no. 526

“I always wonder when you see someone saying "I need my gun so the government can't put me in a death camp", jesus, how can you live in a country you perpetually believe is one step from murdering millions of its citizens? That must be stressful. I mean, are you not worried that every time you go to the post office they are just going to lock the doors behind you and start pumping in carbon monoxide?”

Eoin Howe, commenting on Republicans

no. 525

“It's a direct result of their decades long campaign to build up an immunity to irony.”

Matthew Quirk, commenting on the GOP’s lack of a sense of humor.

no. 524

“Unintentionality?” Mica asked as she soldered the top onto a canister. “Is that a word?” 
“It’s like unpredictability,” Yumi said, “except with a higher chance of death being the result.”

From “Relic of Sorrows” by Lindsay Buroker

no. 523

"One prefers to be civil on Twitter, but here’s an idea for you: Fuck off. Then keep fucking off. Fuck off until you come up to a gate with a sign saying “You Can’t Fuck Off Past Here”. Climb over the gate, dream the impossible dream, and keep fucking off forever."

Michael Marshall Smith

no. 522

“America’s boys are broken. And it’s killing us.”

Black cites an outdated model of masculinity as the culprit, “where manhood is measured in strength, where there is no way to be vulnerable without being emasculated, where manliness is about having power over others.”

“They are trapped,” he writes, “and they don’t even have the language to talk about how they feel about being trapped, because the language that exists to express the full range of human emotion is still viewed as sensitive and feminine.”

Michael Ian Black < https://nyti.ms/2CbA9kd >

no. 521

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness”

Terry Pritchett in “Men at Arms”

no. 520

"Both mass shooters and gun defenders agree that violence with guns is the best possible solution for the problems they perceive in the world, and themselves the most appropriate possible instrument to deliver it.

They disagree only on the appropriateness of target."

Julius Goat, on Twitter after the latest school shooting.

no. 519

“There is no anchor any more. At the core of the administration of the most powerful country on earth, there is, instead, madness.”

~ Andrew Sullivan



For future reference, this is about the Trump administration.

no. 518

"One of my teachers at Columbia was Joseph Brodsky...and he said 'look,' he said, 'you Americans, you are so naïve. You think evil is going to come into your houses wearing big black boots. It doesn’t come like that. Look at the language. It begins in the language.'" 

Marie Howe (h/t Joseph Fasano)

Language activates an idea and a circuitry in your brain. And the result of that is every time a circuit is activated, its synapses get stronger. So the more you hear certain things, even if you just hear and understand them, the circuitry gets stronger.

From a FB Post by George Lakoff

http://www.dw.com/en/dont-retweet-donald-trump-and-dont-use-his-language/a-42213110

no. 517

When the media is owned by those who believe they have the right to choose leaders, and who also believe that only the rich have the right to make decisions, the media ceases to be an objective reporting tool, and becomes an instrument of criminal conspiracy.

From the book “Hire A Hero”, by Timothy Ellis

no. 516

“As you've seen, the relentless return of U.S. conservatism to hatefully anti-science error always turns out to have been bought and paid for by cynical oligarchs. Manipulators who are never brought into account for the countless lives their delaying tactics wrecked.”

David Brin, ostensibly discussing the Tobacco Industry, but also so much more. 

no. 515

“Being a dissident is rooted in the belief that if everyone knew, the tide would turn against injustice. Dissidents don’t want you to be comfortable. They feel compelled to act and they want you to care as much as they do.”

Garry Kasparov

no. 514

"I was born with a reading list I will never finish." 

Maud Casey

no. 513

"The fact that homosexuality exists in 1,500 species and homophobia exists in one is proof that love is something human beings need more of."

Lacey Roop

no. 512

"It's true that the early bird gets the worm, but the early worm gets eaten."

Me

no. 511

"Taking all criticism of a group you're a part of personally and being unable to handle it is the hot new look for 2018"

Gin and Tacos, on Facebook, Dec, 31, 2017

no. 510

Retweeted AltHomelandSecurity🇺🇸 (@AltHomelandSec):

The American people should not be using politics to determine their morals, but using their morals to determine their politics.

no. 509

“The death of our political process is going to be a bunch of technocrats and DLC-style Liberals wonking themselves into a frenzy while the right steals or destroys everything that isn't nailed down. And they'll smile and say, sure, go do some more research and get some CBO scores or whatever, and while they're distracted the handful of interests that are returning us to the era of Robber Baron capitalism will empty the last of the till into their briefcases and laugh their asses off on the way to their offshore havens.”

Gin & Tacos

no. 508

“Someday, you may be at peace with your enemies. Make sure you can look them in the face, and not down on them.”

From the book “The Bad Company”, by Craig Martelle and Michael Anderle.

no. 507

"I'm too lazy to distinguish between an imperfect candidate and a fascist toddler. Haven't you seen South Park?"

Nick Bernard's sarcastic response to some still complaining, over a year later, about the "lousy" choice between Trump and Clinton.