Leftovers & Links #42
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Political pessimism, sorry: In this week’s elections, Republicans and conservatives won in Seattle, police reforms were voted down in Minneapolis, a Trumpian Republican was elected Governor in Virginia, and the Democratic Governor of New Jersey was narrowly re-elected, but he'd been expected to have a more lopsided win.
All indications suggest we're a nation of idiots, and the 2022 Congressional elections will be a bloodbath of red.
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More optimistically, all you need is a wrench and some know-how, and you can take eight TV stations off the air. One person can make a difference!
♦ ♦ ♦Mort Sahl died a week ago, but I just found out today.
He was major league comedy a generation before I was born, but I saw him on the telly a few times. To me, he was always really, really old, but funny. He never seemed 'old' and out of touch like Carson toward the end, or Bob Hope forever. No matter how old he got, Mort Sahl was always funny. Now he's dead, but still funny.
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NASA warns that climate change is
about to start slashing crop yields
Quote: In a study published in the journal Nature Food this week, the scientists found that ever-rising temperatures, levels of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon dioxide, as well as shifts in rainfall will likely have disastrous effects on common crop yields. The results even came as a shock to the NASA researchers.
Well, it’s only food. Nothing to worry about.
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Some customers are bothered
that porn was filmed at their gym.
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Quote: A judge can order people convicted of crimes to pay a portion of a court’s operating costs, such as salaries, utilities and other services. Someone who is acquitted doesn’t get a bill for overhead, nor do parties in a civil lawsuit. If prosecutors lose a case, money isn't deducted from their budget.
But for “traffic tickets, drunken driving cases and other misdemeanors mostly committed by people who can least afford it,” the punishment is a fine that's kept by the court, adding up to about $43-million per year.
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Happy birthday, Larry Livermore, of Lookout Records, Lookout the zine, and the band the Lookouts.
He’s an even older coot than me, and he’s done more, lived more, and writes better than me. If his name is unfamiliar to you, be sad about that.
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“Due to supply chain issues,” says the sign on the shelf, “Friskies cat food is unavailable from the manufacturer,” and my cat is not happy about this. She simply ignores Aldi’s wet cat food (my previous cat felt the same way), and she’ll sniff and tolerate 9 Lives, but clearly she doesn’t like it.
I hate 9 Lives more than you do, cat. Always a layer of it is left, stuck to the inside of the can, and you can’t shake or bang the food out of the tin. It’s wasted, unless I’m willing to scrape inside the can with a rubber spatula (I’m not) or rinse the can (but the cat won’t eat rinsed food).
Not to go all QAnon here, but products are meticulously engineered by corporations like J.M. Smucker, the jam giant that owns Big Heart Pet Brands, the company that makes 9 Lives. Cat food that won’t come out of the can is not an accident, it's a design and marketing choice. They’re cheating their customers, to sell more cans of shitty cat food.
Ah, well. By the cat’s choice, she’s mostly dining on dry food now. Crunch crunch, all during the day and night, and I have to turn up the volume on Mr Magoo.♦ ♦ ♦
Go Christmas shopping in 1910.
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When I last gave a damn about baseball, the Oakland A’s were my favorite team, but — fuck the Oakland A’s.
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Aaron Rodgers, superstar quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, lied about his unvaccinated COVID status. Now he has COVID, and even if he quickly recovers, he’ll miss at least one and maybe two games.
I live in Wisconsin, 150 miles from Green Bay. That's close enough I could already smell that Rodgers was kind of an idiot, but still — this is sportsball, man. You don't often see a team's best player screwing his team like this.
♦ ♦ ♦Riding a race car, on the walls of a silo, with a lion on board.♦ ♦ ♦
Documents reveal Facebook targeted
children as young as 6 for consumer base
Curiously, the headline and article cast this entirely in past-tense, as if Facebook did this, but no longer does this. Very au contraire, there’s no reason to believe it’s stopped.
♦ ♦ ♦Here's yet another article telling me how good Mulholland Dr is.
Quote: In the process of reimagining Mulholland Dr., Lynch invented a radical new cinematic language…
Yeah, but it’s a language I don’t speak. All I remember about Mulholland Dr is being bored right out of the theater halfway through.
Is everyone in the world right and I’m wrong and I missed a masterpiece?
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Mystery links — Like life itself, there’s no knowing where you’re going:
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Sincere tip 'o the hat:
BoingBoing
Captain Hampockets
Follow Me Here
Hyperallergic
Messy Nessy Chick
National Zero
Ran Prieur
Vintage Everyday
Voenix Rising
EXTRA SPECIAL THANKS:
Becky Jo
Name Withheld
Dave S.
>A dead man’s body was autopsied for a paying audience ($500 tickets) without his or his family’s consent, as part of the traveling Oddities and Curiosities Expo.
ReplyDeleteJesus Christ, how ghoulish.
>NASA warns that climate change is about to start slashing crop yields
You want pessimism, and to get angry? Try the subreddit /r/collapse.
I love the porn in gym article. The movie is called "Latin MILF Rose Monroe Gets Her Big Ass Worked Out By Brick Danger" I wonder what it's about?
I know it's a pain in the ass, but depending on the can design, you MIGHT be able to use a can opener on the cat food, even with a pull-tab lid. Never tried it, but Ive seen the YouTuber Atomic Shrimp do it for the very reason you mention, though not with cat food.
I don't remember walking out, but man, I'm with you on Mulholland Dr. I had to look it up, because I thought that maybe we saw it together, but no. It was released in 2001, and I'm 99% sure you were gone from SF. Though I may be wrong.
All I remember about Mulholland Dr is that halfway through I didn't know what it was about.
DeleteAs for 9 Lives, I might try a can opener. Good idea. It's still stupid on purpose, though.
Latin MILF Rose Monroe Gets Her Big Ass Worked Out By Brick Danger might be in my next movie roundup. Prolly not.
r/collapse is on my list, but I'm expecting more of a slow wobble and deterioration than literally a collapse.
I've been accused of being pessimistic. Yeah.
You could say Sahl invented what comedy is. Before him, comics told "my wife" jokes, he was the first at least to my knowledge that used the day's headlines for fodder. It paved the way for Lenny Bruce and everyone who followed, Carlin, Pryor, Stewart. Rip funny guy.
ReplyDeleteI missed out on a lot of his career, of course. Dude was old enough to have been my grandfather, if he'd started boinking young and without protection.
Delete