I’m so fucking sick of people complaining about what the Democrats should have done years ago when the Republicans have been actively disassembling this country for my entire adult life, and are really getting down to the “rip out the wiring and sell it for scrap copper” phase.
My uncle was a small-herd fairy farmer my entire life. Never had more than a couple dozen cows at a time, always knew all of them by name. He kept on getting squeezed out by larger and larger operations. He eventually went grass-fed organic to try and stay competitive. Then he told me that the large operations have organic mini-farms that they operate. The cows there are kept organic… but only so long as they remain in perfect health. The instant one gets sick, she gets moved over to the bigger factory operation and is pumped full of all the antibiotics that all the rest are kept on.
So, while my uncle is keeping a small herd and who has both financial and moral reasons for wanting to maintain his cows that way, a large factory farm can maintain a nominal organic operation, undercutting small fries like my uncle, but actually only keeping their cows organic for exactly as long as it’s convenient, and not a moment longer.
My uncle is retired now, but it hurt me to hear him tell that story. We ought to care about small family farms, but we keep letting capitalist “efficiency” turn every aspect of life on Earth into a market-optimized hellscape.
"The number is 40 percent within weeks. Do not contradict the president.”
These ghouls can’t be trusted with reality.
How long have you been working here? Okay. You like working here? Okay.
I fucking loved him as Mr. Hand. When he gets the John Murdoch memory upload he starts doing Rufus Sewell’s mannerisms and it’s honestly a little uncanny. Great performance.
How many college educations could have been fully funded for $3 billion? How many elementary schools built? How many other worthwhile problems could have been solved, rather than building a bunch of worthless crumbling garbage out in the desert?
Honestly, given the available evidence, this is just as likely an outcome as any other.
“Mr. Franklin, of what use is this hot air balloon contraption?”
“You can take ladies up in it with a bottle of wine and a blanket and you know, they can’t refuse, because of the implication. Think about it. She’s floating up in the middle of the sky with some dude she barely knows. You know, she looks around, and what does she see? Nothing but open air. 'Ahhhh! There’s nowhere for me to run. What am I gonna do, say ‘no?’”
Surveys indicate that 100% of people respond to surveys.
Pig is a masterclass in not telling the audience more than they absolutely need to know. I’ve gotten so sick of movies where the dialog repeats itself for the benefit of people who weren’t paying attention thirty seconds ago, or else it constantly spells out stuff that rightly ought to be conveyed by the actions of the characters. Pig is the antithesis of that. Characters hardly say anything that they don’t need to say, and everything else is left to the viewer to figure out. I fucking love it.
Great opportunity to update a woefully out of date operating system!
Someday I’d like to replicate Eratosthenes’ experiment with a long north-south road trip, but I never remember to make the measurements.
We do this at a used book store. It’s books that we don’t think we can sell inside for whatever reason, and we put them on shelves outside. There’s a big awning so they don’t really get rained on unless it’s raining sideways. We sell them for a dime or a quarter, and there’s a slot for overnight drops in case people want to get books at night. Every morning there’s at least a couple of bucks from the previous day/night.
We donate the proceeds to public radio, and over the years we’ve donated over $100,000.
Counterpoint
I was watching Labyrinth on a loop as a young boy, and I thought David Bowie was awesome, but I turned out… more or less straight. Mostly. Pretty much. I mean, of course Bowie is gorgeous, I’m not an idiot.