Samson's Wig

Such a brave and bold move, Starbucks, belatedly getting out of the Russian game now that no one there can afford your shitty coffee anymore.

This is just the latest investigation on this issue with the SBC. It's been an open secret for a long time, including numerous lawsuits filed by victims. I grew up in the Baptist Church, during an era when this shit was apparently at its worst. Dodged a bullet I guess. I bailed on those nutbags a long time ago for other reasons. Fuck those fuckers. And yes, every time this issue comes up Baptists will chime in with the "decentralized organization" line. "My church would never do that." Bull shit. I understand how clinging to that notion can make one feel better about being part of something that is inherently evil, especially when it is something so intrinsically tied to one's sense of self and one's existence as religion. But the so called "innocent" members of the flock who claim to have nothing to do with this stuff are exactly who enables the leadership to get away with it. Whether it is Catholics, Baptists, Baylor jags, Penn Staters, Boy Scouts, everyone throws up their hands and says "wasn't me!", but I don't see many of them bailing on their organizations or demanding change. Fuck every last one of them for enabling this shit to go on and on for decades. Hiding in a turtle shell and acting like you have no culpability because you had nothing to do with it, all while filling up the collection plate or donating to alumni organizations, is just one cunt hair less disgusting than the people who cover this shit up for the organization. Watching the sheep try and distance themselves from the flock now that it all is coming out is grotesque. You all know what you were a part of.

The Catholic Church, Southern Baptists, Baylor University, The Boy Scouts, and fraternities. Good times.

My ten year old son is still running a 102 fever after developing symptoms last Friday. Deep cough as well. I feel bad for the guy, he's been stuck in his room for the most part, and if things don't improve he'll miss the entire last two weeks of school. This shit doesn't just go away in a couple of days for everybody, not even kids. Wife, Daughter and I all tested negative on a PCR test this week. Weird virus.

Of course not. But I stand by my statement.

Seems like most of the folks I'm hearing from that have it now are getting it for the first time. I wonder if this is due to the transmissibility of the new subvariant or simply the general relaxation of protective measure we've all slipped into. Either way, a large wave that doesn't result in much hospitalization may be a good thing if it signals that we can finally start treating this thing like a cold.

Fuck that.

My top theory is that it is some form of religious self-flagellation mentality trickling into the secular aspects of their lives. Or maybe it is leftover Great Depression austerity pride passed down from parents/grandparents. Fuckers can go be a monk in a Sonoran sweat lodge if they want to, I'll be comfortable and cool in my house. ERCOT can get fucked along with anyone purposefully choosing to sweat while sitting at the dinner table so they can earn tough guy and/or woke eco points. My other working theory is simpler. The people pridefully talking about how fucking hot their house is are either female, old, have ruined their circulation with smoking, or suffer from an iron deficiency (or some combination of the four). I have more sympathy for these folks than the former, but they'll still have to deal with hard nips if they come over to my ice palace for Sunday brunch.

Better than the alternative. Sounds like you hit the jackpot to me.

The numbers will look no different than the number of asshole parents who sent kids to school with a fever pre-Covid. That type of shit is what one would hope this pandemic would train out of the populace, but it hasn't come close. Fever = no school. Period. Same for work. Until we can change this mentality we'll just rinse and repeat every flu season and for every new novel virus that pops up.

Everyone in our house has dodged this shit through the entire pandemic, until today. Son (4th grader) woke up this morning with 102.5 fever, sore throat, head congestion, and a sore neck. Tested positive for Covid. He's vaxxed but it's hitting him pretty hard. His pediatrician had to remind herself how long he should quarantine, etc. as she hadn't dealt with a Covid patient in so long.

My kids are both smart and half Canadian. That's a leg up, mother fuckers!

That sounds amazing.

I'm not sure at what age I'll puss out and finally move away from the heat, but I know it will happen eventually.

Lol. And true.

Cedar pollen is still at numbers typically seen in February. Is this the apocalypse? https://austinpollen.com/cedarseason.html

That's interesting. My experience has been the exact opposite. While attorneys certainly have no lack of an inflated ego regarding their intelligence (myself very much included), on the whole most attorneys I've dealt with will readily admit when they don't know something and are comfortable outsourcing the issue. Admittedly, and obvious to anyone who has practiced law for more than ten minutes, there are a boatload of dumbasses with law degrees, and I may very well be one of them. However, I've met too many engineers who would fight to the death before acknowledging there is a subject they are not the master of, or capable of being the master of, if they just do their research. Their world is binary and anything with shades of gray is a foreign language for them. I think it comes down to one profession being filled with folks who focused on a narrow band of subject matter their entire education and working life, and the other profession involving people who tend to come from all kinds of backgrounds and often wandered in the desert before becoming a lawyer. The educational aspect is more difficult and singularly focused for engineering, generally speaking, and that's going to lead to a bit of myopia.

Megan Fox has children. I feel sorry for them.

Orange juice has more sugar than milk, way more carbs than milk, less protein than milk, no calcium, but more fiber. Pick your poison, I guess, but neither one of them have any alcohol so I don't why any of you are using them for cereal.

A decade of tests. Huh.

I find all the uproar to be hilarious. Twitter is used by maybe a fifth of Americans, and most of them are white, male, and between 23 and 35. It's just a big circle jerk of young dudes who are incapable of waiting to read properly fleshed out news items, already groomed by 24 hour cable news I guess. References to it being the "public square" or having any kind of genuine significance are fatuous at best. Like most everything else the "tech industry" has brought to the world, Twitter is meaningless, adds no measurable value unless you need it to spread nonsense, and is ultimately a silly toy for boys. Acting like some kind of disaster has occurred because a rich guy bought a new toy is just silly. Like most toys, Twitter can be entertaining, but claims of its relevance are greatly exaggerated. It is schlocky cable news in an app, combined with tit pics and millions of stupid opinions that don't merit reading. More power to you if that's your thing, but there are better places for news and tits, and the opinions are better left to those who harbor them. Directly communicating with celebrities and knowledge leaders? Please. That shit isn't real most of the time.

It's a bit infuriating, and a bit sad, that the people who are the worst at communication are the same folks who think they know everything and therefore don't recognize how terrible they are at the written and spoken word (and everything else that doesn't fall into their narrow band of knowledge). The world needs engineers, but we'd probably be better served if we grew them in a lab and kept them isolated from the rest of the population. It's for their own protection, really.

We're living in a golden age of VC assholes robbing America of its treasure by selling shiny things to idiots technology.

That guy went off on them unprovoked? Aggy gon' aggy I guess. I do like the quote from the white dude claiming a systemic problem in San Francisco of African American aggys verbally assaulting gay couples with Asian/Caucasian backgrounds. San Francisco should get right on top of this, as it clearly happens much too frequently.