Our Collapsing Civilization

[Grath]

"“Prius Repellent” is a perfect introduction to one of the Obama era’s great conservative subcultures: the men and women who “roll coal.” For as little as $500, anyone with a diesel truck and a dream can install a smoke stack and the equipment that lets a driver “trick the engine” into needing more fuel. The result is a burst of black smoke that doubles as a political or cultural statement—a protest against the EPA, a ritual shaming of hybrid “rice burners,” and a stellar source of truck memes.""

Jesus babyfucking christ. This is actually real. This is a real thing.

I wonder what they'd think about my hybrid Subaru.

[Smiler]

Captain planet is real.

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]

Anybody keeping an eye on the ongoing Ebola outbreak?

This stuff flares up periodically, but this is about as bad as it's ever been.

[beatbandito]

Holy fuck why are they bringing people with super ebola back to america to treat? Send the doctors there, god.

[Mothra]

Eh, it isn't airborne. We'll be fiiiineee~

[Grath]

I'm not worried until Madagascar closes their ports.

[Mongrel]

New study indicates Americans have virtually zero functional influence on government policy

A bit hyperbolic, but maybe not by much at all.

EDIT: When I read the line "A shattering new study by two political science professors has found that ordinary Americans have virtually no impact whatsoever on the making of national policy in our country." my first thought was "Professors! We don't need their scum!"

[Mongrel]

Well, uh, this is embarrassing

Study shows that if you tell white folks the prison population skews heavily to blacks, the response of those white folks is... to demand harsher crime laws that continue to penalize blacks.

Essentially, a self-perpetuating cycle.

[Mongrel]

WaPo reports today that CO2 levels are rising dramatically faster than even the more strident climate-change scientists have been predicting

UH. UH.

[Mothra]

Hooo boy.

[Classic]

Why did I read the comments!?

[beatbandito]

Read the report instead maybe? We're at super high levels compared to before 1750
The 2012-13 jump was the highest its been since 1984.

So you know; Pollution is bad, WaPo is dramatic.

[Mongrel]

The Last of the Monsters With the Iron Teeth. On the disappearance of childrens' culture.

This is purely an opinion piece and not scientific in any way, so fair warning. It has a truthiness to it though.

I liked that the internet or other media were not blamed, in fact the author seems careful to avoid assigning blame to any party at all, other than a nebulous reference to a "tiling system".

[sei]

I enjoyed that article. Thank you.

[Mongrel]

Surprising absolutely no one, study comes out confirming that recently-implemented voter ID laws are having the intended effect.

[Mongrel]

The hidden author of Putinism: The Atlantic looks at the main person behind behind the modern Russian authoritarian state machinery

Long suspected, but nonetheless horrifying to hear details. It speaks to his personality type that he is flaunting himself abroad in such a transparent way, but he's far from the first to do that.

While Goering was kind enough to dissimulate his compatriots' eternal methods in a single easily-digestible sentence, the suspicion that we can - and have - made vast improvements on such simple work is inescapable.

But I suppose soldiers aren't the only ones who can find out too late that they've been fighting the last war instead of the current one.

Still and all, I know few peoples on this earth as cynical about their government as the Russians. I'm sure any number of them see the stage-management for exactly what it is. Not enough of them though, sadly. The best hope is "events" as they say. In this case, falling energy prices and Europe that's now pretty highly motivated to get the hell off of Russian energy. No amount of PR can cover a totally tanking economy, unless you set up something positively North Korean.

[Mongrel]

NY Books: The Dying Russians

A group of scientists look over Russia's mortality rate - the highest ever record in a country in peacetime, and not under the duress of war or plague - and concludes, uncomfortably, that Russia may literally be dying of sadness.

This is one of the more depressing articles I've ever read, and that's coming from someone who has know quite a lot of Russians in his time and who is familiar with the phenomenon described by the article.

It's an interesting thesis, that's for sure. I've suggested that Russians seem depressed, as a people, to me, but the Russians I known who I've dared advanced that theory to always scoff at it. Probably they're right that things seem normal enough if you're living in the middle of it. But who knows?

[zaratustra]

Dying is a way of life in Russia.

[Friday]

in soviet russia