The Anonymous activists behind “OpKKK” – which infiltrated and unmasked Klan members, including many in US military and police departments – began by creating thin-but-plausible fake identities on Facebook that signalled support for “Blue Lives Matter.” By friending other accounts that indicated support for Blue Lives Matter, they found themselves being auto-suggested friendships with KKK members.
The more Klan accounts they friended, the more the Facebook algorithm located new ones for them to solicit for mutual friending, and the more plausible they seemed to anyone contemplating friending them.
They were greatly aided by the Klan’s primitive recognition loop: a Klansman asks “AYAK” (“Are you a Klansman”) and listens for the response “AKIA” (A Klansman I am) – the KKK has a long history of dopey, D&D-inflected wordplay.
As the Grugq points out, closeted gay people had better tradecraft than this with the whole, “friend of Dorothy” thing. The KKK, by contrast “aren’t really good at handling insider threats or figuring out how to keep threats outside.” That means “When you want to punch a Nazi in the face, they’ll be easier to find and hunt down.”
As Governor of Indiana, Mike Pence was significantly to the right of the mainstream, even for his own party – so it’s no surprise that in the days after his resignation (to become vice president of the USA), his successor and state Republican lawmakers: pardoned an innocent man who’d been locked up for 20 years (whom Mike Pence refused to help); allowed a town to declare a state of emergency; greenlit a needle-exchange; and overrode his vetoes, which would have allowed university cops to keep their records secret and which prevented strict environmental rules.
It’s a sobering reminder that Pence only looks cool and reasonable because he is flanked by walking dumpster fires, and that President Pence might just continue the cruelty of Trump, but with the measured competence needed to turn grandstanding stunts into actual policy.
A group of rough looking boys walked past me today and all I heard of their conversation was “he’s got that anxiety disorder bro so I went with him so he’d be more comfortable” and it made me realise the world isn’t all that bad
The pet store I worked at had a pen with rabbits near the front door. On every side of the pen were huge signs saying “You can pet me, but don’t pick me up!” One day two absolutely huge guys came in and one immediately reaches into the pen to grab a rabbit. Before i could say anything his friend grabbed his arm and asked him “did you see the sign?” He said “yeah! it says that you can pick them up but don’t pet them!” Then he went quiet for a moment and softly said “I didn’t read it right did I?” And his friend just puts his arm on his shoulder and said “its ok, i know you’ve got that thing where words get mixed up. Let just pet these cute lil shits” And I still haven’t gotten over that interaction.
Last week saw multiple retailers either dropping or de-emphasizing Ivanka Trump-branded products in their stores, and now two more chains are stepping back from the family name: Sears Holdings announced over the weekend that Kmart and Sears are pulling 31 Trump Home branded products from their online stores.
The company said on Saturday that the decision is part of push to focus online business on the most profitable items. Neither Kmart nor Sears sold Trump Home products — which includes furniture, bedding, and lighting — in retail stores, a Sears Holding spokesman told Reuters.
“As part of the company’s initiative to optimize its online product assortment, we constantly refine that assortment to focus on our most profitable items,” he said in a statement. “Amid that streamlining effort, 31 Trump Home items were among the items removed online this week.”
Those items can still be found through a third-party vendor, the spokesman said, without providing additional information about the products.
UPDATE: In a blog post on Monday responding to recent media reports, the company noted that “any fair observer” who searches for Trump or Ivanka Trump on Sears.com will still find “hundreds of products available for purchase.”
“All of these products are offered by our marketplace sellers and not directly by Sears or Kmart,” the company said. “The headlines do not do justice to our business or this specific brand of products that we offer through our marketplace sellers.”
The post notes again, that Sears “constantly” monitors products for productivity, “adding products that are in demand and removing products with lesser demand.”
Any products that are found to be unsafe or inappropriate may be removed as well, Sears notes.
I think it’s really weird that the average person needs a home and a car and an education to effectively function at all in a capitalist society but those things are all such an exorbitantly high price that the average person would never ever be able to pay for them one lump sum and thus we decided that upon entering adulthood every average person would likely have to sign their life away to various powerful banks to pay for these things and everyone was just like “Ok, that seems legit and not fucked up AT ALL.” and now it’s such an accepted and normalized part of society that everyone looks at you like you’re dumb for thinking it’s weird. I just think it’s really fucking weird.
Let’s be honest: Jesus wouldn’t take the wheel. Jesus would let Peter drive, fall asleep in the back seat, wake up to the sound of the other eleven screaming in mortal terror (while Peter bellows expletives at the car in front), and get them out of a fatal car accident at the very last second by rebuking the speed limit.
Melissa McCarthy reprised her guest role as Sean ‘Spicey’ Spicer in Saturday Night Live’s cold open. McCarthy didn’t do much to mix up the bag of tricks she’d drawn from in her first rendition last weekend (literally, the toys are back), continuing to play the White House press secretary as solidly, predictably…
“To fuss and hand-wring about confronting fascists because you might be giving them the attention they crave is to ignore the deeply violent things they will do to others when you are not paying attention.”
if u were a gifted/talented child who grew into an anxious adult w fragile self worth and a perfectionist streak that makes u abandon things if ur not good at them immediately clap ur hands
so my dad fixes hot tubs for a living which means he goes to people’s houses and has all these crazy stories, but he has some regular customers that really like him. he’s also basically a dog whisperer, so every customer’s dog loves him (even ones that are usually “dangerous”). recently, my family’s little poodle elphie died from breast cancer, and it really hit my dad hard. he doesn’t show his emotions outwardly but it’s been really tough for him lately. apparently, he went to this one regular customer’s house that has a big black lab, a pedigree dog that they use for breeding. usually the dog is really friendly with him, but this time he got there and the dog was howling and whimpering, and ran right up to him and started nuzzling into his lap. he started talking to her owner, and she talked about how the dog just had puppies, and because she’s a regular customer she knew my family had a dog, too, so she asked about elphie. my dad had to tell her that elphie just died, and he got a little choked up. as he talked about our dog, the lab noticed and started to nuzzle and push him, and him and the owner were really confused, so he let the dog push him. she ended up leading him to her newborn puppies and pushing him to hold them. the owner was really surprised because the dog wouldn’t even let HER near the puppies, let alone touch them. somehow this dog knew my dad was hurting for our dog and wanted to make him feel better by being with other dogs. i’ve just…never heard of anything so pure in my life.
tag yourself. I'm a bee. I got shit to do, and no time to mess with you and absolutely no problem with dying to make you leave me alone. ... that escalated quickly.
all bugs can be organized into one of three categories: homies, chillers, and haters. hornets and wasps are haters. mosquitos are haters. most spiders are homies cuz they eat shitty bugs, some spiders are chillers cuz they dont really do anything, but also some spiders are haters because they’ll kill you. learn to tell the difference. bees are homies but they become haters if you fuck with them. most beetles are chillers but if they’re the kind of beetle that flies really fast at your face then they’re haters.
Remember this the next time you want to complain about GMO’s, we may not have done it in a lab but they still are that.
Bananas looked like lemons wtf
Isn’t this more of a combination of selective breeding and GMOs? Not just GMOs?
Yes. But people talk about how GMO’s are “unnatural”, yet for centuries humanity has been exploiting mutations in animals and plants to produce food for themselves.
GMO’s are simply the process of inducing these mutations reliably.
People hear “Lettuce being modified with scorpion DNA” and think that we’re now eating scorpions. But, in reality, they’re taking a tiny bit of scorpion DNA and splicing it into the plant. Why? So the plant will produce poison that is not harmful to humans but will deter insects, reducing the use of pesticide, which CAN be harmful to humans and the environment.
GMOs are producing rice that can survive flooding, which makes rice more reliable yields and will prevent food shortages in poor nations that rely on said crops for staple food.
GMOs are also creating spider-goat hybrids. Why? So we can splice web production into the goat’s udders. We’ll be able to spin huge quantities of spider silk, enough to reliably create spider silk cables and ropes, which have more tensile strength than steel.
I for one am glad I live in a time where watermelons aren’t giant tomato abominations
The issue with GMOs is that corporations like Monsanto are patenting GMOs and arresting indigenous farmers for cross pollinating with they seeds. But there is nothing dangerous about the science.
^This.
The problem isn’t the science, it’s what capitalism does with that science.
Reminder: Your friends really do love you. No they dont secretly hate you. No they dont just put up with you and think you’re annoying. Your friends truly love you and care about you as much as you do.
“Being president harder than Donald Trump thought” sounds like it would be the headline of an Onion article we could all laugh at about a year ago, but it’s our reality now.
