Sociotard

A few years old, so sorry if this is a repeat. I hadn't heard it before. A farmer bought some fertilized duck eggs. by coincidence, they had a pregnant cat. By an even bigger coincidence, the cat gave birth just a bit before the ducklings hatched. The ducklings saw the cat, and decided she was their mother. The cat was flooded with mother hormones herself, and accepted them as her yellow kittens and taught them to breastfeed.

I have always wanted to try Durian. Sadly, my town is too small to get it. I should have tried it in Portland, but even they only had frozen durian

An amusing twitter takes Trump quotes and puts them in Red Skull speech balloons. https://twitter.com/PresVillain

Except for the gooseneck that wasn't so different from Trudeau's solution. Go all in, preventing the illusion of domination.

Heh, made me laugh: Donald Trumps tweets as a early 2000's emo song.

Posted here and not Random Videos because it nearly made my wife throw my phone accross the room.

All those GoPros strapped to themselves and that's the best video they could post?

The thing is, the party leadership tried to turn on him already during the primary. Now he's so popular with the base that only the most well-established Republicans, ones confident they can trounce any primary challenge (McCain) will dare oppose him.

To be fair, Obama started it. What worries me is the escalation. Much like the use of the filibuster. Every time the Senate changed minorities, the new minority would use it more than the last, because "we remember how you used it against us". So, the next Democratic president will use executive orders even more brazenly than Trump, just as Trump used them more than Obama. (though to be fair, Obama didn't start being so brazen until he faced an opposition congress, and Trump doesn't yet.)

So he didn't want to take the immigrants Obama had agreed to. That does sound like Trump. Actually, I am confused by the terms of the deal. The US was to take Indonesians who'd tried to immigrate illegally to Australia, and Australia would take in Central Americans. Okay, I get the concept of trading, but why would they want to trade? Why wouldn't the US take the central americans and Australia take the Indonesians? (or was it Papua New Guineans? I forget)

Saudi Arabia does, Afghanistan does not. Their government only controls 2/3 of the country. Perhaps they will be included in the next 30 days.

But why background checks from those countries instead of Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan?

Mechanical Failure by Joe Zieja Very funny. I very much recommend this if you want an easy chuckle.

The nominee for Eduaction may have plagiarized on her written exam (questionnaire from senators anyway). DeVos may have copied some questionnaire answers: report In better news, Trump will maintain LGBT workplace protections. The LGTB community is not pacified (his travel ban really hurts gay refugees, some of his cabinet picks have made very negative remarks, Trump is still not for marriage equality) but I am looking for reasons to be optimistic. http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/317026-white-house-trump-will-continue-to-enforce-lgbtq-workplace

Its legs look weird. Almost like a deer.

The annoying thing is that once Trump was elected there was also a spate of false reports of hate crimes. People who said Trump supporters were assaulting them, only to later say they'd just been grasping for an excuse for being out late, etcetera. So, when conservatives hear that, they just assume that the little boy is crying wolf again, and they're more ready to believe that because they like wolves allegedly being cried about.

The thing is, that tends to be what Republicans want in a UN ambassador. Conservatives hate the UN. They complain about its ineffectiveness and the threat of world government to our sovereignty. Remember when Michael Bolton was UN ambassador under the last Republican administration? He was described as "a nanny who hates children". Trump appointed an ambassador who says things to the UN that Trump's base wants said to the UN.

Not exactly either. The quote that comes to mind is "I didn't make the sea, I just sail on it." Journalists didn't make a marketplace that prized the speedy and the salacious. But, if we have 24 hour news, speed matters. If we need clicks, social media or otherwise, salacious matters. If customers are more likely to select media that reflects pre-existing ideology, maintaining partisan bias matters. Customers could seek out balanced news sources, but that takes work. No, not just work to go look, but a willingness to become intentionally uncomfortable, reading things that fall outside their comfort zone, and then force themselves to fact check things. Effectively, to be part-time journalists themselves. The fault then, is the setup of the news marketplace itself. That's what makes the problem so intractable. The marketplace rewards partisan, salacious, speed-over-accuracy journalists and lazy, comfortable people. Frankly, there aren't many options for changing the marketplace.

Yeah, I try to split my time between Vox for in-depth-kinda-liberal and The Hill for in-depth-kinda-conservative. They seem to get most facts right, and this way I keep a little perspective. Sometimes a little Al Jazeera English or BBC for a not-American perspective.

The article about state department management resigning was a bit misleading So that's good news.

And the upcoming TV adaptation of Handmaid's Take seems timely as well.

I work for a company that buys Idaho barley to make malt. The malt is all exported (all of it) to Mexico, where it makes Corona and other Mexican beers. Many of those beers are imported back into the United States. What I'm saying is, these tariff rumors are terrifying. You see, every beer has slightly different specifications for its beer (pale beers have lightly toasted malt, dark beers have nearly burnt malt. Some beers want low protein count for clarity) The point is, we can't just shrug and start making Budweiser malt. We have plans to do that, but it is not easy, cheap, or fast. Right now Mexico imports our barley because Idaho makes some of the highest-quality barley in the world. But even now, they look at Mexican barley. It wouldn't take much of a trade war to convince them to change. I don't do well if my company can't sell malt.

Head of DARPA resigned too.

Fun watching the Press Secretary try to walk back Trumps tweet threatening to "send in the Feds" if Chicago can't lower its gun homicide rate. Without actually promising Trump would not send in the National Guard.