February 13, 2013
— Ace This feels like a @DepressiveBlogger69 post but when the earth claims back human structures, it's really very pretty.
Why am I posting this? For the same reason I post most things: To inspire Dungeon Masters as they write their "modules."
But worth a look.
I'd steal like ten of these but that would be stealing (ten of these). So how about this one?
That shot taken from this blog, which runs an "Abandoned places" feature on Saturdays.
I know this is kind of obvious -- every videogame developer knows this, of course, especially the Uncharted guys, which is why I love Uncharted so much-- but after stuff gets ugly for a decade or two it starts to get pretty again.
PS, this is your future, might as well learn to appreciate it.
Silver linings, silver linings.
Via @kurtloder
Posted by: Ace at
03:17 PM
| Comments (130)
Post contains 148 words, total size 1 kb.
— Ace Chris Dorner never drank no water.
Murdering people is not a career ender at CNN, but drinking water? That is.
That's a buzzfeed link but they got the story, so.
Video: At Breitbart.
I forgot to say this about Dredd: It's your future. So, be prepared.
Posted by: Ace at
02:51 PM
| Comments (174)
Post contains 84 words, total size 1 kb.
— Ace
CNN now clarifies this was a "joke." (That's just a link of the same picture; the joke clarification is by @politico's Media Defender Dylan Byers, and I don't link that shit.)
via @ehtanklapper and @katmckinley
Kat asks if I'll do a rant. Right now I'm struck dumb.
Ever hear someone say "I need to process this" when something really unbelievable happens?
I need to process this.
Video: At Newsbusters.
Posted by: Ace at
02:20 PM
| Comments (271)
Post contains 75 words, total size 1 kb.
— Ace We need our disasters to be bipartisan.
Posted by: Ace at
02:06 PM
| Add Comment
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.
— Ace We need our disasters to be bipartisan.
Posted by: Ace at
02:06 PM
| Comments (75)
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.
— Ace Eh, you know what I think. I've said it enough. Sure, I want the heat and fire of the Tea Party, but I'd also like that tempered by some cold numbers-based decisionmaking.
I don't trust The Establishment to actually do anything, but I'm losing confidence in the Tea Party's ability to distinguish Protest Candidates from Candidates who Can Actually be Put Into Position to Make Change.
I think the dynamic -- and the pushback from either side -- is necessary. I don't want to see either side "win" in this.
I don't think you should be looking to "win" interparty disputes fully. If you completely win, you've won the right to have the losing party abandon you.
Anyway, Rubio doesn't say all that, but he's keeping an open mind.
Oh: Chris Matthews, who can hear a dog whistle beyond the capability of dogs' hearing abilities, called Rubio primitive.
And did you hear? Rubio drinks water. Holy mackerel, there's your headline.
Posted by: Ace at
11:47 AM
| Comments (257)
Post contains 182 words, total size 1 kb.
— Ace Yes, he's a Democrat.
Rep. Steve Cohen repeatedly tweeted, and then deleted, messages to a woman on Twitter who his office is calling “the daughter of a longtime friend” and who has the same name as a Texas State University blonde bombshell featured in a college co-ed calendar.In a Tuesday night message ahead of President Obama’s State of the Union address, a Twitter user named Victoria Brink tweeted to the Tennessee Democrat, “just saw you on tv!”
According to a tweet captured by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation’s Politiwoops site, Cohen replied to Brink, “pleased u r watching. Ilu” The tweet was deleted after three minutes.
Both Wikipedia and UrbanDictionary.com define “ilu” as Internet slang for either “I love you” or “I like you.”
In another message sent Wednesday morning, Cohen wrote again to Brink on Twitter: “nice to know you were watchin SOTU (state of the union.) Happy Valentines beautiful girl. Ilu.” That message was deleted within 15 minutes of being posted.
I've done some of my own sleuthing (which consisted of clicking on a prominent link in the above article) and I've discovered this. (Apparently now getting a 404 error on that.)[link fixed - Andy]
Cohen has previously expounded on "the Big Lie:"
They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels. You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing. The Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it and you had the Holocaust. You tell a lie over and over again. And we've heard on this floor, government takeover of health care.
Cohen's actually unmarried (I believe) but one of his flacks say he has a "longtime girlfriend" in Memphis who presumably is more age-appropriate.
Congressman Cohen is 137 years old (estimated by tree rings).
In completely unrelated news -- seriously, I've been meaning to post this and just haven't had a chance, and I'm just randomly throwing it in here -- cheating service Ashley Madison has pronounced Washington DC the most unfaithful city in America for the second year in a row.
Given that Cohen is unmarried, I don't expect this to go anywhere, and it probably shouldn't. Yes, he has a "longtime girlfriend," but conservative commentators have objected to treating that as equal to the sacrament of marriage.
And yet...
By the picture, he appears to be some type of weasel. --
Lurking Canuck
And yet. Powerful and accomplished men have long attracted much better looking (and much younger) women than they'd otherwise attract. Nothing new there.
But is Cohen powerful? Is Cohen accomplished?
Now even backbenching blowhard idiot Congressmen apparently have so much money and power and connections as to attract the favors of fetching young girls; should that be the case?
Citizen legislators, indeed. I'm not saying a Congressman should wear the hairshirt, but I am definitely saying that if he's got enough Bank to Pull the Young Hotties then we're doing something wrong.
It's not so much that he's tweeting "ilu" to a 24 year old girl, you know. Humans do what humans have done for centuries. Bad behavior is nothing new, and hardly uncommon.
It's that I don't think a Citizen-Legislators should be in the category of people with the money and connections and power to be able to indulge bad behavior.
This all feels very Roman to me. Our little Rome-on-Potomac is booming, tax-farming the hinterlands to the breaking point, and our little cadre of Roman senators is having a never-ending fantastical party. On our dime.
Ah well. L'amour, qui peut le connaître?
Posted by: Ace at
10:43 AM
| Comments (491)
Post contains 645 words, total size 5 kb.
— Ace This isn't new news; it dates from February 1. But very little of last nights State of the Union was new, either (although I think Obama did add "self-healing electrical grids" to his laundry list).
So as Obama's speech was recylced, as it always is, Joe Biden's words from a couple of weeks ago are still relevant. more...
Posted by: Ace at
10:17 AM
| Comments (171)
Post contains 105 words, total size 1 kb.
— Ace She does start to pick up on that vibe -- the cult of the emperor, as many more primitive societies have featured.
itÂ’s never desperate; itÂ’s always professional; and itÂ’s a little short on true interactivity. IÂ’d say it was regal.
...
But Obama is a president and democratically elected in a country with a nominally free press, so I would be uncomfortable comparing him to a king, even a kindly one.
So she decides at the end, I guess, that she doesn't mind having her every waking thought devoted to the worship of his Celestial Majesty.
She figures her life could use the structure, I guess.
Posted by: Ace at
10:09 AM
| Comments (103)
Post contains 163 words, total size 1 kb.
— DrewM Spend enough time on the internet and you'll see everything.
Avik Roy writing at National Review's The Corner takes on one of conservatism's most sacred cows.
But it’s worth pointing out that the landslide defeat of Goldwater to Lyndon Johnson led to the enactment of the Great Society, and most notably, Medicare and Medicaid. In other words, the very fiscal crisis we face today — for which, at our most courageous, we recommend but modest reforms — was a direct result of the disastrous Goldwater campaign.We may all prefer the policies of Goldwater to those of Rockefeller. But it’s at least debatable whether or not the conservative movement was better off, or worse off, for having nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964. Indeed, the 1964 election may be the most salient example of what happens when we don’t pick the most conservative candidate who can win.
This is heresy of the highest order to conservatives. Personally, I find anyone who doesn't have a bit of heresy in their arsenal but I prefer it to be somewhat more grounded in reality.
My biggest problem with this formulation is that in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination Rockefeller had any more of a chance against Lyndon Johnson than Barry Goldwater did. There's simply no reason to believe that's true.
I pointed this out to Roy and he replied
@drewmtips It's not just about whether Rockefeller would have won, it's about what he would have done to reduce Dem majorities in Congress.— Avik S. A. Roy (@aviksaroy) February 13, 2013
Aside from the movement of the goal posts this ignores a major fact.... despite popular belief the Social Security Act amendments of 1965 that created Medicare and Medicaid passed with significant (near majority) support of Republicans in Congress.
The House adopted a conference report -- a unified House-Senate version of the bill -- on July 27, 1965, and passed it by a 307-116 margin. That included 70 Republican "yes" votes, against 68 "no" votes.Then, on July 28, 1965, the Senate adopted the bill by a vote of 70-24, with 13 Republicans in favor and 17 against. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it two days later.
How would the nomination of the more liberal and thus more "electable" Rockefeller have led to more conservative Republicans in Congress?
More inconvenient for Roy's argument is Rockefeller supported the creation of Medicare before the 64 election.
more...
Posted by: DrewM at
09:32 AM
| Comments (180)
Post contains 984 words, total size 7 kb.
43 queries taking 0.3378 seconds, 151 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
