python, and also a little bit of food kink now and again.

I borrowed it on DVD and immediately went out and bought the Criterion Blu-ray. It’s amazing.

I’m not sure if the meme conveys my point precisely. I’m not saying that the Olympics are a genetic superman breeding program.

I’m saying that if you put a call out across the globe for the most gifted competitors for decades, you’re going to be getting people who are already deeply passionate about their events, but if you presume that level of competitive spirit to begin with, then you’re going to start seeing people who are also genetically advantaged emerge as top competitors.

Michael Phelps is already an incredibly passionate swimmer, but then again so is everyone in the pool with him. He’s got his super long arms that, if he weren’t competitive, wouldn’t be worth a damn, but combined with his training and commitment help give him an edge.

I bet if you did a little digging you’d see all sorts of genetic quirks among top level Olympians. Weight lifters with surprisingly dense muscle fiber, skaters and gymnasts with extra-robust inner ears, target shooters with extraordinary eyesight. It’s not meant to take away from their talent or the work they’ve done, but it’s not any more surprising than seeing extraordinarily tall players in the NBA, or extraordinarily stocky NFL linebackers.

Pretty much

Compromise: Host the debate on Fox, but have the lady that confronted him with his own words at the National Association of Black Journalists event be the moderator.

It sucks that people can be more than one thing. Like, they can be talented artists or performers or whatever, but at the same time they can also be fucking scumbags. It would be significantly more convenient if people were all-shit or all-good.

My entire adult life, it’s felt like Republicans are made in those Coca-Cola Freestyle machines where you can customize the flavor. The base flavor is always pro-big business, American imperialist, anti-women’s rights, anti-intellectual. But then there’s always an extra shot of flavor! Maybe it’s something common, like being especially anti-queer, or rare like McCain having just a little squirt of integrity.

But sometimes it’s weird! With Sarah Palin it was aerial wolf gunning! There was some other guy who was against laws forbidding dog fighting, because he said that because human boxing was allowed, outlawing dogfighting would elevate dogs above humans. And then you’ve got the likes of MTG where you just take ALL the flavors and mix them together.

So yeah, we can expect a steady stream of base flavor repellent Republican behavior, with notes of racism and sexism that will be familiar to anyone who was paying attention during the Obama administration or the Trump vs. Clinton campaign.

We’re cavemen on the Moon, we carry bone harpoons! But there ain’t no whales so we tell caveman tales and sing a whaling tune!