IKEA MonkeyMy alma mater, ladies and gentlemen
The latest bit evidence to support bringing the relegation system into college football comes from the incredibly under-anticipated matchup between Rutgers and Maryland. Near the end of the first quarter, the Scarlet Knights failed to complete one of the simplest tasks someone could be asked to do on a football field:…
On Monday, Sears filed for bankruptcy after 132 years of operation, spurring a wave of eulogies and sometimes outright sentimentalizing for the company that got its start as the R.W. Sears Watch Co. in Minneapolis and grew to become an iconic retail giant through its innovative catalog.
IKEA MonkeyThis is the most horrifying thing in the news today. It is just agonizing. He went in to get a document so he could marry his fiance. She waited for him for hours outside of the consulate. They tortured and murdered him. And our president is like "yeah but they spend a lot of money on weapons, so..."
I'm just so heartbroken for his fiance, his family, for him, for our world in general
NO BONE SAW! NO BONE SAW! YOU ARE THE BONE SAW! Last night, Donald Trump sat down with three AP reporters to shout nonsense about poor innocent Mohammad bin Salman being stoned to death like Brett Kavanaugh on the cross.
You know, here we go again with, you know, you're guilty until proven innocent. I don't like that. We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh. And he was innocent all the way. So I was unconcerned. So we have to find out what happened and they are doing a very major investigation. So is Turkey. Plus, they're putting themselves together and doing it. And hopefully they'll get to an answer as to what happened. But I will say they were very strong in their denial about themselves knowing.
Time to ring up Ed Whelan, see if he can cook up a backstory about Omar bin Squi, the notorious ROGUE KILLER who has never met the Crown Prince, but still has access to state-owned Gulf-stream jets, a diplomatic passport, the Saudi consulate's appointment calendar, and a forensic pathologist with expertise in dissection and mobile autopsies.
Trump has a lot of practice disregarding the findings of his own intelligence agencies, but the US government picked up sig-int showing that MBS ordered his goon squad to "bring home" dissident reporters abroad, by whatever means necessary. David Ignatius says in the Post,
One possible scapegoat, according to several sources, may be Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, the deputy chief of Saudi intelligence. Assiri "has made numerous approaches to MBS on taking actions against Khashoggi and others," said one source who is familiar with Western intelligence reports.
The U.S. government learned last month that Assiri was planning to create a "tiger team" to conduct covert special operations, I'm told, though officials didn't know the targets. U.S. intelligence also learned, but only after Khashoggi's disappearance after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, that the crown prince had told his subordinates this summer that he wanted Khashoggi and other Saudi dissidents brought home.
As reporters connect the dots between MBS and the kill team, which included members of the Saudi royal guard and Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a diplomat formerly assigned to the Saudi embassy in London, Trump digs in further to insist that the Saudis "were very strong in their denial about themselves knowing." Who you gonna believe, the guys who lied about his death for two weeks now, or your lying ears? Middle East Eye reports,
It took seven minutes for Jamal Khashoggi to die, a Turkish source who has listened in full to an audio recording of the Saudi journalist's last moments told Middle East Eye.
Khashoggi was dragged from the consul-general's office at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and onto the table of his study next door, the Turkish source said.
Horrendous screams were then heard by a witness downstairs, the source said.
"The consul himself was taken out of the room. There was no attempt to interrogate him. They had come to kill him," the source told MEE.
The screaming stopped when Khashoggi - who was last seen entering the Saudi consulate on 2 October - was injected with an as yet unknown substance.
To which the president replies, "Yeah, okay, human rights are great and all. But have you tried arms sales?" More or less.
Well, there are many other things we can do. But when we take away $110 billion of purchases from our country, that hurts our workers, that hurts our factories, that hurts all of our companies. You know, you're talking about 500,000 jobs.
So if we do that, we're really hurting our country a lot more than we're hurting Saudi Arabia. They'll go to Russia, they'll go to China. They'll make the order. The equipment is nowhere near as good as our equipment; they know that. Our equipment is the best in the world. But they'll go to China. They'll go to Russia. They'll order equipment. We're just hurting ourselves.
So sorry that US-resident reporters are getting chopped up and taken home in diplomats' luggage. And we're really bummed that all those brown Yemenite kids have to get dead. But it's super important that we sell a lot of bombs, okay?
AMERICA FIRST!
[AP / WaPo / Middle East Eye / White House Press Office]
Follow your FDF on Twitter!
Well, it's all going to hell. But at least your Wonkette is here to narrate the descent into flames! Click here to fund your infernosplainers!
How often would you like to donate?
Select an amount (USD)
$2$25$5$50$10$100$15$500$20$1000
IKEA Monkeythe what
The surprisingly good cast of Tom Hooper’s adaptation of Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats is about to get even more surprisingly good, because Variety is reporting that Idris Elba is “in final negotiations” to join what will surely be a big, weird musical. The film version of the iconic Broadway show already has Ian…
IKEA Monkeyit WAS down last night!!
Look, we don’t know about you, but we rely on YouTube for a lot of shit over the course of a day. What was the theme song to that TV show we watched three times in the 1980s? YouTube’s got it. Need to watch another human being play through the entirety of Chex Quest? YouTube has your back. Children having annoying…
Canada became the first industrialized nation to legalize recreational cannabis on Wednesday, but a legal buzz will be hard to come by in its biggest cities. Some, including Toronto and Vancouver, will have no stores open.
IKEA MonkeyI need dis
You’re the big winner! Using a complex series of algorithms and convoluted calculations, we here at The A.V. Club have determined that you’ve worked very hard this week and are, in fact, in need of a break. So, we’ve procured this new video from Wired that features comedy phenoms John Mulaney and Nick Kroll…
IKEA MonkeyNothing. I am starting to think that nothing is going to come from this Mueller trial.
August was riddled with speculation about whether and when special counsel Robert Mueller might issue a report or take further major action in his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The clock was ticking toward a 60-day window before the Nov. 6 midterm elections, a period when the Justice Department traditionally avoids significant public steps that might influence—or give the appearance of trying to influence—the vote.
IKEA MonkeyThis is so funny
One of the most "impressive" things about conservatives is the fact that they pretty much never change. Anything they say now is something they have said before, anything they fear now is something they've feared before. There's never a lot of new material. Every complaint they have about feminists now, they had about suffragettes in the late 1800s, every complaint they have about Black Lives Matter has already been a John Birch Society pamphlet. And, much like the conservatives of old, they are super concerned about witches.
Next weekend, Catland Books in New York City is hosting a public event, open to all who wish to participate in a mass hexing of Brett Kavanaugh, rapists and the patriarchy in general. That seems like some good wholesome fun to me, but over on Gateway Pundit, Stupidest Man On The Internet Jim Hoft is for real upset about it. Because, apparently, hexing rapists just PROVES that Democrats are evil.
Won't someone think of the ... rapists?
Imagine thinking that it's more "evil" to put a hex on a rapist than to actually be a rapist.
Over on Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire, they are taking this very seriously as well. Feminists are WITCHES and this proves it!
It's no secret that witchcraft and feminism go together like Hillary Clinton and Planned Parenthood, but the practice has especially seen an uptick during the Trump era. Since day one of his administration, these feminist witches have performed a variety of spells and hexes to "bind" the president from implementing policies they dislike.
And writer Paul Bois takes care to note that "both Christianity and Judaism regard witchcraft and astrology as demonic practices."
Oh, for real?
Let us not forget that many geniuses on the Right also still think that Marina Abramovic's performance art is a for real occult ritual that is somehow related to pedophilloic pizza parlors.
For those out there who are genuinely afraid that some evil feminist witches are going to put curses on them, Jennifer LeClaire of Charisma News has got them covered. She warns that, this being October, it is pretty likely that some witch out there is going to put a curse on them. For reasons! Maybe because they're Brett Kavanaugh, or a rapist, who knows.
I'm just gonna include this screenshot because it is freaking hilarious.
She writes:
To everything there is a season—and this is the season where witchcraft gets heavy, demonic imaginations target minds and infirmities inflict bodies.
Of course, Jezebel and her witchcrafts can creep onto the scene any time of the year. But every single October for as far back as I can remember I see an onslaught of spiritual attacks from every direction. It's like clockwork.
What is witchcraft? Merriam-Webster defines witchcraft as "the use of magical powers obtained especially from evil spirits; the use of sorcery or magic; communication with the devil or the familiar." You might think of the voodoo priests or the witch doctors, but as I've said before, even Christians can release witchcraft at you with their thoughts and words.
Is she talking about the malocchio or something? I don't know! That's the only way I know of that someone can accidentally curse someone else, and I am pretty sure you can just get rid of that with some olive oil, an egg and a few Hail Marys or Our Fathers, if you are so inclined. What I do know, however, is that I need to immediately start a band, right now, called "Jezebel and her Witchcrafts."
Alas, none of LeClaire's remedies include olive oil or eggs. They do, however, involve "girding the loins of the mind," which -- from a purely biological standpoint, seems an impossible task:
Gird the loins of your mind. The first step in any battle is to gird up the loins of your mind. 1 Peter 1:13 says, "Therefore guard your minds, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
The battle really is in the mind—or at least it starts there. Last week, a friend of mine who had a stroke many years ago began manifesting with post-stroke symptoms out of the blue. The enemy was working on his mind, trying to convince him that what he had been delivered from was returning. Meanwhile, a lump manifested on the back of my neck that itched and burned like fire, followed a few days later by ear pain so bad that I could hardly think, the feeling of knives in my throat when I swallowed and rocks in my stomach all at once. I finally broke down and went to the doctor. My vitals were normal. No sign of infection. I am convinced every bit of it was witchcraft.
Yes, this definitely seems like a real thing that happened.
Basically all of her tips are that you should just love God a whole lot and be really into God and then no one can cast spells on you. LIKE MAGIC.
This is, of course, fucking hilarious. I'm a full-on atheist, but given that these folks clearly think this is FOR REAL, I will totally pretend to be a witch of some kind just to fuck with them. I could pull it off, I think, as I have many mano fico charms and am very into Stevie Nicks. Plus I recently rewatched all of Charmed in preparation for the reboot. We should all lean into this, if only because it makes these people look even more ridiculous than they already do.
Now gird the loins of your mind for your FRIDAY NIGHT OPEN THREAD!
[Facebook]
We hex you into giving us money. CURSES, FOILED AGAIN.
How often would you like to donate?
Select an amount (USD)
$2$25$5$50$10$100$15$500$20$1000IKEA MonkeyWhy are both of their faces so ORANGE
First Lady Melania Trump is a very busy woman who is far too busy to dwell on claims that her husband is an unfaithful piece of shit.
IKEA MonkeyThat was fast
IKEA MonkeyYay for them!
IKEA MonkeyThis entire practice is going to go down as one of the greatest humanitarian atrocities of the modern era.
There is seemingly no end to the trauma migrant families are enduring as a result of the Trump administration’s family separation policy: The New Yorker reports that a five-year-old Honduran girl named Helen was separated from her family, detained, and then, before a bond hearing (established by an agreement known as…
IKEA Monkeyomg its obviously elon musk, stop it enty
IKEA MonkeyWe have a 20 pounder and I love it
Winter is coming, but weighted blankets can work wonders for your anxiety in addition to keeping you warm, and several different models are on sale today for some of the best prices we’ve seen, including a rare discount on a 25 pounder. Just note the promo codes.
IKEA Monkey*gasp* she looks STUNNING. That TIARA.
IKEA MonkeyFine. Vacate and release all non-violent marijuana offenders first.
IKEA MonkeyThis is insane and horrifying
The Turkish government has told U.S. officials it has audio and video evidence that Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and then dismembered in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul earlier this month, the Washington Post reported Thursday. The development in the cryptic case of the regime critic’s disappearance, which had already snowballed into a full-fledged international incident, could have significant repercussions for new Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Riyadh is already facing a gathering storm of international pressure in response to the Istanbul-based journalist’s presumed death after entering the consulate and never returning.
We sometimes hear the tales behind the making of Nintendo’s greatest games: the Zeldas, the Marios and the Metroids. Let us bend our ears for another tale, this time of the making of Gold Digger, a game about a finger interacting with a nose.
IKEA MonkeyWhy even bother making this blind
IKEA MonkeyThis is so weird
Ever been in an uncomfortable situation with the president of the United States? OK, a million American women just raised their hands, so we'll narrow it down. Ever felt like Sarah Huckabee Sanders led you into the Oval Office against your will, but you didn't quite know what to say about it, because on the one hand, you are a journalist covering the Trump administration, therefore you like to get #scoops, but on the other hand, SHIT IN THERE IS FUCKING CREEPY?
That is the story Olivia Nuzzi is telling at New York mag, about what happened when suddenly out of nowhere she was shuffled into the Oval Office, and forced to watch the most bizarre dog-and-pony show meant to convey that everything in the White House is FINE, JAN, IT'S FINE.
Accompanying the president were his trusty pals Judge, Squi and PJ, AKA John Kelly, Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence, and everybody agreed that it was just marvelous they all found themselves in the Oval at the same time, so they could say the most bizarre shit in the world to Olivia Nuzzi.
And when we say "most bizarre," we mean WEIRD and BAD. Trump seemed to be obsessed with the notion that Nuzzi was going to write a very bad story that said the White House isn't a picture perfect well-oiled tight ship machine, and moreover that she was going to write about the supposedly bad relationship between Trump and John Kelly, which is GOOD, DAMMIT, THEY LOVE EACH OTHER, LOOK, THEY ARE KISSING RIGHT NOW!
It happened this past Tuesday, as Nuzzi was actually on her way out of the White House:
As I walked, I noticed I had a missed call from a Washington number I didn't recognize. It was Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She sounded very serious. She asked me if I had left yet. When I said no, she asked me to come back inside, and when she greeted me, she looked very serious. She implied she wanted me to go with her behind a door. I didn't understand, maybe didn't quite hear her. Then, she told me Trump wanted to speak to me.
Uh ... OK?
Nuzzi writes that she figured maybe Trump wanted to say her story about him and John Kelly not being best friends OMG LOOK THEY ARE STILL KISSING was not true, but she says her "imagination was too limited."
What ensued amounted to a private press conference — featuring a series of special guest stars from the highest echelon of the Trump administration — to try to get me to change my mind.
And for real, EVERYBODY showed up. And it was all just a happy accident! Mike Pompeo showed up and Mike Pence showed up and John Kelly showed up and they all said their lines about how none of them ever fight with Trump PERFECTLY.
Also, Trump said this word salad:
"But I want to tell you a couple of things: the chief is doing a very good job. I'm very happy with him, we have a very good relationship, number one. Number two, I didn't offer anybody else the job. I didn't talk to anybody about the job. And I'm not, I'm not looking. Now, look, with time, do people leave? As an example, Nikki Haley told me six months ago, even a year ago — but six months ago, that, you know, she's been governor, she's done this, she's helped us with the campaign, a lot of good things, and you probably saw the conference. It was a very, very positive thing. We have a very positive story going on at the White House. We have a very positive story for the country. We're doing a great job. We have the greatest economy in the history of our country. We have among the greatest job numbers. Among many groups, we have the greatest job numbers. We have things going on that are phenomenal on trade. China wants to make a deal — I said, you're not ready yet. But they wanna make a deal, and at some point we might. Iran wants to make a deal. They all wanna make a deal. We have great things going. We have a very smooth-running organization even though it's never reported that way. So the real story is that. It's really the real story. When you walk in here, you don't see chaos. There is no chaos. The media likes to portray chaos. There's no chaos. I'm leaving for Iowa in a little while. We're doing something that's going to be very exciting tonight in Iowa. A big, a big announcement, actually. Doing four rallies this week. I think the rallies have, frankly, built up our poll numbers very greatly. What am I now in Rasmussen? 52?"
No, it was 51, but that doesn't matter, Trump says, because actually when you read polls, you are supposed to take the people who don't answer the question, which is always 10 percent, and add that to your total, because those are "automatic" votes for you, which means by Trump's tortured abacus math, his approval rating is approximately ELEVENTY THOUSAND PERCENT, whereas his disapproval rating is apparently just this one mean lady in New York named Hillary.
After Trump delivered the rambling syphilis monologue up there, he delivered seven more just like it, as if he was doing a private Trump rally for Olivia Nuzzi, which is kind of creepy. He also forced Nuzzi to read a list of all his accomplishments, which, as she notes, was padded with "accomplishments" like "Republicans want STRONG BORDERS and NO CRIME. Democrats want OPEN BORDERS which equals MASSIVE CRIME." That is not an "accomplishment," Mister Fuckbonkers! That is just Sean Hannity's diarrhea, and somebody needs to clean. it. up.
We don't want to spoil the whole article for you, because Olivia Nuzzi tells it so well, and we absolutely love that she wrote this story, instead of the original story she was looking for, about how John Kelly manages to keep his job. But here is one more graf, about Nuzzi's reflections on why John Kelly showed up in this TOTALLY SPONTANEOUS Oval Office meeting in the first place:
Kelly had appeared in the room, a wary expression on his face, which resembles a cross between Wallace Shawn and Woody Harrelson. Kelly's military service began in 1970 and over the decades took him around the world. He'd served in Belgium and he'd overseen U.S. and Iraqi forces in Iraq and operations across 32 countries in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. It seems silly to think that such a person would ever give a fuck about anything related to matters of palace intrigue in this White House. Had he known we'd be discussing this? Had the president ordered him to be here? Was it all a coincidence?
Also John Kelly says White House lunch is good because "best french fries in the world" and everybody else who showed up was weird and gross too. And then there was the part where John Kelly made out with Nick Ayers, who is Mike Pence's chief of staff, and to whom Trump allegedly has offered Kelly's job:
"Hey, Olivia." I turned toward the room again to see Kelly and Ayers entwined, their arms stretched around each other and their faces pressed close together. They smiled theatrically. "This is my friend," Kelly said.
What. The. Fuck.
In conclusion, READ THE WHOLE THING, as they say on the internet, which is conveniently where we are right now!
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT NOW, DO IT RIGHT NOW!
Wonkette is the ONLY NEWS ON THE INTERNET. Please give us money RIGHT THERE BELOW if you want us to live FOREVER.
How often would you like to donate?
Select an amount (USD)
$2$25$5$50$10$100$15$500$20$1000IKEA MonkeyI miss my condo. The view of downtown was amazing during thunderstorms. I've see lightning hit all the tall towers.
Hey, it’s not like you can play outside, go swimming, ride your bike, or walk to the store. So just flick off the lights, yank open the blinds, and stare out the window at the majestic streaks of bright lightning cracking down all around you.
AWESOME!
Photo from: here
Join my book club!
— Follow me on Facebook —
The post #687 Turning off all the lights and opening the blinds during a thunderstorm appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.
IKEA Monkeyjust goofin. new boot goofin.
It’s been a while since we’ve sat down with Thomas Lennon, best known for his work in front of the camera, on Reno 911! and The State, and his work as a screenwriter with long-time writing partner Robert Ben Garant. So, in honor of his newest film, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich, The A.V. Club decided to sit down…
IKEA MonkeyI'm so bad at names but I really try, especially with work, to remember people I work with. I've been forgotten at work, though. Its more egregious with superiors, who I am sure I was just a blip to, but to me working with them was important and memorable. Still, I remember which ones remember ME, and when they come to me again for teaming up, I'm a lot happier to work with the ones who remember my name.
Side note, my EVP - who I see every day and have had lunch with a couple times with the 2 other members of my team - has never addressed me by my first name. I say hello to him every day. "Hi Dave". He just says "hello" and he'll never say hi to me unless I say hi to him first.
Its something I've noticed. Not in a good way.
A good friend of one of my good friends forgets me every time I see him. We’ve hung out four times in the past several years, and on each occasion, he’s greeted me with a beaming smile and an outstretched hand. “Hi, I’m Jerkface,” he says. (Jerkface’s name has been changed to avoid unnecessary shaming.)
“Hi, yes,” I reply. “We saw each other at that bar that one time, and at our friend’s apartment before that.”
“Oh, yeahhh,” he says, clearly not remembering.
Nothing knocks you down a notch like learning you don’t make much of an impression. Nevertheless, people forget each other all the time. It happens between the newest acquaintances and the oldest friends: Names, faces, occupations, birthdays, invitations, and promises evaporate so often that entire adult interactions can revolve around avoiding the awkwardness of a blank stare.
[Why childhood memories disappear]
I’ve been a Jerkface myself plenty of times. At a wedding this summer, I made it halfway through a conversation with a woman without realizing I already knew her. Devin Ray has been a Jerkface, too. Ray is a psychologist who admits his head is usually “in the clouds.” “I’ve swapped some strange names with people’s names,” he says. Recently, Ray became curious about the lasting effects of such blunders, and led a largely unprecedented investigation into what being forgotten does to people. Fair warning, his findings are going to make you sorry you’re not better at remembering things.
With colleagues at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen, Ray ran four experiments that measured how people interpret forgetting. One had 56 students keep online “diaries” at the beginning of the school year, asking them to detail every single time they were forgotten. Their entries, recorded daily for two weeks, captured all the ways forgetting can play out. For the most part, it was loose acquaintances forgetting basic facts—names, class years, majors—or experiences they’d shared with the diary keepers, like attending the same party. But there were also broken commitments (“My friend was supposed to meet me at the library today”), dramatic exclusions (“My friends organized a night out, and forgot to ask me”), and confusions of one person for someone else.
Ray and his team were surprised by how consistently damaging all this forgetting was. Statistical analyses of both the students’ reports and a follow-up, controlled study found that people who were forgotten felt less close to those who forgot them, regardless of whether the forgetter was a family member or someone they just met. Mercifully, the people who were forgotten were almost always eager to excuse the memory lapses: The university students, for instance, would explain away potential slights with comments like “she already met too many people in the last couple of days.” But such rationalizations only softened the blow in the end. “The good news is that this happens a lot, and people will try their best to be forgiving,” Ray says. “The bad news is that, on average, they can’t quite get there.”
These results, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggest that forgetting someone does indeed send the message everyone seems to fear it does: You simply weren’t interested or invested in that person enough to remember things about them. The impression might be inescapable. “It’s such a big deal to admit that you don’t remember a person,” says Laura King, a psychologist at the University of Missouri who has separately studied the social consequences of forgetting. “It’s an insult, even though it’s completely innocent and we have absolutely no desire to hurt the person’s feelings. You just told that person they’re a zero.”
In a subtle way, doing so might harm the people themselves who are forgotten, on top of their relationships with the forgetters. Ray’s team asked their research subjects to do a little soul-searching during the experiments, instructing participants to rate their general feelings of belonging, self-esteem, meaningful existence, and other abstract emotions after they were forgotten or remembered. The effects were marginal but reliable: People who were forgotten reported decreased senses of belonging and meaning in the world. It was as if they’d received an ever-so-faint existential zap.
Jerkfaces can take heart knowing that no one’s life is going to crumble if you fail to remember their favorite song or what they ate for lunch. Being forgotten had little to no bearing on people’s self-esteem and other measures of self-comportment, and even the most pronounced changes were matters of fractions of scale points. Moreover, as King points out, research has shown that people generally consider lives fairly meaningful to begin with.
But Ray’s minute findings leave open the possibility of a cumulative impact. Like other small stressors, being forgotten could take a toll on people who deal with it often—especially if it coincides with other elements of discrimination. Ray’s earliest inspiration for looking into forgetting, he says, came from witnessing a professor constantly mix up the names of two of his “non-white” graduate students. (Ray refrained from providing identifying details in his account.)
“Your relationship with your supervisor is a big deal. You work with that person for years,” Ray says. “[Being forgotten] is an important and layered experience. It can lead to these ‘funny, haha, I forgot your name at a party’ stories. But it can also lead to more serious, ‘oh my god, I can’t believe you did that’ crushing moments.”
There’s a lot left for researchers to unpack. Charles Stone, a psychologist at the City University of New York who specializes in memory, ran through a laundry list of nuances and variables likely to shape how being forgotten is received, from how pertinent the thing forgotten is to the relationship between the forgetter and forgettee, to the power dynamic between the two. He also notes that the incongruity between remembering and forgetting could be what’s damaging, rather than forgetting itself: If two people realize they both forgot each other’s names, there might be no bad vibes, or the pair could conceivably even feel closer.
Ray’s work reveals nothing of forgetters’ actual feelings or intentions, only how they’re perceived. It’s reassuring that participants tried to give forgetters the benefit of the doubt. “Forgetting is the rule, not the exception,” Stone says. “We forget most of our past. Think about how many days, how many hours, how many minutes everyone’s been on this planet.” The big question for scientists isn’t why people forget, he says, but why people remember certain things.
The scope of forgetting can make even the most boring social interactions poignant. There’s something miraculous about any two people’s lives intersecting among all those days, hours, and minutes, whether they bump into each other on campus or sit down for coffee. Sharing a moment with someone is a reminder that we’re all here, that connection is possible. At least, until Jerkface forgets it.
IKEA MonkeyVice Headline du Jour
Alaskan king crab legs are a culinary delicacy, prized for their massive size and tender, succulent meat. Turns out they’re also great for getting stoned when you’re in a pinch for something to smoke out of. On this installment of SMOKEABLES, VICE’s Trey Smith shows you how to turn king crab legs into a DIY one-hitter. All you have to do is cook one, eat it, and stuff a piece of empty shell with a boatload of pot. Delicious and dank.
Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.
IKEA MonkeyTURN ON SOME LIGHTS
Ozark is some extremely bingeable shit, even if the show itself—a queasy thriller about a financial planner’s attempts to launder money for the Mexican drug cartel—never quite delivers. The plotting is frantic, the performances spotty, and the catharsis not all that earned. Still, the scenic, mountainous backdrop is…
IKEA MonkeyThis is pretty great
There is nothing quite like staring down the barrel of your own mortality by thinking about what you’d choose as your last meal on earth or the final song you’d ever hear. These are deeply personal choices, difficult and unpleasant to think about. We regret to inform you that that decision might be made for you, and…
IKEA MonkeyNo, that would be work, and we can't have her doing any work (thank god)
Ivanka Trump has taken herself out of the running as the next ambassador to the United Nations.
IKEA MonkeyMake this into a movie
Due to a recent spate of fatal mishaps, airlines have had to make it pretty clear which animals you can and can't bring on flights: Dogs, cats, and, weirdly enough, mini horses are totally fine; pretty much everything else—like peacocks, hamsters, and snakes—are a definite no. But somehow, a woman in Florida apparently thought it'd be totally chill to take her "emotional support squirrel" on a recent flight, only to wind up getting kicked off the plane once the crew found out she'd brought a live rodent into the cabin, ABC News reports.
Squirrels can be vicious, bloodthirsty creatures, liable to terrorize small towns and attack innocent parkgoers, but if you can domesticate one, they make for pretty cute pets—and apparently for this woman, therapeutic little friends. Unwilling to endure her Frontier Airlines flight from Orlando to Cleveland without her little buddy, the woman somehow managed to sneak it all the way past security and onto the plane—but Frontier explicitly bans "rodents" in its emotional support animal policy, along with "reptiles, insects, hedgehogs, rabbits, sugar gliders, non-household birds or improperly cleaned and/or animals with foul odor," for those who might be curious. So she and her squirrel had to go.
"The passenger noted in their reservation that they were bringing an emotional support animal," Frontier said in a statement to local ABC affiliate WFTV, "but it was not indicated that it was a squirrel."
Unfortunately for Frontier, this woman wouldn't back down: When the crew asked her to leave the plane, she flat-out refused. The airline then had to call in the cops to deal with her, and they made every single passenger onboard get off the plane so they could go in and wrangle her, along with, of course, her squirrel.
Eventually, the cops managed to escort the woman off the plane in a wheelchair, while she toted her squirrel in her lap in what looks like a cat carrier. Her fellow passengers were, understandably, pretty pissed that they'd been delayed for two hours and forced to evacuate their flight over a tree rat, and cheered as she made her way out.
In a video of her dramatic exit, you can hear her yell "shut up, bitch!" at a passenger before throwing up a defiant middle finger, and then, perplexingly, a thumbs-up as she's wheeled toward the main terminal.
Did this woman inconvenience dozens of people? Sure. Is she a good pet owner? That's unclear. But at the end of the day, did she stand up for something she believed in? Absolutely—the right for, yes, even squirrels, to serve as emotional support animals and get a seat on the plane. Though seeing as she seemed, well, a bit agitated, it's possible that Frontier might have a point: They may not be quite right for the job.
Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.
Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.
IKEA Monkeylol
Twitter user @vinandwesson was a bit taken aback at his local Kmart when he spied a shopping cart of DiGiorno Frozen Pizzas near the kitchen of a Little Caesars inside the store. He posted the corresponding video, commenting, “this can’t be happening right on front of me.” Even Chrissy Teigen chimed in, tweeting the…
