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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Please Don’t Kick the Bison (Open Thread)

Please Don’t Kick the Bison (Open Thread)

by | 133 Comments

This post is in: 

I’m not really here today, but it looks like we could use an open thread. Here’s something stupid that doesn’t involve an angry orange jack-o-lantern glowering in a Manhattan court room:

A 40-year-old man from Idaho was arrested at Yellowstone National Park this month after rangers received a report that he had harassed a herd of bison and kicked one of them in the leg.

Clarence Yoder of Idaho Falls is facing charges in federal court for the District of Wyoming for allegedly approaching and disturbing wildlife, being under the influence of alcohol in a park area, and disorderly conduct. Yoder suffered minor injuries in the encounter, and rangers took him to a nearby medical center for treatment before transporting him to Gallatin County Detention Center.

Clarence Yoder of Idaho Falls is a goddamn idiot, and he’s lucky the bison didn’t trample him to death. Why are people so dumb and hateful?

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

133Comments

  2. 2.

    Trollhattan

    Clarence Yoder of Idaho Falls is a Cohen brothers character and I demand my prize.

    BTW I have been to Idaho Falls.

  4. 4.

    Trollhattan

    Beginning to think being employed at one of Elmo’s love shops is a self-limiting gig. Talkin’ to you, Tesla workers.

    Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla (TSLA) , has reportedly planned another round of job cuts at his billion-dollar automotive company. Hundreds of Tesla employees are set to get the boot just two weeks after the company laid off roughly 14,000 staff members. In an email to staff announcing the latest round of job cuts, Musk reportedly told employees that they need to be “absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction,” according to a recent report from The Information.

    The email reveals that in this round of layoffs, Tesla’s senior director of electric vehicle charging, Rebecca Tinucci, is exiting the company along with her team of roughly 500. Tinucci and her team were also responsible for the company’s Supercharging initiative, which helped to develop fast-charging stations that can charge Tesla vehicles in 15 minutes, adding 200 miles of range.

    The email from Musk also clarifies that Tesla is not stopping its development of new Superchargers. Daniel Ho, Tesla’s director of new vehicles programs and new product initiatives, is also leaving the company, along with his team. Most of Tesla’s public policy team are also being laid off. Musk also stated in the email that staff members of executives who “don’t obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test” will also be laid off.

    Tesla’s recent cut to its Supercharging team comes after it began rolling out its Supercharger network to more non-Tesla EV owners across the nation in February. In the company’s first-quarter earnings report for 2024, it revealed that its fleet of Supercharger stations increased by 26% year-over-year, and its Supercharger connectors increased by 27%.

    https://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article288155680.html#storylink=cpy

    “Work more, LOSERS.”

  5. 5.

    Anonymous At Work

    He *was* drunk.  That explains the “stupid.”  Could explain the “asshole” part as well.  I personally get stumbly and silly.

  6. 6.

    Maxim

    I saw a post the other day (on FB) that said park rangers are already seeing new heights (depths?) of stupidity from tourists this year. And there was an actual video of several such persons getting ridiculously close to various wild animals in order to film them with their phones.

  7. 7.

    jonas

    For every Florida Man who shoots his dick off while drinking and trying to fight an alligator, I suppose there’s an Idaho Man who nearly kills himself drinking and thinking it’s a good idea to pick a fight with a bison.

  8. 8.

    VFX Lurker

    Yikes. I agree that the bison-kicking idiot is darned lucky he escaped without getting stomped by the one-ton animals.

    Max Brooks wrote about the bad behavior of tourists visiting wildlife parks in Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre. People treat wildlife like Disney animatronics instead of respecting them as wild animals.

  9. 9.

    Mike S

    Tech bros really are special.

    “What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”

  10. 10.

    Trollhattan

    Damnit, 2031 is a LONG time from now.

    The United States and Mexico have withdrawn their joint bid to host the 2027 Women’s World Cup and will instead focus on bidding for the tournament in 2031.
    It comes less than three weeks before the hosts were to be chosen, at a Fifa congress in Bangkok on 17 May.
    The remaining bids are from Brazil and a joint one from Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
    The US Soccer and Mexican Football Federations said their 2031 bid will call for equal investment as the men’s tournament in a “historic first”.
    “The revised bid will allow US Soccer to build on the learnings and success of the 2026 World Cup, better support our host cities, expand our partnerships and media deals, and further engage with our fans so we can host a record-breaking tournament in 2031.” the federations said in a statement.
    The US, Mexico and Canada are hosting the men’s World Cup in 2026.
    “Hosting a World Cup tournament is a huge undertaking – and having additional time to prepare allows us to maximize its impact across the globe,” said US Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone.

  12. 12.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    As in the classic statement by a Yellowstone park Ranger:

    “there’s considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bear and the dumbest human.”

     

    Bison also, too, I guess.

  13. 13.

    Kelly

    Went to Yellowstone with the family in 1989. We saw people were getting stupidly close bison and elk to get pictures way back then.

  14. 14.

    hueyplong

    Not to kick start contentiousness in the new thread, but it seems like maybe this story in fact at least indirectly “involve[s] an angry orange jack-o-lantern glowering in a Manhattan court room,” because the smart money is on the defendant being an Idaho Falls-based MAGAt.  A whole lot of algorithms will spin out of control if he ain’t.

  16. 16.

    twbrandt

    @Trollhattan: so, the other automakers finally adopt the Tesla standard meaning there will be a huge demand for supercharging stations, and all of Tesla’s model lineup is aging. Laying off the supercharger and new product team makes no sense whatever.

    Dumber than kicking a bison.

  19. 19.

    Trollhattan

    @Mike S: These douches again. Solano County way too close for comfort if you ask me.

    The particulars of this caper veer into the ridiculous. Flannery Associates, the billionaires’ front group, sneaked around for five years on a stealth mission to snatch up $900 million worth of agricultural land in Solano County, where land use laws expressly forbid projects like the one the group proposes. The company lavished money on local landowners, overpaying for the land by millions and creating a frenzy. Then, after some local landowners resisted their offers, the billionaires filed a $510 million lawsuit against them. Ironically, the plutocrats turned plaintiffs accused this handful of holdouts of “endless greed.”

    Solano County residents—whose approval will be needed next November for the project to move forward—are understandably dubious of the shady billionaires and their secretive plan for a new community whose name sounds like a celebrity cemetery. At packed town hall meetings, community members from cities like Fairfield, Rio Vista, and Vacaville have voiced fierce opposition. They fear the project will spur environmental damage, traffic, pollution, and sprawl.

    Yet there’s potentially a more sinister angle. California Forever aligns suspiciously with a cultish dystopian movement to build so-called “network states”—private zones where tech zillionaires can abandon democratic society to live under the rule of their own private micro governments. The secret plot to assemble vast swaths of land and build a new city fits a pattern of wealthy Silicon Valley types attempting to construct similar enclaves around the globe. San Francisco billionaire Michael Moritz, a driving force behind California Forever, appeared to hint at the idea in his pitch to potential investors back in 2017.

    “He painted a kind of urban blank slate where everything from design to construction methods and new forms of governance could be rethought,” reported The New York Times, which first revealed the billionaires’ plan.

    In a world of intensifying crises like climate change and economic inequality, some billionaires have a novel solution: high-tech secession.

    “We can secede by removing children from state-run schools, converting currency into gold or cryptocurrency, relocating to states with lower taxes, obtaining a second passport, or expatriating to a tax haven,” writes Slobodian. “We can secede, and many have, by joining gated communities to create private governments in miniature.”

    Like that place in Idaho preppers were planning to build, only the people with the guns will be employees.

  20. 20.

    Bee Girls

    “Something, something, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son”

    Clarence has somehow made it to 40 years old. His friend who was driving was also drunk and also charged.

  21. 21.

    gwangung

    @Maxim: Add to that the observation made elsewhere that there a lot more asshole drivers and you have to wonder if the pandemic is causing all sorts of post-traumatic stress behaviors that are not at all obvious.

  22. 22.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    This assclown had an accomplice, 37-year old McKenna Bass, his girlfriend?

    It’s almost 2-hours from Idaho Falls to the West Entrance and this happened on the 21st when it appears the west entrance hadn’t been open for long.  Even with climate change, I’ve been up there that time of year (we actually had a literal “IT Shack” in the park for the Fed Lands people (they do the roads in the National Parks) and it’s cold and snowbound.

    Two morans.

  23. 23.

    gratuitous

    Why are people so dumb? I have no answer, except to relate my Yellowstone experience. We were walking the little tour past an area with bubbling mud pots, separating the path from the pots by a three rail fence. As we were looking at stuff, a bison came ambling down the slope on the other side of the fence. I grabbed my wife’s elbow and started slowing walking backwards. The bison was pretty chill, but there’s no guarantee he was going to stay that way, so we kept our distance.

    Not everyone though! There were probably a dozen eejets who rushed over to the fence to get selfies with the bison in the background. Luckily the beast was about his own business and nobody had to be life-flighted out of the area, but holy shit – how dumb can a person be?!

  25. 25.

    SpaceUnit

    I believe that people should be allowed to interact with bison in any way they choose.  It’s what Darwin would have wanted.

  29. 29.

    eclare

    @Baud:

    I wouldn’t kick a cow, either.  I used to volunteer at a zoo, taking out small animals for interactions.  When I was asked “does it bite?” the standard response was “anything with teeth can bite.”

  32. 32.

    CliosFanboy

    Anybody else see the t-shirt for sale online with a Buffalo on it and the re t Please Don’t Pet the Fluffy Cows.

  33. 33.

    Baud

    @CliosFanboy:

    Wasn’t there one that was basically free sex all the time? Didn’t last, but at least it was better than the abstinence communities.

  37. 37.

    Jeffro

    I think the signs should say, “Please DO kick the bison…before you reproduce, though”

  38. 38.

    Jeffro

    @Maxim:

    @VFX Lurker:

    visitors to NPs have been dumb since time immemorial…reading this helped me convince Mrs. Fro that being a ranger probably isn’t a healthy, relaxing post-retirement occupation (or, ever)

  40. 40.

    cmorenc

    @twbrandt:

    The smartest person in the world doesn’t need no stinkin’’ engineers.  How does he know he is the smartest person in the world?  Because he’s the smartest person in the world.

  42. 42.

    Tony Jay

    @Trollhattan:

    Confiscatory tax-rates clearly aren’t just necessary for the good of society at large. Continent-sized assholery of this calibre absolutely demands that confiscatory tax-rates be ushered in wearing a dandy cape and straddling a bison, for only that could properly express how fabulous they would be when wielded against these Tai-Pans of Technobbery.

  43. 43.

    Gvg

    @Baud: Cows especially Bulls are dangerous. Before modern times when most people lived on farms, more people were killed by bulls than most other causes. Modern dairy farms mostly don’t keep bulls and use artificial insemination. Farmers look through catalogs and compare how much milk all the heifers from bull A produce compared to Bull B etc. I think the states run the stud farms. Even the cows are no joke. They are huge.

  44. 44.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @eclare: Yes in England walkers are basically given free reign to cross pastures on country rambles and there are a few people every year that are injured or killed by cows behaving badly.

  46. 46.

    sdhays

    @Trollhattan: This hilarious:

    staff members of executives who “don’t obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test” will also be laid off.

    This is an obvious lie since Musk himself continues to have a job.

    I guess now Tesla’s employees and investors get to experience Musk’s Xitter-level executive performance.

  50. 50.

    sdhays

    @Baud: I seem to recall that the guy who assassinated McKinley was a guy who joined one of those very Christian sex communities and left because no one actually wanted to have sex with him. So he eventually got around to assassinating the President.

    Maybe it was Garfield?

  51. 51.

    TBone

    All the cows I’ve ever known are not wild animals.  They are very sedate and respectable.

  53. 53.

    Mike S

    @Trollhattan:  They seem to think dystopian scenarios are workable with their grand visions attached to them. The people he plans on arming will be completely beholden to them:

    Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly “policeman’s banquets” to win them over.

    “Grays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,” said Srinivasan. “What does that mean? That’s, as I said, banquets. That means every policeman’s son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.”

    In exchange for extra food and jobs, cops would pledge loyalty to the Grays. Srinivasan recommends asking officers a series of questions to ascertain their political leanings. For example: “Did you want to take the sign off of Elon’s building?”

  55. 55.

    Martin

    @Trollhattan: There is a real strain of technofascism developing here.

    “A huge win would be a Gray Pride parade with 50,000 Grays,” said Srinivasan. “That would start to say: ‘Whose streets? Our streets!’ You have the A.I. Flying Spaghetti Monster. You have the Bitcoin parade. You have the drones flying overhead in formation…. You have bubbling genetic experiments on beakers.… You have the police at the Gray Pride parade. They’re flying the Anduril drones …”

    Everyone would be welcome at the Gray Pride march—everyone, that is, except the Blues. Srinivasan defines the Blue political tribe as the liberal voters he implies are responsible for the city’s problems. Blues will be banned from the Gray-controlled zones, said Balaji, unlike Republicans (“Reds”).

    “Reds should be welcomed there, and people should wear their tribal colors,” said Srinivasan, who compared his color-coded apartheid system to the Bloods vs. Crips gang rivalry. “No Blues should be welcomed there.”

    While the Blues would be excluded, they would not be forgotten. Srinivasan imagines public screenings of anti-Blue propaganda films: “In addition to celebrating Gray and celebrating Red, you should have movies shown about Blue abuses.… There should be lots of stories about what Blues are doing that is bad.”

    Balaji goes on—and on. The Grays will rename city streets after tech figures and erect public monuments to memorialize the alleged horrors of progressive Democratic governance. Corporate logos and signs will fill the skyline to signify Gray dominance of the city. “Take total control of your neighborhood. Push out all Blues. Tell them they’re … unwelcome,” he said. “Just as Blues ethnically cleanse me out of San Francisco, like, push out all Blues.” The idea, he added, is to do to San Francisco what Musk did to Twitter.

    The problem I that California does need development, so there’s an appetite for what they are wanting to do, but the manner in which they are doing it is just horrible, and their politics are as bad or worse than Trumps, but it has a lot of the trappings of what people on the left look for. Not in the passage above, but in the techno-utopian promises they offer – addressing climate change, universal healthcare and the like. All you need to do is give them all the money and power and it’s yours

    Heh. Mike S beat me too it. Touché good man.

  56. 56.

    Another Scott

    @Trollhattan: Is Andreessen an investor??

    ICYMI, Prospect.org – Rick Perlstein – My Dinner with Andreessen:

    The big idea: “Our enemy is the Precautionary Principle.” Normal people define that as the imperative of seeking to prevent and contain certain potentially civilization-ending potentialities like nuclear holocaust and pandemic. Andreessen, conversely, calls precaution “perhaps the most catastrophic mistake in Western society in my lifetime … deeply immoral, and we must jettison it with extreme prejudice.”

    Move fast! Break things! Let the proles suffer the consequences! Send me power and money!!

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  57. 57.

    TBone

    @Mike S: sounds easily infiltrated to me.  I’d get one of those “security” jobs and perform small acts of resistance all over the damn place.

  58. 58.

    Harrison Wesley

    @sdhays: Yeah, Garfield – there’s a new book out about the sect and about Guiteau that looks pretty interesting.

  60. 60.

    Jeffro

    @NotMax: I’m pretty sure the new recruits don’t get that gig right out of the academy ;)

    And if they did want it?  Much less get it?  They’re not REAL rangers!! ;)

  61. 61.

    CaseyL

    Don’t much care about tech MOTU building Galt’s Gulch in California, EXCEPT insofar as they’re buying up water rights.

    Water is going to be a Very Big Deal in 5 years – already is in the Southwest – and I worry quite a bit about bilionaires making sure that they, and no one else, has any.

  63. 63.

    Brachiator

    The email from Musk also clarifies that Tesla is not stopping its development of new Superchargers. Daniel Ho, Tesla’s director of new vehicles programs and new product initiatives, is also leaving the company, along with his team. Most of Tesla’s public policy team are also being laid off. Musk also stated in the email that staff members of executives who “don’t obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test” will also be laid off.

    Wow. This Musk guy is a master fuck-up.

    He’s like an Ayn Rand roid rage.

  64. 64.

    eclare

    @Martin:

    Does anyone else think it’s more than a coincidence that the Grays are the good guys and the Blues are the bad guys?  That’s a little too Civil War-ish.

  65. 65.

    hells littlest angel

    Why are people so dumb and hateful?

    The answer is right there in the story: “being under the influence of alcohol”

  66. 66.

    Trollhattan

    @Citizen Alan: There’s a crapton of wind turbines sited in Solano County and those billionaire bastards will be spending a lot of time and money trying to outlaw the persistent wind making their cookouts so damn…windy.

    OTOH easy access to the Vacaville Outlets Mall and Travis AFB. “Somebody should make those C-17s less noisy. Who do I call?”

  70. 70.

    JustRuss

    @CliosFanboy:Anybody else see the t-shirt for sale online with a Buffalo on it and the re t Please Don’t Pet the Fluffy Cows.

    Yep, very nearly bought one. There’s another one with a Bison on it that says: Actually, I can fix stupid.

  71. 71.

    Trollhattan

    @Another Scott: Why yes, how did you know? :-)

    In 2020, Balaji Srinivasan—a close associate of both Thiel and California Forever investor Marc Andreessen—published “The Network State: How to Start a New Country.” Srinivasan, the idea’s leading evangelist, defines a network state as “a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.”

    Srinivasan envisions an explosion of new mini-nations in which “the people are spread around the world in clusters of varying size, but their hearts are in one place.”

    He depicts traditional patriotism as an outdated concept with no place in the world of the future. “Is the US establishment a force for good in the world?” asks Srinivasan, who Donald Trump reportedly considered appointing as head of the Food and Drug Administration in 2017. “Is the US establishment a force for good at home?” His answer: “No.”

    Srinivasan, whose manifesto favors short paragraphs and numbered lists, also speaks matter-of-factly about the possibility of another Civil War.

    Evidently Thiel already has his own thing going elsewhere.

  74. 74.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Kelly: ​
     

    Went to Yellowstone with the family in 1989. We saw people were getting stupidly close bison and elk to get pictures way back then.

    But did you see anyone carving their initials on a møøse?

  75. 75.

    gene108

    @eclare:

    And that libertarian town in New Hampshire that was overrun by bears.

    Tech billionaires would only higher the best people to grift work for them.

    They’ll also be less likely to cooperate than the towns folk in New Hampshire.

    Or each billionaire could build their own settlement and be the sole authority for local decisions.

  76. 76.

    Geminid

    @CliosFanboy: Those were wild times, with a lot of novel religious movements.

    Some lasted. The Latter Day Saints survived to thrive in the 20th century, and 7th Day Adventists and Christian Scientists are still around as well. The Universalists made it through by joining up with the Unitarians.

    Not much love now for the Swedenborgians though.

  78. 78.

    Origuy

    @Mike S: O, Brave New World that has such people in it! I suppose calling the various groups Alphas, Betas, and Gammas would be too obvious.

  80. 80.

    Mike S

    @Martin:

    We are a very blue state and I live in a very blue part of it. That makes the maga population within the bluest parts very fascism curious and they just aren’t smart enough to understand what happens when their dream leaders actually take power.

  82. 82.

    Martin

    @eclare: Oh, the analogies they regularly draw are fucking wild. The whole AI scene is astonishing – with half of them rushing for the complete downfall of civilization as soon as possible so they can rebuild it after, and the other half demanding all funding go into addressing the problem of the complete downfall of civilization at the expense of all other societal problems. They’ll only take a small cut.

  83. 83.

    Harrison Wesley

    @Geminid: True, there aren’t a whole lot of New Church people around.  I’ve been interested in them for years, but that was pretty easy since I lived in Philadelphia.  They make up a pretty big portion of the population in Bryn Athyn (Montgomery County), and the Swedenborg Foundation is located in West Chester (Chester County).  The only other places I’ve heard about them having a presence is Boston and London.  There are also some in California but I’m not sure where.

  86. 86.

    Jackie

    Another one’s about to bite the dust!

    “The District of Columbia’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel issued a recommendation this week battering the credibility of former Donald Trump Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Clark, saying Clark’s ‘dishonest attempt to create national chaos’ in the run-up to Jan. 6 meant the only suitable sanction would be disbarment because, put simply, nothing else would do,” Law & Crime reports.

    From the opinion: “We must do what we can to ensure that this conduct is never repeated. The way to accomplish that goal is to remove from the profession lawyers who betrayed their constitutional obligations and their country. It is important that other lawyers who might be tempted to engage in similar misconduct be aware that doing so will cost them their privilege to practice law.”

  87. 87.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Maxim: one of the Instagram accounts I follow is called Taurons of Yellowstone (Tauron = Tourist + moron), which show videos of people endangering their lives to take selfies or pet the wildlife. People act like it is Disneyland. I saw one satisfyingly video where an older lady approached a bison to pet it, I presume, and got knocked ass over teakettle (but wasn’t bad hurt, thank goodness). Bison don’t play.

  89. 89.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): I think it’s spelled Tourons of Yellowstone. The videos of people holding their infants up for pics ten feet from a bison bother me most. Not the baby’s fault their parents have no sense…. The guys who run up to grizzlies just have a death wish..

  90. 90.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Snarki, child of Loki: I remember that quote! It was regarding the difficulty in getting effective bear proof garbage cans which people could still figure out how to open.

  91. 91.

    PST

    @Mike S:

    … a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”

    Sounds a little like maybe this guy read Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age once upon a time, although I suppose to follow that model each megacompany would have its own manners, mores, and t-shirt color.

  93. 93.

    Kelly

    @Gvg: Bulls are dangerous

    It took Lyle Lovett 6 month to recover from being pinned against fence by his uncle’s bull.

  95. 95.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Harrison Wesley: I see you got there first. Have you read Destiny of the Republic? It’s about Garfield and Giteau. Garfield was an impressive guy and probably would have been a really good President. Maybe top shelf. But never got the chance.

  97. 97.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

     

    @eclare: Being kicked by a cow is no picnic either, as I have gathered from reading and watching All Creatures Great and Small. And let’s not even start with bulls.

  100. 100.

    Geminid

    @Citizen Alan: Man, I tried to read Atlas Shrugged andI decided reading it once was once too often. At first that “Who is John Galt” thing hooked me, but after 150 pages I was like, “Who the fu*k cares.”

  103. 103.

    BigJimSlade

    @Trollhattan: These people basically live like this already, just not in their own “state” or whatever they want to call it. Just like money, they can never have enough of everything they want.

  105. 105.

    gene108

    @Martin:

    I believe Srinivasan is a Brahmin caste name – the highest

    Still an incredibly common name. I’m not sure if all the Srinivas’s, Srinivasan’s, and Srinivasalu’s I’ve met are Brahmin’s, but it’s a bit much to assume the name conveys political affiliation.

    It’d be like assuming Donald’s are MAGA’s, because of Donald Trump.

  106. 106.

    Brachiator

    @Snarki, child of Loki:

    “there’s considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bear and the dumbest human.”

    Well said.

    You would think they would have learned something from “Yogi Bear Show” cartoons.

    Yogi has it better than a millionaire.
    That’s because he is smarter than the average bear!

  107. 107.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Geminid: The book discusses his Civil War record some but doesn’t mention Harrison or McKinley.

  110. 110.

    Jay

    @Dan B:

    Mostly through vehicle accidents, not attacking humans.

    They use the plowed roads and railroad tracks as trails when moving around in winter, eat the road salt.

    While a 1500lb moose on skinny legs has little impact on a train, on a car or truck most of that 1500lbs hits the windshield.

  111. 111.

    Jay

    SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. – A wealthy Silicon Valley-backed campaign to build a green city for up to 400,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area has submitted what it says are enough signatures to qualify the initiative for the November election.
    The campaign submitted more than 20,000 signatures but would need only about 13,000 valid ones to qualify for the ballot. If verified by Solano County’s elections office, voters will decide in the fall whether to allow urban development on land currently zoned for agriculture. The land-use change would be necessary for the development to be built.

    Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader who heads the company behind the campaign, California Forever, said at a news conference Tuesday that he heard from thousands of people who want careers and homes in the county where they grew up but can no longer afford because of high housing costs and a lack of nearby work.

    https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/campaign-to-build-new-california-city-submits-signatures-to-get-on-november-ballot-1.6868222

  112. 112.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Gvg:

    Modern dairy farms mostly don’t keep bulls and use artificial insemination. Farmers look through catalogs and compare how much milk all the heifers from bull A produce compared to Bull B etc.

    Heifer cow is better than none.

  115. 115.

    hueyplong

    There is an argument that doctors killed Garfield, but the assassin got the ball rolling.

  117. 117.

    schrodingers_cat

    @gene108: My guess is that he is Tambram. In the last election BJP got upwards of 90% Brahmin vote. Modi’s most vociferous social media defenders are South Indian Brahmins. They seem to have taken over as the RSS brain trust from Marathi Brahmins off late.

    Vikram Sampath, Jai Sai Deepak, Anand Ranganathan to name but a few. They have been merrily distorting India’s history in service of the Hindutva agenda.

  119. 119.

    Lyrebird

    @Gvg: Ah!  Someone else who can understand why I don’t know whether to gag or laugh at the use of “service” as a verb in front of “your customers” or something like that.  NO THANK YOU!!!

  120. 120.

    Eyeroller

    @schrodingers_cat: Huh.  When I was in junior high to high school the husband in my next-door-neighbors’ family was Tamil, but I have no idea what caste he may have been and I cannot get even a hint from the name since I don’t know whether there’s a pattern.  In my ignorance I thought most Brahmins were northern Indian.

  121. 121.

    kalakal

    @Jay: Similar effect with camels, they tend to walk away, the driver not so much. Camels are big, dromedaries about a 1,000 lbs, Bactrians can get to double that

  122. 122.

    like a metaphor

    Recently I was at the Japanese gardenin the park. There is a small lake that has some very big Koi fish in it, and several streams that feed into the lake.  I saw these two guys on the banks of the stream, with a net.  They were trying to kidnap the younger Koi fish.  With a net and a backpack(!).  I remembered having seen a gardener in a Cushman nearby, so I went and told him- “Hey those two white guys over there are trying to poach the Koi!”  (In my experience, it’s important to specify if the hoodlums are white, otherwise people are likely to assume that you are talking about a POC).  The gardener got on his walkie-talkie, and hordes of cops were there, in less than a minute.  I had no idea that the cops were already in the park for some other reason.

    I’m not the snitching type, but damn it felt good to save some fishes from getting stuffed into some fratboy’s backpacks.

  125. 125.

    Eyeroller

    @schrodingers_cat: He wasn’t particularly observant (he married an American woman) though he drifted toward vegetarianism as he aged; maybe that’s a Brahmin thing?  I know that some Brahmins make a big deal out of being vegetarian but that doesn’t mean only Brahmins would do so. He stayed mostly Hindu, but he had doubts.  He was a pediatric surgeon and I clearly remember one night he came over to talk to us because he was upset that once again he had had to tell some parents that their baby would not survive, so he was doubting theology in general.

  126. 126.

    RaflW

    @Trollhattan: We need wealth taxes and much higher taxes on multi-million-dollar salaries (and on the various dodges bigwigs use to disguise their salaries as ‘stock option vesting’ and all the other sh*t).

    These people are too rich and too sociopathic. We can’t fix the latter, so we have to change the former.

  129. 129.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Eyeroller: Not all Indian vegetarians are Brahmin and not all Brahmins are vegetarian. There is a lot of regional variation. Like anything about India it is complicated. But to those that are vegetarian its a big deal to them. It has a lot to do with ideals of ritual purity. Animal carcasses and those who deal with them are considered not pure.

    Some of India’s strictest vegetarians are Jains who are not Hindu at all.

  132. 132.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    @gene108:

    Or each billionaire could build their own settlement and be the sole authority for local decisions.

    Damned if I didn’t read that at first glance as “Delusions”

    Did I just fix that for you?

  133. 133.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @CliosFanboy: when I went to Yellowstone, they had videos playing in every ranger station and visitor center, showing what a bison could do to you, if you approached it. I mean, it showed what a bison was doing to someone.

    a fellow tourist had a t-shirt I thought was hilarious: it said something like

    ”feed the bears

    swim in the hot pools

    pet the bison.

    the EMTs of Yellowstone thank you for your business”

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