Linkee-poo knows they'll hurt you if they think you've lied

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Philip Roth on retiring from writing. (Grokked from Mrs. Tadd)

And in case you need reminding of how unbalanced the playing field is, "Hostess Brands will ask a bankruptcy judge on Monday for approval to shut down the company and pay $1.75 million in executive bonuses." Those bonuses will go to 19 executives. You know, the company that said "we don't have enough money to pay our workers a living salary, so no more Twinkies for you." That company. The ones that can't make enough profit from brands other companies are salivating over the chance of snapping up. Like they've all been on a three day marijuana binge. The words you're looking for are "WTF?!" (Grokked from Teresa Nielsen Hayden)

Let's see. There's about 5000 workers in the BTGM for Hostess, so that would be $350 per person. And now you know why they're going into mediation.

When a kindergartner is asked what she would do if she ruled the world replies, she would destroy it from space. Like you do. In case anyone ever talks about putting children in charge, now you know why we don't do that. (Grokked from Tor.com)

You know, when astronomers worked out all the details of how to detect exo-planets that was very cool. But those methods weren't direct observations, they were observations of the perturbations of the stars those planets revolved. I still thought it was cool and never thought we'd be able to image those planets, at least not in my life time. But now we are doing it somewhat regularly. Sure, they're not much more than a glob of pixels brighter than the background, but still. Who knows, by the time I've passed on we may have color images to see if they're blue, green, orange, or purple. And maybe we'll see if they have rings (although they would need to be like Saturn's and not the rest of the gas giants (heck, we didn't know they were there until a few decades ago). (Pointed to by John)

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church decide that stepping on the American Flag during one of their protests would be a Good Thing™. One of the soldiers in attendance took exception. It's never good to cheer violence, but I see their point. Unfortunately, yeah, that's battery. My guess would be the soldier still thinks it was worth it. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)

"So (Paul) Ryan did his best to impersonate a budget wonk. It wasn’t a very good impersonation — in fact, he’s pretty bad at budget math." Just a reminder of who the players are as we head into the heavy spin cycle of this December. (Grokked from Teresa Nielsen Hayden)

The Nation's article on Alexander Lamis' interview of Lee Atwater (the Karl Rove of his generation). Just in case you think all this talk about race-baiting and dog whistling this past election is new. Also, to see the context of how "abstract statements" are intentional dog whistles to the old racial hatred. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

And, yes, some people who practice the dog whistling just don't get it themselves. "Michael Brown and Linda Harvey and other white evangelicals are fine with (having congregations of mainly white people). And they’d be perfectly comfortable tapping 'minorities and women as executive leaders and thought leaders' just as long as those folks share all the exact same opinions, perspectives and priorities as those of the white evangelical establishment." Also note the pillaring Gen. Colin Powell, once the darling of the conservative movement, took after endorsing President Obama on policy matters.

More of the self-loathing evident in conservative circles. "Seventy percent of counties with the fastest-growth in food-stamp aid during the last four years voted for the Republican presidential candidate in 2008, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data compiled by Bloomberg." An article written before the election. I wonder how the numbers held up? (Grokked from Jay Lake)

Tweet of my heart: @jasonsanford: I invented a shock collar to zap authors anytime they write cliches or steal ideas. Unfortunately, no authors survived product testing.

Alligator Quotient: Either they're really tall, or there's a whole bunch of them stacked together.