ThePrettiestOne

Statistics Show White Supremacy is a Bigger Threat to the U.S. Than Radical Muslims:

thisisantiasianracism:

antifainternational:

This will come as no surprise to most of you but when it comes to terrorism in the U.S., you are nearly 2x more likely to die at the hands of a neo-nazi racist terrorist than you are to die at the hands of a Muslim extremist terrorist.  

Water is wet.

-Mod R

I’d cheekily suggest that we come up with a patch or something that these people should wear, so we know to stay away from them, but they already take care of that for us with their fucking Confederate battle flag.

by-grace-of-god:

Antoine Leiris posted a Facebook message to ISIS, after his wife was killed in the Paris attack, “You will not have my hatred.”

On Friday night you stole the life of an exceptional being, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hatred.

I don’t know who you are and I don’t want to know - you are dead souls. If this God for which you kill indiscriminately made us in his own image, every bullet in the body of my wife will have been a wound in his heart.

So no, I don’t give you the gift of hating you. You are asking for it but responding to hatred with anger would be giving in to the same ignorance that made you what you are.

You want me to be afraid, to view my fellow countrymen with mistrust, to sacrifice my freedom for security.You have lost.

I saw her this morning. Finally, after many nights and days of waiting. She was just as beautiful as when she left on Friday night, just as beautiful as when I fell hopelessly in love over 12 years ago.

Of course I’m devastated with grief, I admit this small victory, but it will be short-lived. I know she will accompany us every day and that we will find ourselves in this paradise of free souls to which you’ll never have access.

We are two, my son and I, but we are stronger than all the armies of the world.

I don’t have any more time to devote to you, I have to join Melvil who is waking up from his nap. He is barely 17-months-old. He will eat his meals as usual, and then we are going to play as usual, and for his whole life this little boy will threaten you by being happy and free. Because no, you will not have his hatred either.

Sources: Catholic Link, Daily Mail

Humanity at its best.

coffeeisfine:

*sips tea*

“Here’s a little something I did for Trans Day of Remembrance. There won’t be any update tomorrow. ♥ ″

As seen on the Assigned Male Facebook page

Trans Day of Remembrance is tomorrow, Nov. 20

LOVE, RESPECT AND PROTECT TRANS PEOPLE

never being quite sure if people like you or want to be friends with you and so never knowing how friendly to be

buzzfeed:

buzzfeedvideo:

Feels alert! Drunk girls LOVE puppies! 

EVERYONE LOVES PUPPIES.

gillianjacobs:

Am I a thing worth saving? Am I a righteous man? The world wants me gone.

repmarktakano:

(As prepared for delivery on November 19th, 2015)

Mr. Speaker. 70 years ago my parents and grandparents were stripped of their possessions and placed in Japanese-American internment camps.

They were not guilty of espionage. They did not commit treason. They simply looked like our enemy — and that cost my family their freedom.

Yesterday, the mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, suggested that this country’s treatment of Japanese-Americans during the 1940s is a model for how we should address today’s global refugee crisis.

It does not take courage to condemn such disgraceful comments, nor does it take wisdom to say our World War Two policies were a product of fear and hysteria.

What takes wisdom is recognizing that history is now repeating itself. And what takes courage is sending a message to the world that America will protect innocent people regardless of their nationality or religion.

That’s what my mother and father deserved 70 years ago, and it’s what these refugees deserve today.

Thank you and I yield back.

John Cleese recently appeared on Conan and during his interview he told Conan O’Brien how he would play on his late mother’s dark sense of humor by offering to have her killed and stuffed as a means of cheering her up.

pleasure-puss:

i read a really interesting response to this very question once.

good food is one of the only luxuries millennials can feasibly afford. with student debt, job insecurity, and an increased cost of living millennials can no longer afford to indulge in the past generations luxuries. things like cars, houses, even travel! a good meal is honestly one of the only things we can treat ourselfs to, so shut the fuck up and let us enjoy our fucking food

sophygurl:

unrepentantauthor:

teslacarter:

adriofthedead:

sweaty-resetti:

mammacarnage:

myladymother:

i hate when people are like “only dogs can give u love and affection cats are cold and elusive” like okay dog person if you had ever actually owned a cat you would know they are the neediest fucking creatures on the planet

cats will literally sit on your head until you pay attention to them

That proves the point, they want attention, they want you to pay attention to them not them!

cats show affection and love in their own way

for example

• actually holding eye contact with you and blinking slowly is how cats ‘kiss’
• cats choose to sleep or sit next to you even if you’re busy when they have a million other places to be because they like your company
• they consider positive attention love
• when they ‘headbutt’ you it’s called ‘bunting’ and it’s how they show affection
• when they knead you it’s because they feel comforted
• they think of you petting them as grooming- it makes them feel good so they will ask for you to pet them (or demand) especially if they’re feeling sad
• cats like to step on you because they mark you with their scent from their little feet telling other cats BACK THE FUCK OFF THIS HUMAN IS MINE
• cats will lick you or groom you because they want you to be clean and happy
• they bring you dead things because they don’t want you to starve

cats think of humans as parents whereas dogs think of humans as the alpha dog

http://catpsychology.org/

;w;

I have been saying this FOR ACTUAL YEARS. THANK YOU.

Why do dog people insist on being weirdly moralising about cats like

I half expect them to start claiming dogs would give to charity while cats wouldn’t or some shit

cats are super loving. IF they actually in fact love you.

inkskinned:

“women don’t know how much rejection hurts” i wasn’t allowed to play with legos or touch a football or look at sports. i wasn’t allowed to eat more. i wasn’t allowed to talk loudly, to laugh too much, to inject myself into male conversations. i wasn’t allowed to be good at science. i was told “oh sweetheart, have another college in mind, STEM fields are hard.” i got turned down from jobs in favor of boys where were less qualified. one boss told me he was hesitant to hire me because my last name is hispanic and i’m pretty and he didn’t want the “controversy.” i couldn’t take up space on the train. i would be talked over in public places. i couldn’t eat steak or drink beer, they were “boy” things. video games were off limits, i wasn’t allowed to ask if i could see more characters like myself in them. super heroes were all men, women were just love interests. i wanted shirts with wonderwoman, with black widow, with harley quinn, i found next to nothing. i wanted pockets and colors other than pink and clothes designed for warmth, not sexy, i got nothing. women change their name to be published nationally. i wasn’t allowed to be emotional, i wasn’t good at driving, i wasn’t in charge of my own body. i wasn’t allowed to show off my body, i wasn’t allowed to dress modestly. i had to be pretty, whatever it took, but my eating was constantly made fun of. “she’s, like, anorexic” was a punchline, not a disorder. “she’s fat” was a death sentence. 

boys said no because: i wasn’t pretty i wasn’t small i was too loud i spent too much energy on being funny on because i wouldn’t shut up what a feminazi i wasn’t smart i was too smart for my own good i was always reading i was always busy i was too needy i was too independent i was not who you took home i was too much of a house mom i was perfect and it was scary.

women don’t know. women don’t know. never sat in a room and wrote angsty poetry about this shit. somehow both overemotional and not capable of knowing how much rejection stings. which one is it. which one is it. i’ll give you a hint: we’ve been rejected since the first time our parents said, “no, not the blue blanket, it’s for little boys to play with.” we are used to having “no” slammed in our faces. we got used to it. maybe the reason it seems so unnatural to hear “no” is because for your entire life, you heard “yes.”

Good job, GOP, you are doing ISIS’s bidding!

“The reality is, [Isis] loathes that individuals are fleeing Syria for Europe. It undermines [Isis’s] message that its self-styled caliphate is a refuge.”

Remember, the whole ISIS conceit is that they’re building an Islamic paradise that transcends national borders. So how does it look for them when hundreds of thousands of Muslims are fleeing their advances? 

It looks like shit, that’s how it looks. Why do you think the Soviets and eastern Europe built walls and guarded their borders against defections? Same reason.

If ISIS could, they’d build their own walls, but that’s difficult given the tenuous grasp on their territories and the need to funnel all their cash into funding and feeding their army. So what’s the next best thing? To dry up places for their people to flee to. 

So congrats, GOP! Not only are you supporting their biggest source of funding, but you are helping them limit their defections. In return, ISIS gets to scare Republicans, since they are addicted to being scared. 

It’s quite the symbiotic relationship, actually. 

smdxn:

Obama: I didn’t appreciate how weak the presidency is until I was president

“What I didn’t fully appreciate, and nobody can appreciate until they’re in the position, is how decentralized power is in this system. When you’re in the seat and you’re seeing the housing market collapse and you are seeing unemployment skyrocketing and you have a sense of what the right thing to do is, then you realize, ‘Okay, not only do I have to persuade my own party, not only do I have to prevent the other party from blocking what the right thing to do is, but now I can anticipate this lawsuit, this lobbying taking place, and this federal agency that technically is independent, so I can’t tell them what to do. I’ve got the Federal Reserve, and I’m hoping that they do the right thing—and by the way, since the economy now is global, I’ve got to make sure that the Europeans, the Asians, the Chinese, everybody is on board.’ A lot of the work is not just identifying the right policy but now constantly building these ever shifting coalitions to be able to actually implement and execute and get it done.

saathi1013:

amorremanet:

reasons why the world absolutely NEEDS a crossover between ASOIAF/GOT and Star Trek:

1. put any given Targaryen into a random situation with any given Klingon. add someone who’s annoying either/both of them. sit back, watch chaos ensue, and then title it, “Fire and Bloodwine.”
2. Benjamin Sisko wouldn’t let any of this shit happen.
   • …oh, which shit? ……uhhh, good question, I mean to refer to a LOT of shit in this statement, really, so… uh, pick some shit and I probably meant to include it.
3. take one Spock. add three dragons. hilarity ensues.
   • ……oh, HOW does the hilarity ensue? …umm. ……er? ………GOOD QUESTION, I do NOT know. but putting Spock around dragons seems like it could only lead to hilarity so…… y'know. it would absolutely totally happen, probably.
4. I don’t care how it happens, I just really want to watch Tyrion and Cersei Lannister drink Morn and Damar under the table
5. AU where instead of Wesley Crusher, the precocious upstart kid onboard Picard’s Enterprise is Arya Stark.
   • …or any of her siblings; they’d all work for this, really (…well, Rickon might strain credulity a bit) — but I would personally pick Arya first. Arya or maybe Bran. but seriously, any of the Stark kids (+ Jon Snow) would work for this.
6. put any given Targaryen into a random situation with any given Klingon. add someone who’s annoying either/both of them. sit back, watch chaos ensue, then title the fic, “Fire and Bloodwine.”
   • yes, I know I already said that reason but… if you ask ME, it’s a really good reason, so here we are
   • ……no, this entire list is NOT just an overly elaborate attempt to justify posting the phrase, “fire and bloodwine” on tumblr dot com, even though it just came to me out of nowhere and it would be so much easier to just post it without all the bells and whistles and ricketta-racketta
   • ……………okay fine, that was a lie, this list is totally just an excuse for posting the, “fire and bloodwine” joke
7. Borg are organic enough to burn. Dany has dragons and Melisandre is a fire priestess. and it’s pretty hard to assimilate people if you’re also literally ON FIRE, I am JUST saying.
8. do I even need to say that the new femslash potential is off the charts? because it is.
   • …yes, the first place I went with this was Cersei/Uhura. ……why? uh, because I am fucking TRASH, that’s why.
   • but please also consider: Sansa/Ezri Dax, Sansa/Ziyal, Uhura/Margaery, Uhura/Missandei, Catelyn/Dr. Crusher, Missandei/Jadzia Dax, Dany/Major Kira Nerys, Melisandre/Deanna Troi, Arianne/Uhura, Arianne/Mjr. Kira, Arianne/Ziyal, Myrcella/Ziyal, Catelyn/Kasidy Yates, Cersei/T'Pring, Cersei/Amanda Grayson, Cersei/Lwxana Troi, Margaery/Jennifer Sisko, Ygritte/Mjr. Kira, Ygritte/Kasidy Yates……
   • we can talk Arya/Uhura when Arya’s older, ditto Sansa/Uhura, also ditto for Arya/Jadzia and Sansa/Deanna and Arya/Mjr. Kira, only not ditto for any Ziyal ship because they only aged her up because the network went, “no, you can’t have Garak and Bashir be Together, you need to no homo that shit RIGHT NOW” and on Garak’s end, they picked Ziyal to be the tool of said, “no homo”-ing
   • so, her age up was only to make it way less creepy when they used her to “no homo” Garak/Bashir (though the age gap was still there, which is a big reason why they never fully went there), and ignoring this hand-wave of theirs enables crossover femslash, so I think it’s okay??
   • ………which. I know that the age issue exists with book!canon Marge, Missandei, and Dany, too, but… *shrug* fudge it to show canon and adjust whatever bits of math actually matter when you’re crossing over two fandoms that should probably actually never meet each other, lest we break the very fabric of causality or something like that — and just… those three being played by adult actresses from the jump makes me feel a lot more okay with engaging in Fuzzy Math™ in order to femslash
   • but oh hey in the meantime?? we still have: Margaery/T'Pring, Missandei/Amanda Grayson, Melisandre/Kai Winn Adami, Olenna/Lwaxana, Missandei/Seven of Nine, Melisandre/Guinan, Brienne/Ezri, Brienne/Mjr. Kira, Cersei/the badass lady Romulan commander from “The Enterprise Incident,” Brienne/Tasha Yar, Dany/Lt. Marla McGivers, Sansa/Leslie Crusher, the girl genius we COULD have had… but Gene Roddenberry decided that no one would find a girl genius BELIEVABLE and we got Wesley instead, Margaery/Leslie Crusher, Ygritte/Tavannah the engineering officer aboard the IKS Rotarran in “Soldiers of the Empire” (DS9 5.21), Cersei/Intendant Kira Nerys from the Mirrorverse, Cersei/Mirror verse!Uhura, Cersei/Adami, Cersei/the Borg Queen
   • …………okay LOOK: if you think I can’t find a way to ship Cersei Lannister with every single Trek lady I can get my hot little hands on, then you seriously underestimate me and just how completely trash I am.
   • the absence of characters from ENT and the new movies is mostly due to how I haven’t actually finished a watch-through of ENT ever, and I have a slightly (very) contentious relationship with the JJ Abrams movies
   • but I’m just…… come ON: girls kissing in crossover scenarios that may or may not break the very fabric of causality (……or idk, something like that)!!!   (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧
9. I want to know if Jon Snow can still be cold and miserable while he’s on the artificially weather-modulated pleasure planet of Risa
10. ……………
11. ……………
12. ……………
13. *whispers in ur ear* **fire and bloodwine**

You had me at “girls kissing in crossover scenarios that may or may not break the very fabric of causality.”  You monster.  

Now I’m just going to construct elaborate scenarios where either ASOIAF is a holodeck program (because shut up that’s why - plus there’s also that whole ‘hey the sentience and autonomy of holograms (and, for that matter, any kind of artificial intelligence) has never been addressed in a way that wholly satisfied me” thing) 

or where the ASOIAF world is a tech-advanced version (in part because I am enamored of adapting the whole power struggle to higher-tech settings, a la that whole ‘Lannisters of Wall Street vs. Starks of Detroit [or other industry-heavy city with shitty winters, like maybe Chicago or Milwaukee or whatever]’ thing that I may or may not have mentioned previously, per extensive conversations with @knitmeapony) but with magic shit going on that baffle the Rational Experts in Starfleet, who occasionally go there to figure out what the actual fuck is going on and then regret it immensely if they survive at all. 

[cue crossover where the Enterprise or whoever goes to - wait, no, shit, KEIKO O’BRIEN sees a really pretty and f*ing unusual flower in the market on the promenade and traces it back and like goes off the radar (because magic?) and when a rescue party goes to find her (because that planet has a rep but of course Keiko gives no fucks when there’s Science to be had), it turns out she’s hanging out with the Tyrells in Highgarden, safe as houses.]

Look, I’m just gonna put it out there: Brienne/Jadzia. Fuck, Brienne with a bat'leth.

Also: Quark meeting the Lannisters, and being like, I hate every one of you, you are terrible and the worst… but also, mad respect.

allenclusive:

I hate when you’re watching a procedural crime drama and they cast a well known actor as the surprise killer so the detective is like,

Hmmm I wonder if it was the baker, the doctor, or Bryan Cranston the Janitor. 

There was an episode of Elementary with Fisher Stevens as a random doctor.

For some reason I immediately had that episode figured out.

A Syrian family turned away by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence arrived in Connecticut Wednesday, and there, they got a personal greeting from Gov. Dannel Malloy.

"I have to say they were absolutely wonderful and charming folks," Malloy said at a news conference. "I told them that people in the United States are generous and good people but sometimes things happen elsewhere that cause people to forget about their generosity, forget about their native warmth and spirit." [...]

Malloy said he felt the need to tell the couple they were coming to a country where most of the population came from another place. He said told them about how his own family originally came to the U.S. from Ireland about 100 years ago.

"They know that they've been diverted. They know that they were unwelcomed in another state," Malloy said. "We're not in the position to take everybody from Syria, but Connecticut should take its share."

The executive director of Exodus International, the charity that was working to place the married couple and their five-year-old son, said she would have liked to fight it out with Indiana that “this is not constitutional, that refugees can go to any state that they want because they're admitted to the U.S., not into a state,” but made the decision to protect the refugee family from “more scrutiny or drama.” A second Syrian refugee family was slated to arrive in Indiana in December, and Catholic Charities, the organization placing that family, is working on solutions for them. 

Malloy is one of a handful of Democratic governors who have insisted that, as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee put it, “we also have to win the moral battle. And that's a battle of hope and a vision for the future where we can live together. And I think this is part of that.”

Dr. Carson:

One of your most important achievements as a neurosurgeon was inventing the functional hemispherectomy, a treatment for epilepsy in which the epileptic hemisphere of the brain is severed from the healthy hemisphere and the body, allowing the healthy hemisphere to have full control of the body free from any epileptic interference. Children who get a functional hemispherectomy sufficiently early will be partly paralyzed on one side, but they will mostly be seizure-free.

Standard hemispherectomies remove the epileptic hemisphere from the body, but that tended to cause hydrocephalus, so your technique instead just severed all of its sensory and motor connections, leaving it present but inert.

But an anonymous neuroscientist on Reddit expressed some concern that just as the functional hemisphere seems to develop full independent personhood after the split, so the epileptic hemisphere may do so as well. Obviously it remains impaired by the epilepsy, but it’s not seizing all the time, so there will still be comparatively lucid intervals.

So my question for you is – what do you think happens to that person who is in an empty hemisphere, locked out of all sensory input and motor control? Do you think they’re conscious? Do you think they’re wondering what happened? Do you think they’re happy that the other half of them is living a happy normal life? Do they sit rapt in unconditioned contemplation of their own consciousness like an Aristotelian god? Or do they go mad with boredom, constantly desiring their own death but unable to effect it?

Also, a follow-up question. You solve paediatric epilepsy by severing all connections between right and left, consigning one to the outer darkness and turning complete control over to the other. Given that you’re trying to become President, that has obvious kabbalistic implications. Do you stand behind those kabbalistic implications or not?

Ms. Fiorina:

One of the issues that’s played a central role in your campaign is your belief that the Ottoman Empire was the greatest civilization in the world. Certainly their five-hundred-plus year reign was marked by impressive military, political, and artistic achievements. But I want to bring up a particular aspect of Ottoman governance today.

One of the really unique Ottoman innovations was its so-called “millet system”, where every ethnicity and religion was almost its own little empire-within-an-empire. For example, although the Ottoman Empire was itself Muslim, Christians within it got their own millet, led by the Patriarch of Constantinople. They made their own laws, which applied only to Christians, settled disputes between two Christian claimants, levied taxes from Christians to pay for Christian-related projects, and generally kept their own people in line. When the Ottoman Empire as a whole wanted something from its Christian population, the Sultan would meet with the Patriarch and they would hammer it out. There were similar structures in place for Jews, Armenians, et cetera.

The past few years have seen an almost unprecedented rise in identity politics in America, usually marked by the claim that the society is using its weight to kick around people of some identity or another. Society is kicking around blacks. Society is kicking around conservative Christians. Society is kicking around bisexuals. They all feel like they’re getting the short end of the stick, but a lot of their preferences are mutually exclusive, and it’s hard to imagine some kind of centralized government policy that could satisfy any of them.

As an admirer of the Ottoman Empire, you’d be in a uniquely good position to import some of the advantages of the millet system into the modern Western world. Obviously this would be complicated given all the conflicting identity claims and the close quarters in which everyone is intermingled, but there are already some visions of what it could look like – including my own Archipelago – and if it were raised to the level of a national discussion, people could no doubt come up with many more.

So my question for you is – weren’t you a pretty crappy CEO?

Mr. Bush:

Assume that fitness-to-be-President is a normally distributed trait with known heritability. Suppose also that past elections have 100% efficiency; that is, they always choose the most qualified candidate. We can then use some of the standard regression-to-the-mean equations to determine the chances that the highest fitness-to-be-President individual in generation G will be the offspring of the highest fitness-to-be-President individual in generation G-1.

The single most fit-to-be president man in a population of 300 million would be about six standard deviations above the norm. If that man breeds with the single most fit-to-be-president woman, and if in keeping with findings for other complex traits heritability is about 60%, we would expect their offspring to be about 3.6 standard deviations above the mean in fitness-to-be-president. One in every 2500 or so people is 3.6 standard deviations above average, meaning there would be at least 120,000 equally good or better presidential candidates than they in the United States.

How high would the heritability of presidential fitness have to be before there was at least a 10% chance that the offspring of the two most presidential Americans was himself presidential material? My calculations suggest about 90%, which is very high compared to what we know about similar traits – but actually not entirely outside the realm of plausibility.

But if a maximally-presidential man breeds with a woman who is less than maximally presidential, the odds fall precipitiously. Suppose that a maximally-presidential man breeds with a woman who is merely in the 99th percentile for presidential ability. Now given a heritability of 60% there will be three million Americans more presidential than their average offspring. Even given a 100% heritability, there is only a 1/73 chance that their offspring will themselves be worthy of the presidency.

So my question for you is: do you think Barbara Bush is an unrecognized political super-genius, or are there probably hundreds of thousands of Americans who would make a better president than you would?

Senator Cruz:

You were on your college debate team, and you were good at it. Really good. You won the national championships and you were pretty widely believed to be the best debater in the country. Quite an achievement. But my worry is – which is more likely? That the best debater in the country would also be the best choice for President? Or that he would be really really really good at making us think that he would be?

Don’t respond yet. Before you answer that question – well, before you answer any question – we’ve got to think about this on the meta-level. There’s a classic problem in epistemology. Suppose that we have a superintelligence with near-infinite rhetorical brilliance. The superintelligence plays a game with interested humans. First, it takes the hundred or so most controversial topics, chooses two opposing positions on each, writes the positions down on pieces of paper, and then puts them in a jar. Then it chooses one position at random and tries to convince the human of that position. We observe that in a hundred such games, every human player has left 100% convinced of the position the superintelligence drew from the jar. Now it’s your turn to play the game. The superintelligence picks a position from the jar. It argues for the position. The argument is supremely convincing. After hearing it, you are more sure that the position is true than you have ever been of anything in your life; there’s so much evidence in favor that it is absolutely knock-down obvious. Should you believe the position?

The inside view tells you yes; upon evaluating the argument, you find is clearly true. The outside view tells you no; judging from the superintelligence’s past successes, it could have convinced you equally well of the opposite position. If you are smart, you will precommit to never changing your mind at all based on anything the superintelligence says. You will just shut it out of the community of entities capable of persuading you through argument.

Senator Cruz, you may not quite be at the superintelligence level, but given that you’ve been recognized as the most convincing person out of all three hundred million Americans, shouldn’t we institute similar precautions with you? Shouldn’t your supporters, even if they agree with everything you are saying, precommit to ignore you as a matter of principle?

Senator Rubio:

When you became Florida’s Speaker of the House, one of the other men on stage here tonight, Jeb Bush, presented you with a golden sword, which he said was the “Sword of Chang”. He told you that “Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society. Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.” You looked pretty excited about it.

Now, some might say that this all came from a giant misunderstanding. Back in the late 1940s, Mao Zedong’s victorious Chinese communists forced Chiang Kai-shek’s defeated Chinese nationalists to retreat to the island of Taiwan. The United States kept the peace in the the Taiwan Strait, mostly to prevent Mao from invading and finishing the job, but a common refrain in 1950s conservativism went that we should “unleash Chiang”; that is, advise Chiang Kai-Shek to go back across the strait and reconquer China. George H. W. Bush served as envoy to China, had to listen to this sort of stuff, and got annoyed enough at the “unleash Chiang” rhetoric that he would quote it ironically at bizarre times, like his documented habit of threatening that his serve would “unleash Chiang” on his tennis opponents. It’s unclear how we got from George H. W. Bush’s constant threats to “unleash Chiang” on people, to his son’s belief that Chang was a mystical conservative warrior. Maybe it was a joke, either Bush Sr. pranking Jeb or Jeb pranking you.

In any case, you hung the sword in “a place of honor in your office”. From that point forward, Jeb’s fortunes declined. He left the Florida governorship, failed to get any further high positions, and then ran a very lackluster Presidential campaign. But from that same point your own fortunes decidedly rose. You started a law firm, were appointed a professor, got elected to the Senate, and are currently running a spectacular Presidential campaign with most pundits betting on your eventual victory after Trump and Carson lose their shine. The connection between the transfer of the sword and the sudden switch in both your fortunes is so striking that even the Huffington Post, not normally a source for magic-sword-related journalism, wrote about it: Jeb’s Last Hope – Reclaim the Sword of Chang.

But here we have a conundrum: if there was never a mythical Chinese warrior named Chang, by what magic does this sword grant worldly success to its possessor and ignomious ruin to any who lose it? There is a legend that fits almost exactly: the tale of the Holy Lance, aka the Spear of Destiny, aka several other portentious sounding names. According to the story, this relic from Christ’s crucifixion grants victory to all who own it and swift ruin to all who lose it. Charlemagne was reputedly the first to make use of its power; he was unstoppable while he wielded it but died moments after dropping it during battle. The same pattern repeated with Frederick Barbarossa, then a host of other military leaders, until finally it passed to the Austrian Habsburgs. They realized its power, locked it away, and ended up winning the greatest empire in European history. Supposedly Hitler was obsessed with it, so much so that his fascination with the object inspired the depiction of Nazi archaeologists in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and he took it for himself after the Anschluss. As the war wound down, the relic caught the special attention of General George Patton, who brought it back safely to Vienna afterwards. But ever since that time there have been various rumors that it was a fake, and that Nazi sympathizers took the real Lance in preparation for the time when the Reich would rise again.

The book Secrets of the Holy Lance describes one possible route by which the artifact might have been smuggled out of Europe:

Reporters John Buchanan and Stacey Michael cite recently declassified documents from the US National Archives that indicate that Prescott Bush “failed to divest himself of more than a dozen enemy national relationships that continued until as late as 1951. Bush conducted business following the end of World War II with moving assets into the Nazi refuges of Argentina, Panama, and Brazil.

So Prescott Bush was involved in moving Nazi “assets” from conquered Europe to South American refuges, presumably including the true Lance. Far be it from me to impugn his business ethics, but I don’t remember Nazi refugees in Argentina becoming an unstoppable force aided by a weapon of legendary mystical power. On the other hand, I do remember Prescott Bush being elected to the United States Senate just a few years later. Then his son and the presumed heir of his property was elected US President. Then his son was also elected US President. I need not add that according to the the laws of genetics, the chance of this happening by coincidence is hundreds-of-thousands to one even assuming implausibly high heritability of the fitness-to-be-president trait. Then his other son starts rocketing up through the ranks right up until the moment he gave you the sword of Chang, a sword named after a weird Bush family in-joke about a Chinese mystical warrior who doesn’t exist.

I think we can start to sketch out a plausible explanation here. Hitler didn’t want the Holy Lance falling into the hands of his enemies, so he replaced it with a fake and hired Nazi-artifact-smuggler Prescott Bush to transport the real one to safety in South America. Bush realized what he had, handed the South Americans a second fake, and kept the real one for himself, reforging it from a lance into a sword to cover his tracks – an action entirely in character for Prescott Bush, whose other relic-stealing adventures include the theft of Geronimo’s skull. He died unexpectedly without getting the chance to explain the significance of the artifact to his son George H. W. Bush. But since it seemed like a sentimentally important heirloom, George took care of his father’s weird golden sword anyway. When his sons asked him about it he didn’t have a real answer, so he just made his favorite in-joke about “unleashing Chiang”, and they believed him. Then eventually it passed to George W, later on to Jeb, and then Jeb thought it would be a funny present to give you to honor your election as Florida speaker.

Obviously the Lance is a significant strategic asset for America, and I imagine if you were President then its aura of victory would apply to the country as well, much as the Habsburgs’ possession of the lance enlarged Austria-Hungary. However, its powers are generally held to come from the Antichrist.

So my question for you is, do you think it’s ethical to use your magic sword to channel the power of the Antichrist if that would ensure America’s military success?

Mr. Trump:

You are famous both for your vast corporate empire and for your tendency to name the pieces of that corporate empire after yourself. By my count there are six buildings named “Trump Tower”, ten named some variation on “Trump Hotel”, a Trump Building, a Trump Palace, and a Trump Estate. You founded a financial services group called Trump Mortgage, a modeling agency called Trump Model Management, a bottled water brand called Trump Ice, and a magazine called Trump Magazine. You also started an airline called Trump Airlines, a TV company called Trump Productions, a book series called Trump Books, and your own radio talk show called Trumped!. There are also several Trump-themed games, like Donald Trump’s Real Estate Tycoon and Trump: The Game.

Mother Jones wrote a great article on this last one. Trump: The Game seems to be a tacky Monopoly clone. Players move around a board and bid on properties, and when one of them gets locked out of bidding for a property the other player gets to say “YOU’RE FIRED” the same way you do on your show. The only way to get back in to a property once you’ve been fired is to use the game’s most powerful card, which has a picture of your face on it and is called “The Donald”.

My question for you is: WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL IT THE TRUMP CARD?!?!!!!111111111asdfdf

nerdfighterwhatevernumbers:

I like how she didn’t even directly mention men and he still said that

houstonforbernie:

wehateyou-pleasedie:

micdotcom:

Watch: President Obama calls out Republicans for their refugee hypocrisy — and then drops the mic by tying it to the debates.

man LISTEN

Most presidents enter a “lame duck” phase in their last year.

Obama has instead entered a “I don’t give a fuck” phase, and I like it.

latenightseth:

Viola Davis is on point. 

when you’re faceblind so you never know if you know someone and should be greeting them

stirringwind:

buzzfeed:

Mumbai Is Sending Powerful Messages Of Love, Support, And Solidarity For Paris

Further context: Mumbai suffered a devastating terrorist attack that was very similar to what happened in Paris. Multiple gunmen + bombers attacking a major city, focusing on soft civilian targets and taking people hostage. It killed 164 people and injured hundreds of others. That’s why this message of support is especially poignant. 

Bravo, Tucker FitzGerald. Bravo.

Since the map went live, Oregon has gone green, so to speak, on this map. And so has Colorado. You red states? Keep on cringing and cowering.

sonnywortzik:

little fury road things i dig way too much:

• toast knowing her way around guns. just. every gun. all of them
• toast saying they can “squeeze off this little [gun] a raunchy 29 times” and looking at max like maybe she’s trying to get a reaction out of him but he does fuck-all
  
• nux kissing capable on. the cheek. a cheek kiss. on the cheek. boy was spraying poison on his face a few scenes ago now he’s kissing people on the cheek don’t touch me
• nux still referring to max as “blood bag” even after he’s part of their little makeshift family & how it’s another illustration of nux’s weird innocence. ‘cause “blood bag” isn’t inherently a derogatory term in his head it’s just stating a fact and he doesn’t have anything else to call max so it doesn’t occur to him that maybe max doesn’t want to be called “blood bag” but here we are
• “tree thing”
  
• the fact that the wives know what trees are even though they’re around the same age as nux (or younger) but they’ve got books/have probably read about trees & deduced that that thing is, in fact, called a tree
• “stay where you are little joe. it’s kinda lost its novelty out here” dag pls
  
• “warlord junior. gonna be so ugly” “it could be a girl” KEEPER OF THE SEEDS PLS
• the way they light max’s eyes in the “hope is a mistake” scene 
• when max tells furiosa his plan about cutting back through the canyon and blowing it up behind them and the kEEPER. OF THE SEEDS. SAYS “KABOOM”
• aND MAX SMILES AND POINTS AT HER LIKE “she gets it”
• that black-top in the final battle trying to intimidate furiosa by hissing at her and she roars and head butts him so hard dickhole probably ain’t got a face anymore
• furiosa and max’s last fights being edited together because parallels and also punches n stuff being timed w/ drumbeats because the actual hero of this movie is punk rock 
• when furiosa and the wives are pulled up on the platform at the end and they pull other people up w/ them (as opposed to those people being beaten down at the beginning)
• the closeup of the dude w/ the facial growths who gets pulled onto the platform and is open-mouthed smiling so hard while gazing upwards idk he just makes me happy
• the women who were hooked up to the milking machines being the ones to start the water flowing once they see immortan joe is dead
• all the “fuck capitalism” content in this movie culminating in one big happy “NO SERIOUSLY FUCK CAPITALISM” final scene

“What I’ve learned, as a guy, is to just ask women questions and listen to what they have to say. Go to your group of female friends and ask them about times they’ve experienced sexism at their job, and you’ll get blown away by the things they tell you.”

- Aziz Ansari

hahahahaha

Hovertext: Weinersmith vs. WHO reporting, Round 1.

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improbablegalaxies:

yellisse:

thetattedstoner:

Have you ever been too nice and ended up in a situation that could’ve been avoided if you just would’ve been an ass hole??

Yup all the time smh

YUP

Something to think about.