I wish this was real wingnut outsider art and not a hipster imitation thereof, but this is my favorite picture I’ve seen in a while (via):
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by DougJ| 188 Comments
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I wish this was real wingnut outsider art and not a hipster imitation thereof, but this is my favorite picture I’ve seen in a while (via):
Comments are closed.
Kropadope
I like how well the artist captures the wickedness in Obama’s eyes.
DougJ
@Kropadope:
Yeah, that’s the best part.
Amir Khalid
So how is Obama getting on with the Federal conquest of Texas? There seems to be very little coverage of it in your American news.
Chris
@Amir Khalid:
Censorship by the One World Government.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Many newsletters are being mimeographed as we speak.
Kropadope
@DougJ: Though, Honey BooBoo running away in a tinfoil hat is powerful, despite the implausibility of the running,
Bobby B.
I can hear the rage quivering as Fox News….
DougJ
@Kropadope:
Yes, that is well done too.
Gin & Tonic
He’s burning a US Constitution there. Can never remember my history – were there any delegates from Texas at the Constitutional Convention?
Kropadope
They need to hurry up and make their way to MA, those FEMA camps won’t fill themselves.
Schlemazel
The nuts aren’t bright – and never right
deep in the heart of Texas.
The crazy’s nigh – wide and high
deep in the heart of Texas.
The nutcakes bloom in every room
deep in the heart of Texas
Schlemazel
@Gin & Tonic:
there were a bunch at the one in 1864
Baud
Hard to tell the difference these days.
schrodinger's cat
What about the wingnut art that has Jeebus and the founding fathers together? Sorry, I forgot the artist.
Mike J
@Kropadope: The Obama is from actual wingnut art, even if the whole pic isn’t. Looks like it’s from a John McNaughton painting.
Ah yes. Found it.
schrodinger's cat
@Kropadope: Honey Boo Boo is a child, I don’t like making fun of children. BTW did you decide about your physics minor.
schrodinger's cat
@Mike J: Ah yes, that’s the artist I am talking about.
Mike J
@schrodinger’s cat: Chubby bubbles girl is a standard meme.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/chubby-bubbles-girl
Tommy
I wish I had a snappy, funny comment. I don’t.
Davis X. Machina
@schrodinger’s cat: A better example of Socialist Realism you’d be hard-pressed to find.
It’s good to see an artist who understands his role in the Revolution….
Kropadope
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yeah, sorry, not that she wasn’t put into an awkward, laughable situation in that picture
I think I’m going for the physics minor. It looks like I need 6 classes total and after the first two general physics classes, there are some I can take concurrently. Given that I am doing a half-time or slightly more schedule anyway, I should be able to get through it without seriously delaying my graduation.
Baud
@Tommy:
{{{Hugs}}}
Mike in NC
@Mike J: McNaughton’s idiotic painting is entitled “One Nation Under Socialism”. WTF does that have to do with burning the Constitution? Someone fetch me the wingnut translator, please.
schrodinger's cat
@Kropadope: Good luck! Physics classes demand a lot of work, but they can also be a lot of fun.
Mike in NC
USA Today managed to find a woman — in Texas, of course — who stated that “people are surprised to learn that our bases are unguarded”. Wrong answer, moron.
debbie
@Kropadope:
But what is that she’s carrying, bubbles?
Elizabelle
@Mike J: My God.
It’s Kinkade for wingnuts.
ETA: Their “most popular” “art”work: Liberalism is a Disease.
linky: http://www.jonmcnaughton.com/liberalism-is-a-disease-4/
Some good company there. Cannot decide if the dude with the martini glass is meant to be K-Thug or George Clooney, or maybe both.
“Obamanation” is kind of good too.
Kropadope
@schrodinger’s cat: Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it in high school and I hope it helps me down the road.
@debbie: Apparently this is not Honey BooBoo, but an unidentified girl from an internet meme (see upthread). Personally, I’m glad I didn’t know it wasn’t HBB.
Mike J
@Elizabelle: That particular painting is among his tamest.
schrodinger's cat
@Kropadope: You are welcome. There are few things in the world that have the sublime beauty of classical mechanics.
Riley's Enabler
@Amir Khalid: Well, sadly I’m writing this from the bowels of an abandoned Walmart. They rounded us up this morning and stuffed us in without our daily rations of moon pies and RC Cola.
South of Houston here. Nary a black helicopter to be seen…but you get GREAT side-eye when you mention Jade Helm in public. Which I do. Loudly and often.
Capt Seaweed
Meme “Chubby Bubbles Girl” gets around:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/chubby-bubbles-girl/photos
Baud
@Kropadope:
I wish I had the talent to be a physicist. Good luck.
Elizabelle
@Mike J: Moar, please.
I am marveling over “Coming to Zion”, which he apparently sells to gullible Mormons. Or worse, the gullible buy for Mormons.
Did they really migrate without any animals?
Gravenstone
@schrodinger’s cat: I always knew physics nerds were weird. Says the guy who was an optics class away from getting a physics minor.
p.a.
@Amir Khalid: sweeping defeat of Federalist forces; hence news blackout. Wolverines!
Davis X. Machina
@Elizabelle: The poorer sort, not being able to afford oxen, used handcarts. It’s part of the Mormon legend.
mai naem mobile
I follow James Woods on Twitter because,well,because I’m a fucking masochist. I know he had that incident with the 9/11 hijackers before 9/11 and he kind of lost it after that but jeezus christ this moron actually believes Daily Caller/ Blaze stuff and he’s a Harvard grad. I don’t think he’s a Bush kind of legacy Harvard grad either. The replies reinforcing his beliefs are even wackier. Shit, I know I’m very anti-Dubbya but I don’t think I ever bought into the real crazy left wing conspiracy stuff and,hell, Dubbya gave us way more reason to believe the crazy than Obama ever has.
Elizabelle
Next up: The Empowered Man.
Artist stuck W in with the failed liberal presidents.
p.a.
@Gin & Tonic: David Barton says yes.
Kropadope
@Baud: I hope I do. I’m in my early 30s and can’t keep dicking around about finishing school. That’s why I asked everyone the other night, it’s time to commit to a course of…courses.
Kropadope
@Elizabelle: I would’ve gone with separate scare quotes around “failed” and “liberal.” Also, surprised the artist is apparently a Lincoln fan.
mai naem mobile
@Riley’s Enabler: why RC cola? I thought Fanta was the choice of Nazis? Does RC stand for Rastafarian Communist?
p.a.
@mai naem mobile: MIT PolySci major, dropped out to act.
Amir Khalid
@mai naem mobile:
I think Coke bought the Fanta brand after WWII.
Mike J
@mai naem mobile: RC is the standard accompaniment to moon pies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4W_KDGQoVM
Calouste
@mai naem mobile: Bobby Jindal was a Rhodes scholar. Being academically gifted isn’t mutually exclusive with being an utter and complete wackaloon. And there are numerous other examples.
raven
It’s 91 in the shade and I gave up following her around while she looks over hundreds of granite pieces!
Kropadope
@Mike J: I know I loved RC cola and Moon Pies back in 1990.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
The last I heard, the troops were confiscating incandescent lights and replacing them with CFLs. ETA: for more details, check out #OMGJadeHelm on the Twitters.
Poopyman
@Roger Moore: CFLs??? They should be LEDs. Obama has failed us yet again.
Elizabelle
Pray for America. It’s Cliven Bundy.
Meanwhile, our president has musical talent.
These are from the “patriotic” category. Nothing says you love your country like painting and buying works like these.
Kropadope
@Poopyman: Can’t even oppress Real Americans right
Funkula
My favorite part is that the rockets in the background are the ones from the Iranian test where they tried to hide a failed ignition with Photoshop and got exposed.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: Jesus returned to Earth and shot him. In the Alternative Spacetime Continuum.
Digital Amish
You can tell it’s not real wingnut art. If it were, the helmets would be UN blue.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
That one has no helpful interactive page to explain it to me! Maybe we can drag Sister Wendy out of retirement to explain it to us.
@mai naem mobile: I looked at Trump’s twitter page, it’s mostly him re-tweeting people who tell him how great he is and tweet-shouting at CNN for questioning his net worth, but he also retweeted Franklin Graham. I’m inclined to agree with the CW that sooner or later Trump will fade, more than likely after he gets bored, but if he does take down Jebbie, who he really seems to hate, it will prove that almost everyone does some little bit of good in this world.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Uh oh, anyone in the DC area who’s out of smelling salts to ring for, you may find the shelves bare
Mike J
@Elizabelle: Did you see Via Dolorosa? Mother Theresa, Karl Marx, a very Jewy Jew, and a cast of thousands stand by and do nothing while Jesus carries his cross. Only a conservative businessman steps forward to help.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Trump’s not a Democrat, so the Village isn’t really that offended.
Liberal With Attitude
I’ve seen those McNaughton paintings for a few years now. I think at first he was aiming solely at his wingnut evangelical base, but now I suspect he is just trolling us.
ranchandsyrup
Song, song of the south.
Running from Jade Helm
And shut my mouth.
BillinGlendaleCA
Thunder storm moving through LALAland, the Cocker Spaniel is NOT amused.
ETA: I think my hike in the hills will be postponed.
Baud
WaPo
RSA
@Kropadope:
Good luck! I see elsewhere you’re majoring in computer science. In my experience, it’s typically very helpful for someone in CS to have a background in a completely different field.
Cacti
@Davis X. Machina:
The Martin and Willie Handcart companies were a disaster for the Mormon Church. Waylaid by autumn snows in Wyoming, ran out of provisions, and had to be rescued by relief wagon teams from Salt Lake City.
The Willie company lost 68 of its 500 people that started from Iowa City.
The Martin company lost a staggering 145 of the 576 that started from Iowa City.
So, about a 20% mortality rate for the handcart pioneers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I think if they tried to shut him out of the debate, they just might piss him off enough to make a third party run. I think the only thing that would really stop him would be the cost of getting on ballots, and I have no idea what that would be
(PS- I will vote for Santorum, Cruz or Fiorina if they pledge to declare the first amendment does not apply to those insurance commercials with “Flo”)
Cacti
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m no fan of McCain, but I really don’t care for prolific draft avoiders like Trump (4 student deferments), mocking those who actually served.
It’s no better than that purple heart bandaid crap from 2004.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m somewhat partial to Flo. Don’t know what it is.
ranchandsyrup
@BillinGlendaleCA: our little pup has been hiding from the thunder. https://flic.kr/p/w8zCNN
heckblazer
@Amir Khalid: Fanta was created by Coca-Cola Germany during WWII when they could no longer get syrup to make Coke.
Anne
@Kropadope: Physics B.A./M.S./Ph.D. here. I’m biased, but I thought it was great fun (if sometimes in a type II way). Here’s hoping you have more good professors than bad professors. Best of luck, and may the forces be with you!
the Conster
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yup. As Atrios just tweeted – “Reporters assemble at the tire swing”. Shit just got real for Trump. Popcorn!!!
Cacti
@heckblazer:
Did you know that South American Fanta tastes different than US Fanta?
I actually thought Brazilian grape Fanta tasted a lot better than the US version.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cacti: Cut and paste of a tweet is not an endorsment! I think McCain is a dangerously stupid man, and I wish Villagers could see that his service and captivity in south-east Asia means fuck-all when it comes to the current geo-politics of the Middle East, but I wouldn’t mock him for that part of his bio. ETA: I will mock him for his flogging of that record as foreign policy expertise, and his daughter. She was NPR’s Wait Wait a few years ago and managed to spew out a war-hero-POW non sequitur in the first thirty seconds.
People are saying this is the end of the Trump boomlet. WE’ll see
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Some of those commercials are pretty funny. “Sprinkles are for winners”.
Kropadope
@RSA: I hope you’re being serious. I picked CS for its usefulness across pretty much all industries. Physics because I want to help develop new energy technologies.
Pretty much all my work experience is in healthcare, though. A lot of people tell me “be a pharmacist/nurse/doctor,” which is very valuable work, but it never really compelled me.
As Sheldon from BBT put it (paraphrasing), “Biology is about squishy things” and I prefer to stay dry.
the Conster
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Is this good news for John McCain?
J R in WV
@Elizabelle:
His art is almost as sophisticated as his political acumen, isn’t it? Never heard of him before this morning, no wonder!
Mrs J collects art, real art, not this cruft. I’ll show it to her, but I don’t think I’ll surprise her much, she already knows how low they’ll go.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And the beginning of the Village congratulating the GOP about how serious and moderate they are.
dmsilev
@Kropadope: Good luck!
Elizabelle
@Mike J: Did look at Via Dolorosa. Glad to see it was not Reagan who stepped forward to help, as I’d first feared.
Kind of looks like Rick Lazio (HRC opponent for NY Senate, 2000). Or maybe Joel Osteen.
bin Laden, Mother Theresa, Thomas More, Lincoln, Lenin, in the same crowd. Henry 8th and Hitler standing shoulder to shoulder. Don’t know if Reagan’s in the crowd; don’t care … Not sure of artist’s message here …
Elizabelle
@J R in WV: Kind of looks like it belongs in Spencer’s Gifts, as gag art …
Botsplainer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s fucking reprehensible.
McCain was a POW while Donald Fucking Trump was collecting deferments – and I’m not fond of McCain.
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think Trump is gunning for the Republican Establishment. Bush, McCain, Romney have all gotten seriously disrespected.
One could argue that Trump is just responding off-the-cuff to anyone who says something negative about him, but it’s not clear to me that it’s a difference that makes a difference.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@the Conster: It just might get him some rare face time on the Sunday shows, but it’s too soon to tell…
Trump is being interviewed at something called the Iowa Family Leader Summit
and I think that is Frank Luntz, I thought he quit politics and GBCW’ed after 2012? and I never thought the bible-y folk were his crowd
also, too
apparently it was Luke 12:48
But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.
Twitter speculation is he left out the first part, but who knows?
catclub
@Elizabelle: Of course, businessman is saying “My good man, could you call a cab for me?”
Germy Shoemangler
Baud
@catclub:
Probably trying to sell Jesus a reverse mortgage.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Maybe he left out the second part.
Kay
The D candidates in Iowa. I completely forgot about one of them.
Bernie Sanders seems to be thoroughly enjoying his run.
https://twitter.com/lara_marie14/status/622203183142600704/photo/1
Elizabelle
@catclub: LOL.
And reverse mortgage, laughing.
FWIW, this painter looks a tad like Michael Moore. He may not be thrilled at that.
Gindy51
@schrodinger’s cat: You need to hit Fark’s photoshop site for a while. Bubble girl pops up all the time just like firestarter girl.
Baud
@Kay:
Is there a debate? I’ve barely heard any news about this?
J R in WV
@Kropadope:
I got my BS in CS when I was 34, in 1984. Made the Dean’s list a few times, but didn’t get any of the academic awards. Cum laude, etc.
So don’t think you’re too unusual in being an adult before you graduate. In my experience the folks our age were better students. I struggled with the math classes, especially the math classes taught by CS professors, who didn’t really know the math well enough to teach it.
Kropadope
@Baud: Of course not, what’s more entertaining to cover, bread or a circus? So, while the Rs are out there clowning around, the Ds can work together on the substantive issues.
Baud
@Kropadope:
True enough. But what is going on? Why are they all together in Iowa?
Roger Moore
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I got rained on at the Pasadena farmer’s market this morning. Since when is it wetter in July than January?
Kropadope
@J R in WV: Glad to hear I’m not alone. I, like many Americans, can’t help but be affected by TV tropes. One of the biggest ones about technology work is that the whole industry is full of young prodigies who did some awesome thing at the age of 13 and aren’t comfortable working with people who lack that sort of profile.
gogol's wife
@DougJ:
Just got here, haven’t read the thread, but the best part is Honey Boo Boo fleeing in terror.
Poopyman
We all know Trump is a deeply stupid and mean person. He was going to spray his invective at conservative icons sooner or later, and the more he does it the more his “base” is going to desert him. He’ll double down when he gets pushback – it’s what he does. And people are not going to like it.
srv
Obama drives his Executive Order Coach Bus over the olds and disabled:
Baud
@Poopyman:
“He’s treating us like illegals!”
RSA
@Kropadope:
Yup, I’m serious, based partly on my long-ago experience as a software engineer, partly on my seeing the stream of undergrads go through the CS department where I’m now a professor. In your CS classes (and I suspect this is at least partly true of every discipline), you learn how to solve CS problems, formulated in CS terms. In a theory class you might prove an upper bound on the time complexity of some algorithm; in a systems class you might design and implement some low-level data structure or service or whatever. Some of the hardest and most subtle demands on a CS person, though, involve understanding a real-world problem well enough to decide whether it’s amenable to a computational solution and then to build a system that does it. Classroom instruction and even university research in general don’t go all that far toward giving students useful experience in doing this.
I think that students who learn about a different discipline in detail (in my experience it’s most often been human factors and psychology, but I’ve seen examples with chemistry, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, even graphic design–physics seems reasonable, too) gain a different perspective on problem formulation and problem solving. They put that perspective to good use, in particular by having less of a tendency to shoe-horn every problem into something they already know but isn’t the best fit–it’s easier for them to understand a problem on its own terms. Now, it could be that it’s just a particular kind of student I’m talking about, the kind with interests outside CS, but I don’t think that matters in this case.
So, enjoy physics! Maybe you can even end up impressing your peers by hacking VPython to do something cool. :-)
gogol's wife
@schrodinger’s cat:
This is the least of that poor child’s problems.
Kay
@Baud:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/07/17/democrats-showcase-candidates-iowa-dinner/30333763/
If it stays positive for a while between them they should play up the contrast- the GOP side is sort or mean and surly already and it’s so early. They should start saying, as a group, “where is the Republican positive vision for governing??” :)
Sadly. Disappointed. Concerned. I think Clinton could pull that off.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Mike J:
I guess St. Veronica is chopped liver now.
D58826
well it looks like the terrorists have won another one. The Governors of OK, AK, La have ordered their national guardsmen to be armed and in Fla. Rick Scott has ordered them out of the store front stations and into local armory’s. We are rapidly becoming a nation of blindly stupid cowards.
In the meantime a car bomb killed over 100 Iraqi civilians yesterday. Which is just another day in Iraq. I hate to think what the reaction in this country would be.
Baud
@Kay:
Thanks for the info. I like the campaign on our side so far. It’ll be interesting to see how the first GOP debate shakes out on their side and how it affects media coverage.
Botsplainer
@Poopyman:
You are underestimating the meanness and stupidity of the conservative base.
“Suck it, libtards” is their defining ethic – they’re nihilists.
Poopyman
@Kropadope:
Lemme step in here as someone A)who has an astrophysics degree, B) Spent about 20 years as a NASA contractor in operations and s/w development, and C) Still in the contracting business doing systems for various DoD elements.
The fact of the matter is that once it comes down to getting a job, how you work with other people will almost always trump(heh!) your technical skills. The field is littered with wasted millions and failed systems that were built by geniuses that either couldn’t be maintained, didn’t do what they were supposed to do, or were so complex nobody really knew whether it satisfied requirements or not.
Getting experience in school working on complex projects that demonstrably work looks as good to a hiring manager as really good grades do. Get both, of course.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
those bone spurs were hyooge
Emma
@srv: tell me you’re being sarcastic. We allow mentally disabled people to own guns?
JPL
I listened to Trump talk about family. All of his five children are quite successful and drugs were never a problem because he instilled into them the harm that drugs and alcohol can do. He didn’t mention Jeb but you know he wanted to.
Poopyman
@RSA: It might be helpful to mention that the guy who first hired me out of school was looking for people with hard science backgrounds who could develop computer skills in the environment. Of course, this was back in the days of IBM 360s and we were coding in Fortran 4. None of that flashy Fortran 90 for us!
(Wobbles back to his rocker.)
JPL
@Poopyman: I worked for IBM back in those days. My sons laugh at me now because texting is hard. I did finally get a smart phone though.
Kropadope
@srv: I’m never quite sure how to take you.
@RSA: Thank you, everyone here has been so helpful. I’ve just been so nervous, particularly since I graduated with my Associate’s degree that barely prepared me for anything beyond moving to a four-year university.
The way things have been changing so fast my whole life, I figured it would be good to get a decent cross-disciplinary skill set. At least that way, I can generally find a way to make myself useful. I’ve done really well in coordination and support roles. No IT department anywhere seems to want to hire someone without a Bachelor’s degree, though, so I’m still trying to find ways to gain practical experience. In the meantime, I’ll be happy to find someone who will pay a decent rate on typing prescriptions.
Poopyman
@Botsplainer:
No, I’m saying the conservative base is going to get pissed off when someone pisses on their Golden Boy McCain.
Davis X. Machina
@D58826:
We already know.
The thing is, it doesn’t even matter who did it.
There are people still maintaining that the OKC bombing was Al Qaeda.
Some sort of mass-casualty terrorist event, or a repeat of the 2008 Wall St. meltdown, are about the only things I can foresee materially affecting the 2016 election, unfortunately.
BillinGlendaleCA
I’ve had my Note3 for a year and a half. Being that I’ve never had a way to view 4K video that it’s able to record, I’ve never shot anything in 4K. With the UHD monitor, I can; so I shot some test video. WOW.
Kropadope
@JPL: Oh, my God, you should hear my friends laugh at me for still carrying a Blackberry. They all say I should get a smartphone so I can download apps I don’t want. I tell ’em it’s all about texting. I’m very tactile and not only do I hate touch screens, I can text on my BB without having to look at the screen. It’s awesome.
Germy Shoemangler
@Poopyman:
But I thought McCain was too liberal for the base. I remember Lush Rimbaugh criticizing McCain on the radio.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Poopyman: there’s a good chunk of the base that hates McCain, especially now that he’s flip-flopped (again) on immigration. I don’t think the Beltway gets how angry the Medicare-scooter crowd is about immigration.
Riley's Enabler
@mai naem mobile: It would be better if it did…and naw, it’s just standard down here as the non-lite beer redneckian beverage to accompany moonpies. Also, everything here is a Coke. Even if you want a 7-up, you ask for Coke. The waitress/hostess/server will ask you “what kind”.
Classic road trip chow in Texas: Moon Pies and RC, or Cherry Limeade and cheese tatertots from Sonic. It’s a wonder any of us are still breathing.
Germy Shoemangler
@JPL: I listened to Trump talk about family.
srv
@Emma: Imagine you were one of the troops during Obama’s surge and you have PTSD. Now he wants to take away your gun.
And Trump is a monster?
Davebo
I love the picture of Obama holding the “I Invaded Texas and all I got was this lousy T Shirt”!
PurpleGirl
@Amir Khalid: The President and his daughters and some of their friends are in NYC this weekend for father-daughter trip. Last night they had dinner and restaurant in the Village and today they were going to the Whitney Museum, if I remember the story on the news correctly. He ain’t anywhere near Texas.
Kropadope
@Poopyman:
Well, at least I have that going for me. Don’t let me penchant for the occasional online flame-war fool you, I get along great with coworkers and am generally a good resource for job-related info.
Well, my less complex, individually developed projects have worked well so far. We’ll see what happens when I get into upper-level classes. Grades, generally good, with the exception of a few classes that I give up on immediately prior to the final (I’m retaking English 102 right now, got a D+ at my two-year school).
D58826
@Davis X. Machina: It’s not really funny but…. An army recruiter in Atlanta was showing a co-worker his gun and then proceeded to shot himself in the leg. (sigh)
Germy Shoemangler
@srv: Exactly. There’s nothing an-ex soldier with PTSD needs more than a gun.
Unless it’s counseling and job training.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This is all too predictable but still infuriating:
… less about the Republican establishment, but the refusal of the Village to see, much less call out, how that group uses/enables/coddles racism in their politics
ETA: And how many of the GOP candidates, Senators and pundits who are and will be scolding Trump, how many of them were outraged (!) about purple band-aids? Wasn’t that convention in TX? Governor Perry?
Germy Shoemangler
@PurpleGirl: The mayor who posted all the gorilla stuff about the first lady had another post. Something about Obama not surviving his third term… if he tries anything stupid like that.
BillinGlendaleCA
@PurpleGirl: Sure, and you probably believe Obama was born in Hawaii too. He’s in Texas directing troop movements, my dental fillings tell me so.
FlipYrWhig
@Poopyman: The conservative base abhors John McCain. Too much of a moderate.
the Conster
@JPL:
Have you seen the pix of his sons with a dead big cat in Africa? That is not what successful good kids want to do.
pamelabrown53
@Poopyman:
I don’t think that McCain is the conservatives’ golden boy. I think it would take dissing St. Ronnie for a real exodus.
Poopyman
@Kropadope: Find out what research the profs are doing. It’ll be a challenge fitting more work into your schedule, but worth it later on.
Davis X. Machina
@Germy Shoemangler: Well, he picked the Permafrost Passionaria, After that, presumably, he can do no wrong.
RSA
@JPL:
Must have been fun times! My first programming course used Fortran (in… 1981). Fortran 77, probably, but it was still FORTRAN. :-)
FlipYrWhig
@pamelabrown53: There are going to be millions of people who never stop liking Trump for his antics this past few months. Just like millions still like Sarah Palin.
JPL
@Germy Shoemangler: omg.. Who says that about their children?
BillinGlendaleCA
@RSA: My first programming course used PL/C.
Poopyman
@pamelabrown53: That’s true. Has Trump said anything at all about RR? I confess I haven’t paid him much attention.
Germy Shoemangler
@Davis X. Machina: I try to imagine a scenario where McCain/Palin won, and then McCain keeled over from a heart attack.
President Palin!
What the fuck would have happened?
pamelabrown53
@FlipYrWhig:
I SO agree: the id will not be denied!
Poopyman
@FlipYrWhig: One thing Trump will never be is a MILF.
Botsplainer
@Germy Shoemangler:
We wouldn’t be here is what would’ve happened.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Germy Shoemangler: She would have quit, presidenting is too much work.
Kropadope
@Poopyman: Good looks, thank you. I have an outline of classes my CS adviser wants me to take and potential electives. I’m going to be seen at the physics department next chance I get.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Poopyman: Depending on the honesty of his financial reports, Trump is either a MILF or a BILF, at least three times.
joel hanes
The best advice I can give someone getting a degree in CS or engineering is to take at least one technical writing class. If you’re like many STEM nerds, you’ve been avoiding composition classes since you were first given the option to do so — but your career advancement will depend on your ability to clearly present highly technical content in standard English prose almost as much as it depends on your ability to devise algorithms and code them. A techie who writes lucidly is immediately noticed in the corporate world.
And the second best advice is the first lesson in lucid tech writing : ditch the passive voice almost entirely. Although Strunk and White is today much criticised, the bits about the passive voice are right on the money, and a corrective much needed by most writers of science or engineering reports.
The experiment was conductedWe heated the reactants …Results were observedI measured …FlipYrWhig
@Poopyman: Eesh. He’s not even a DILF.
JPL
The Guardian is all over Trump’s comments about McCain.
He also boasts about bringing manufacturing home. Why doesn’t he start with his own clothing line.
I do think his comments today will cause him to peak very soon, like tomorrow.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
would a “please retweet” campaign make this trend?
Kropadope
@joel hanes: Is my writing that bad?
I actually love reading and writing. The English class I’m taking this summer is focused on research and argumentation. I’m having a great time with it, particularly since we’ve been allowed to pick our subject for the second half.
MattF
@RSA: Oh, boy. My first FORTRAN was (I think) FORTRAN II for the IBM 1620. Then moved on to WATFOR (Waterloo FORTRAN) and its successor WATFIV.
Mike J
@joel hanes:
Strunk & White used the passive voice in the very sentence telling people not to use it. Pure bunk.
joel hanes
@MattF:
IIRC, WATFOR was exciting because it did not bail out completely at the first syntax error, but attempted to recover the parse and detect additional errors in the same run.
This was a revolutionary advance if one was accustomed to being unable to detect and fix one bug per run.
MattF
@Mike J: Geoffrey Pullum (co-author of the definitive “Cambridge Grammar of the English Language”) has a long-running series of posts at language log on the passive voice. He also doesn’t care much for Strunk and White, and says so.
joel hanes
@Mike J:
The day you write something comparable to anything written by
E.B White will be the day I find your opinion compelling.
SFAW
@p.a.:
Assuming you mean Political Science, as opposed to “many sciences”:
There are about as many of those as there are Juilliard quantum physics majors.
And with good reason.
Bubblegum Tate
@Elizabelle:
Wow, that one is really…that’s it. It’s just really.
Hard to tell, but I think I see Sojourner Truth, Ahmadinejad, and Napoleon in there as well. But no Sarah Palin? C’mon, McNaughton!
RSA
@joel hanes: @MattF: It’s pretty cool that the early years of the field are still within memory of many people.
SFAW
@Digital Amish:
And the swastika flag would have been a hammer-and-sickle.
And Obummer would have been reading Karl Marx in the original Russian!
Elizabelle
@srv: Yeah. Posting that LA Times article about tying the Social Security database (and VA database) to the NICS computer system background checks for guns.
This could be Summer 2015’s “Death Panels!” hysteria topic.
Having been thwarted by Congress on gun legislation in the aftermath of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, and having noted the Virginia Tech shooter of 32 people in 2007 was able to obtain a gun despite being ordered by a court to undergo mental health treatment — reporting requirements are pourous — Obama issued executive orders.
Article deserves a full read; it’s complicated. Writer follows a self-described “antisocial, irritable” Iraq War USMC vet with PTSD, whose wife handles their affairs, as poster boy for the story. Writer never mentions the toll of suicides and family violence PTSD can take, in some (and only some) veterans.
Question is, how do you judge a Social Security recipient — or veteran — to be someone who should not own a gun? Some people cannot balance their checkbook or manage their investments, but may be safe gun owners and not prone to violence.
Initiative caught the NRA by surprise, per LATimes story, but that won’t last …
joel hanes
Fine.
Choose a style guide or expert on diction that seems good to you.
Pay attention to their guidance on the use of the passive voice.
I’ve read far too many engineering reports couched entirely in the passive voice because the author believed that was how official prose must be constructed.
Origuy
I second the suggestion about technical writing. I wish someone had told me that in college. I tested out of the one writing class that U of I required for CS majors. I spend about half my time writing and reviewing prose documents, not code. Getting the requirements right is a big part of getting the product right; if the requirements are unclear, there will be bugs downstream.
My first programming job was writing assembler and Fortran on a PDP/11 doing respiration and heartbeat data collection for the Developmental Psychophysiology Lab at Illinois. The CS degree program didn’t have a minor as such, but did require 12 credits in a field where computers were applicable; I chose linguistics. After graduation, I spent about 16 years working on compilers, including FORTRAN and COBOL compilers. For a short time, I was on the ANSI COBOL Standard Committee.
joel hanes
@RSA:
On second thought, I believe I’ve conflated WATFOR with WATFIV
It’s been a while since the 70’s, and things kinda run together after a while.
I should have googled.
Kay
@joel hanes:
My oldest son has an undergrad liberal arts degree but he went on to work for a tech firm and he says the same thing. They really did teach him how to write in college. He was a big fish/little pond smart person in high school and he emailed me his first paper from college, horrified. The teacher had used some kind of red lining word editing program and it was just red, red, red. I glanced at it and it sent it back with “that’s a lot of red”.
It rattled him but he’s a quick study and he got it. It’s good. He has glibertarian tendencies. They needed to take him down a peg. He’d be a horrible monster by now :)
Mike in NC
@D58826: If a car bomb in America killed 100 people, martial law would be declared the next day and nobody would be allowed on the roads. Some time after the 2001 WTC attack, a private plane in Florida was stolen and crashed into a nearby building. The media frenzy that day included proposals to assign an armed guard to every private aircraft in the country.
Stupid over-reaction is what we do best.
Elizabelle
@Bubblegum Tate: It’s like “Where’s Adolph?”
SFAW
@joel hanes:
That’s pretty much what we were taught; it’s not as if engineers are big into creative writing or Finnegan’s Wake.
Poopyman
@RSA: Meh! A satellite console I used to prop my feet on is displayed in the Smithsonian.
Man, they’ll take anything!
Frankensteinbeck
@Mike in NC:
Stewardess, I speak Wingnut.
No, really, I love translating from Wingnut. It’s a hobby. In this case, conservatives believe that socialism is a tyrannical form of government that is illegal under the constitution. Its major traits include regulating anything to do with how people spend money, and dictatorial authority enforcing these policies on an America that overwhelmingly does not want them. It is synonymous with Soviet Communism. So, Obama is attempting to destroy the constitution with his socialist policies, and is mostly succeeding.
EDIT – As an added bonus, they believe that Obama was not legitimately elected, that somehow it had to be due to cheating. That is also destroying the constitution, and they associate it with Soviet Communism and thus socialism.
Keith G
@srv: @Elizabelle: I would have to hear a lot more about this, but I do not feel good about any push to entwine the Social Security program with other non-benefits policy issues. I see a vast potential for a slippery slope. Let Social Security and it’s benefits data base be used for the fair distribution of benefits and other related financial issues….only.
Poopyman
@Mike in NC:
Cheney is no longer running the country, and I think you do the vast majority of law enforcement officials a disservice, as they seem to be a lot more level-headed about this stuff than the Bush administration, and certainly much more than our widdle pwess corps.
Emma
@srv: So we wait until he shoots up the neighborhood and then put him in jail where it’s unlikely he’ll get any treatment.
Your shtick is performance art. Got it.
Iowa Old Lady
@SFAW: I spent 20 years researching the communication practices of engineers. It was a rich lode of things to dig out and comment on.
A Ghost To Most
@Origuy:
Nice!
I spent the 80s writing protocol converter software in assembly and C. These boxes pulled together computers using disparate network protocols like X.25, SDLC, HDLC, etc.
When everything standardized on IP, I went into writing database and web applications.
The Thin Black Duke
@Emma: Nicely done. Thank you.
srv
@Emma:
Every vet is Rambo and no doubt they’ll seek treatment if they think their 2nd Ammendment Rights are going to be taken away for having defended your freedoms.
Your schtick is shrieking ungrateful liberal stereotyping troop hater. Got it.
PurpleGirl
@SFAW: Not sure if you’re snarking but wouldn’t President Obama be reading Marx in German? IIRC Marx was German.
The Thin Black Duke
@srv: Oddly enough, the ex-soldiers I know don’t keep fucking guns in the house. It’s only the counterfeit Rambos who think gun holsters are jockstraps.
Emma
@srv: Demoted. Not performance art. Troll, third rate. Too bad. Good performance art is scarce. Bored now.
White Trash Liberal
@srv:
I was one of those troops, and no thank you to guns. I have lost four brothers to suicide by firearm. The predominant method of suicide for the military is by firearm. Without them in their homes, they very well could have been saved.
When you take the war home, when it burns every day and night behind your eyes, it’s a fucking lonely, haunted world.
So don’t politcize guns by linking them to PTSD. As someone who lives with it, go fuck yourself.
SFAW
@PurpleGirl:
Me? Snark? Where’s my fainting couch? I have my pearls already clutched, fortunately.
The Marx thing is an old joke, probably older than you.
boatboy_srq
@PurpleGirl: You’re assuming wingnuts will admit that Obama can read in any language.
@SFAW: Something like reading The Bible in the original (Elizabethan) English, yes?