Trump: We will impose our will on Iran!

Advisor: Sir, they’re blocking the Strait of Hormuz, and they seem to be winning the conflict.

Trump: So you’re saying that blocking the Strait is the winning move…?

Let this empire burn and 50+ flags fly freely

Later, in the smoldering ruins:

“I meant 🌹 🌺 ❤️ Balkanization🌈 🎂 🦄, not 🔫 💥 🔥 Balkanization 💀 🪦 💣!”

If the votes had been even a fraction of a percent in either direction, the Supreme Court wouldn’t have had a role to play.

If less than one percent of Nader voters (not all Florida voters, just Nader voters) had voted for Gore instead, the margin in Florida would have been wide enough for Gore to unquestionably take the state, and he’d have become president.

gamma ray baddies

• Be born rich

• Spend the rest of your life falling up stairs

They are so grateful!!

The podcast “You Made It Weird,” with Pete Holmes is great. He has a lot of smart and funny people on, and the pattern is usually to start with “What’s going on with you? What are you working on? What makes you laugh?” for the first two thirds of a given episode, and then the last third is stuff like “Do you believe there is a purpose to life? Have you ever seen a ghost? Have you ever tried psychedelics?” Pete is clearly on his own spiritual journey and has a lot of heavy stuff to talk about and share, and he makes for a great conversation.

Two highlights were when Reggie Watts talked about going on a trip in a bathroom where he traveled to a parallel universe and met with a sentient planet, and when Judd Apatow talked about how ayahuasca brought him into a meeting with the embodiment of his childhood self.

I don’t necessarily want to get into psychedelics, but it’s a very interesting topic of conversation, if the person is smart enough to ask and answer intelligent questions.

What’s the over-under on Trump demanding that both things get named after him / trying to sell the naming rights, and then when the IAU says that’s not how that works, he throws a tantrum, names them after himself anyway, and starts a Legion of Doom alternate IAU chaired by himself, Steve Bannon, and Kid Rock?

Streety McStreetface

Source:

This book has the weirdest interpretation of this image (and other advertising images), like isolating little details and positing that they’re supposed to make you think of boobs or vaginas and hypnotize you into buying things.

What in the name of absolute fuck?

Also, don’t undervalue the satisfaction of going into a full Yosemite Sam litany of nonsense: “Hazzen frazzen jimpin jampin frazzle bazzle mizzen mazzen grizzle bizzle…!!!”

God, smiting dinosaurs one by one: “This is taking forever! There’s got to be a better way…”

Cyber women.

It’s not a direct connection, but trying to say a dwarf planet isn’t a planet, when it’s got the word planet right there, is generating the kind of semantic confusion that, carried forward, would lead to the conclusion that people with dwarfism aren’t people. The -oid suffix already conveys “is almost the thing, but not quite,” such as in words like humanoid, asteroid, android, and (most importantly) the aforementioned planetoid. Making planetoid the official word for “is in ways like a planet but actually isn’t” would have been working with existing etymology, rather than creating needless confusion.

There are plenty of linguistically unintuitive artifacts kicking around (a peanut is neither a pea nor a nut, a jellyfish is not a fish, all of the “berries” which aren’t berries), but if we’re deliberately creating brand new labels in the 21st century, it might have been nice if we’d avoided that kind of oddness, given the opportunity.

My objection to “dwarf planet” is purely a linguistically aesthetic one.

“Dwarf planet” ≠ planet

…implies…

“Dwarf person” ≠ person

…and I feel like the people under 4’10" (147 cm) would object to that distinction.

Also, “planetoid” was a perfectly cromulent word which Star Trek had been using for decades already.

How many straight people would choose to instantly double the pool of potential mates, if they could make the same choice?