Tag: stupid

Vegan Scam

“I worked hard, this was my passion. This was all I ever wanted. Why would I throw it up in flames? I have nothing now. I have no apartment. I have no money. Why would I torture myself like that? Talk to my friends. They will tell you this is not me.” Her carefully cultivated public persona hid some deeper demons. “She’s thrown stools, grapefruits and phones at me. She would leave cryptic notes with big kitchen knives stuck into vegetables. She punched me in the head and cut me with her ring.”

New clown car side shows

i like that characters in this summer comedy get to develop little spinoff dramas as they leave the main plotline:

I believe in the power of prayer. Be full of faith and so full of joy that this team was chosen to fight a long battle. It took 25 years to defeat slavery. That is a lot longer than 4 years.

Pseudolaw

Would you like to stop paying taxes? Just renounce your 14th Amendment United States citizenship and claim ownership of the secret cestui que (beneficiary) trust that the US government created in your name on the day that you were born. Credit card debt? No problem, the trust is flush with millions or billions of dollars that you can use, just as soon as you establish ownership of your verified birth certificate and the corporate entity that has your name – but in all-capital letters. These are some of the claims advanced by the self-styled experts who insist that everything you know about the legal system is wrong. These days, we are distressingly familiar with alternative, conspiracy-theory versions of science and medicine. Less well-known is the legal version of this phenomenon, not as visible as creationism or anti-vaccine activism but in many ways as destructive. Just ask the residents of Harney County, Oregon, who recently saw militants occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge emboldened by ‘judges’ and ‘citizen grand juries’ who had less to do with actual law than fantasy football does with the US National Football League.

Malheur terrorists

It was clear to me, though, that somebody would die. Such certitude as these men and women possess demands blood sacrifice to justify itself. There were too many armed people in, and circling, the occupation, with too many varying levels of sanity and too many varying motivations for being there. “You can’t not give an cm and be assured of a peaceful outcome. If it came down to a violent showdown, we’re willing to pay the price.” Walking around the refuge parking lot and buildings, I saw a lot of gray beards and “We the People” caps and camo watch caps covering thinning hair or bald pates. The weapons and the tactical vests lent a seriousness to men disappearing into the irrelevance of late middle age. Guns, for as long as we have had them, have given undue impetus to arguments that lack merit or reason, given credence to delusional rants.

The art of the deal

hilarious and insightful.

But Trump of the book is more a-intellectual, in the same way some people are amoral or asexual. The world is taken as a given. It contains deals. Some people make the deals well, and they are winners. Other people make the deals poorly, and they are losers. Trump does not need more than this. There will be no civilization of philosopher-Trumps asking where the first deal came from, or whether a deal is a deal only by virtue of its participation in some primordial deal beyond material existence.

long lost, recently rediscovered at a yard sale: the art of the deal, the movie

Gout returns

These dietary problems are translating to a resurgence of a handful of preventable diseases. In the U.K., 3m people are malnourished, and malnutrition-related hospitalizations spiked by 50%. 100k patients were hospitalized with gout. Gout—typically related to a buildup of uric acid due to over-consuming alcohol and rich foods—is a problem in the US, as well. The prevalence of gout in the US has steadily risen over the past 20 years, affecting more than 8m Americans in 2011.