Not The News

[Cipheron]

https://www.rawstory.com/rfk-jr-brain-worm/

Third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a startling medical secret, according to The New York Times: Parts of his brain were apparently eaten by a parasitic worm.

...

According to the report, Kennedy suffers from a number of other impairments, including atrial fibrillation and mercury poisoning related to the consumption of fish.

Part of his brain got eaten AND he got mercury poisoning.

This might ... explain many things.

[demagogue]

Attacking him just makes his followers circle the wagons & double-down on supporting the guy, as with Trump. They actually get a boost from acting irresponsibly. Well, I don't know if RFK Jr.'s ailments come from irresponsible behavior, but his statements and opportunism riding the populist tide under their shadow (boost?) do.

Trump's legal woe's certainly come from irresponsible behavior. He's on the eve of getting locked up for contempt of court for violating his gag order, and I imagine he'd jump at the chance to get the optics of being unfairly locked up if the sentence is short enough. The guy will probably think he's getting his My Struggle moment.

What a messed up local Nash equilibrium fate has brought us to.
The worse behaved he is, the more they support him.
You can't organize a society around that incentive structure.

[Cipheron]

BTW, The context is apparently from RFK's divorce proceedings, he was arguing diminished earning capacity, to pay less alimony. So we can't know how accurate it is, or if he was lying or exaggerating at the time, but it's from court documents his own lawyers would have filed.

Anyway he has zero chance of doing anything in the election, so it's really a side-story. Trump supporters boosted him because they thought he'd siphon votes from the Democrats purely because of the Kennedy name, but that is some pretty magical thinking there, since the whole "JFK Jr cult" is actually a Republican thing.

So I don't think discussing or not discussing this story makes much difference at this point, but if he is actually still running in November, then some amount of QAnon types would probably switch their vote to him. Which would be pretty silly, but can't be ruled out if you've looked at the alternate reality stuff that is QAnon discussion.

[Starker]

After a prolonged media diet due to real life responsibilities, the first thing I come across when browsing my political feeds was a United States governor bragging about killing her dog. Seems like the dog didn't behave quite like she wanted to because she failed to train it and she took it out to a gravel pit and shot it.

I've trained a few dogs in my life and the first one didn't turn out so good and misbehaved in various ways. You know what I did? I went to a better trainer and retrained the dog under her supervision. I'm not familiar with the dog breed in question, but I looked it up and it apparently is one of the more easily trainable breeds out there plus it was still pretty much a puppy at 14 months old. Instead of taking responsibility and admitting her failure as a trainer by giving the dog to a good home, she instead chose to sweep her failure under the rug by killing the dog.

I don't even get what the point was to brag about it. I guess she was trying to show what a tough politician she is. Well, I have no idea what kind of political culture there is in her state in the US, but around here, even if you have to kill your dog (which from all accounts she absolutely didn't), it reflects your failure as a dog owner more than anything else.

Also, apparently she is trying to turn it into a "you don't know how it is to live on a farm" thing:



I spent a lot of time on a farm as a child. My father and one of my aunts had a farm for the longest time. With animals that occasionally get killed and eaten and people hunting in the woods for some extra meat. Nobody I ever met around there or on the neighbouring farms had that kind of an attitude towards killing animals.

[Cipheron]

The weird part was the addendum to that story where she said that while she was at it, she killed a goat that had apparently pushed her kids over, messing up some clothes.

So, the dog killed someones chickens, and that was the bar, but after having killed the dog, some psychological bar was lowered and she felt it was ok to kill the goat, too.

It really could go either way. Some people would be traumatized by having to put down their family dog, and less likely to kill, but she ... was desensitized and rationalized further killings for lesser offenses. It probably depends a lot of the person. I'm not sure how that personality type translates into a position of power, but my guess is "not good".

In fact if you read between the lines, the likely truth is that she was *angry* at the dog for making her look bad, so killed it out of revenge, then took revenge on the goat, too, still out of anger.

She included the story to try and prove she's a "do the tough stuff that needs to be done" kind of leader but she misread the room, because she is a sociopath. The account ends with her little daughter asking "where's cricket". Like, WHY would you write that and think it makes you sound tough, and not like a weird monster that just traumatized your child. The only way you could make this sound worse is if she skinned and cooked Cricket then the child found out they were eating him.

[Starker]

I had not even heard about the goat, but it does fit the pattern:

https://apnews.com/article/kristi-no...f20ab3b227a19b

[...]
But South Dakota Democratic Senate Minority Leader Reynold Nesiba considered the disclosure more calculated than stupid. He said the story has circulated for years among lawmakers that Noem killed a dog in a “fit of anger” and that there were witnesses. He speculated that it was coming out now because Noem is being vetted as a candidate for vice president.
[...]

[Nicker]

The only way you could make this sound worse is if she skinned and cooked Cricket then the child found out they were eating him.

'Don't cry, Honey. Cricket's a part of you now. Forever.'

She included the story to try and prove she's a "do the tough stuff that needs to be done" kind of leader but she misread the room, because she is a sociopath.

This.

Normal, socialized humans have a dangerous weakness for sociopaths. Every historical leader with The Great in their title was a sociopath/psychopath, responsible for the unnecessary deaths of tens of millions of people and yet they are celebrated as heroes. Unlike clueless twats such as Crusty Gnome, many are cunning and charming, disguising their sickness until they are on the throne. And if there isn't a throne for them to assume, they will destroy a country to create one.

[DuatDweller]

This reminds me of a certain African dictator having a dinner with several foreigner personalities, after dinner the dictator tells to the French minister "did you liked the meat, it was human flesh!". Eeww.
It was Bokassa I think.

[heywood]

Same governor is now banned by 6 out of 9 native tribes in S Dakota and can't set foot in 20% of her state. She's been picking fights with them since before Covid. She says Biden"s dog should be shot too. Real nice lady. Would love to see Trump pick her but he's not THAT stupid. She'd probably have to crawl in bed with him to save her political career at this point.

[Starker]

Jon Stewart on cancel culture:

[Azaran]

This is blowing up. Man claims to have photographed a thylacine, which has been officially extinct for 100 years.



A couple of the clearer pics. The second looks suspicious, the jaw is open too far to be natural, so might be AI generated





Personally, I believe the thylacine is probably still out there (there's been too many claimed sightings), but this one's a hoax. Even the way the guy tells his story is fishy, he hesitates a lot, sounds like he's trying to make it up as he goes along

[DuatDweller]

You will never know, sometimes supposed extinct animals appear on surveillance cameras out in the wild, might be real, who knows.

[Cipheron]

Yesterday I was reading someone's comments speculating that Musk is just a con-man due to how often he'd claimed that fully self-driving Tesla cars were only a year away. Basically he's claimed that every year for almost 10 years.

Then there's his hyperloop thing, which went from Star Trek looking pods in a vacuum tube, to normal Tesla cars driving through a tunnel. The whole thing was pushed as "just around the corner" when Musk was trying to get plans scrapped for a high-speed coastal rail link in California - which is actually cost-effective because it uses existing technology from Europe and Asia, and the population density in California is high enough. But ... it would impact his car business so he had to come up with some snake oil to confuse the issue.

The of course, the cybertruck smacks of someone with too much money and control surrounded by yes men who won't tell you the idea sucks. 100% Musk was relying on his personal brand to sell the thing, and probably thinks people are stupid enough to buy it.

And on Cody's last Some More News, i found this gem:

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon...odysuit-2021-8

Elon Musk unveiled plans for a human-like robot — but the first prototype was just a guy dancing in a bodysuit

He announced he's going to make robots to take on companies like Boston Dynamics but all they could show was a person in a rubber suit, as the proof of concept. Like, at that point he's not even trying to hide how little substance there is to his claims.

Mind you all these things were back when he was the media's golden boy, before the Twitter shitstorm.

[Starker]

900k does not sound like nearly enough for what these apples did:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ortured-police

A California city has agreed to pay $900,000 to a man who was subjected to a 17-hour police interrogation in which officers pressured him to falsely confess to murdering his father, who was alive.

During the 2018 interrogation of Thomas Perez Jr by police in Fontana, a city east of Los Angeles, officers suggested they would have Perez’s dog euthanized as a result of his actions, according to a complaint and footage of the encounter. A judge said the questioning appeared to be “unconstitutional psychological torture”, and the city agreed to settle Perez’s lawsuit for $898,000, his lawyer announced this week.

The extraordinary case of a coerced false confession has sparked widespread outrage, with footage showing Perez in extreme emotional and physical distress, including as officers brought his dog in and said the animal would need to be put down due to “depression” from witnessing a murder that had not actually occurred.

[...]

During the interrogation, Perez Jr started pulling out his hair, hitting himself and tearing off his shirt, nearly falling to the floor, at which point the officers laughed at him and told him he was stressing his dog, the judge summarized. The footage showed him at one point lying on the floor holding on to his dog. Officers also said he would be “charged” $1m in restitution if he did not lead them to his father’s body.

Eventually, detectives falsely told Perez his father’s body had been located, that he was in the morgue with stab marks, Perez’s complaint says. Perez then falsely confessed and was left alone in the room, where video captured him trying to hang himself.

[...]

Perez was then transported to a hospital on an involuntary psychiatric hold and, for the first time, read his Miranda rights indicating he had a right to remain silent, the judge said. That night, one of the detectives received a call from Perez Sr’s daughter, who confirmed that her father had been located and was alive.

[...]

Steering said police did not, however, inform Perez Jr that his father was alive and instead kept him isolated in a psychiatric hold for three days while he believed both his dog and father had been killed.

Steering said detectives took the dog to a pound, but that Perez Jr was eventually able to track him down due to the dog’s chip and rescue him.
[...]

[heywood]

The cops who conducted the torture have not been prosecuted. They don't have to pay for this judgment. And as far as I can tell, so far they have not faced any disciplinary action. That is a real crime.

[Azaran]

Popegate

Pope Francis ‘sorry’ for homophobic slur. Pontiff said there was too much ‘faggotry’ in seminaries, Italian newspapers reported

During a meeting with more than 250 bishops last week, the 87-year-old pontiff was said to have used an offensive term while expressing his opposition to homosexual men joining training colleges for priests, even if they committed to celibacy.

According to two Italian newspapers, Francis said there was already too much “frociaggine” in seminaries, using an offensive Roman term which translates as “faggotry”.

The reports made headlines around the world and drew dismay from both LGTBQ groups and Catholics.

Some commentators suggested the Argentine Pope did not know what he was saying.

The Vatican statement did not confirm that he used the word but referenced newspaper articles.

“As he had the opportunity to state on several occasions: ‘In the Church there is room for everyone, everyone! Nobody is useless, nobody is superfluous, there is space for everyone. Just as we are, all of us’,” it said.

John Allen, *vaticanist and author, said the pope was known for having a “salty tongue”, using “off-colour, occasionally vulgar language”.

Francis once said Catholics need not “breed like rabbits” and in 2015 drew criticism for seeming to defend the use of violence to defend one’s faith, saying that “if a good friend speaks badly of my mother, he can expect to get punched”.

[DuatDweller]

Well I know of a few Catholic church seminars who walked away from their religious call because inside the religious organization students and teachers were practicing homosexual advances on either sides, so I guess is not that far out from the truth.

[heywood]

What do you expect when you impose a celibacy requirement? That's what draws gay men to enroll in disproportionate numbers and leads to most of the sexual abuse. Like the hierarchical bureaucracy, celibacy is a holdover from the middle ages when the church was the richest and most powerful institution and they wanted to prevent nepotism and the formation of dynasties.

[DuatDweller]

Yet another Boing passenger airplane dropping altitude, this time in Singapore.
If you really need it, here is the link.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9xx5pj095jo

The last time* there was a leak from some pilot saying "we lost all instruments, nothing was working".

*New Zealand flight that time.
It is time that Boing do something to fix this instrumental blackout.

[DuatDweller]

https://apnews.com/article/cat-honor...11f92967909b33


Max the cat is now a ‘doctor of litter-ature’ from Vermont State University

A Vermont university has bestowed the honorary degree of “doctor of litter-ature” on Max the cat, a beloved member of its community, ahead of students’ graduation on Saturday.

Vermont State University’s Castleton campus is honoring the feline not for his mousing or napping, but for his friendliness.

“Max the Cat has been an affectionate member of the Castleton family for years,” the school said in a Facebook post.

The popular tabby lives in a house with his human family on the street that leads to the main entrance to campus.

“So he decided that he would go up on campus, and he just started hanging out with the college students, and they love him,” owner Ashley Dow said Thursday.

He’s been socializing on campus for about four years, and students get excited when they see him. They pick him up and take selfies with him, and he even likes to go on tours with prospective students that meet at a building across from the family’s house, she said.

“I don’t even know how he knows to go, but he does,” Dow said. “And then he’ll follow them on their tour.”

The students refer to Dow as Max’s mom, and graduates who return to town sometimes ask her how Max is doing.

Max won’t be participating in the graduation, though. His degree will be delivered to Dow later.

[Azaran]

https://apnews.com/article/cat-honor...11f92967909b33


Max the cat is now a ‘doctor of litter-ature’ from Vermont State University

This is the news we need

[Starker]

Apparently, the answer to, "How do you like them apples?" is, "Not behind the wheel."

[Cipheron]

For something very not news, this novel's title

https://www.theouterhaven.net/2021/1...96-pages-long/

Short version: in Japan "light novels" which are serialized have tended to have longer and longer titles, since it's an extremely saturated genre and harder and harder to catch people's attention. So they really have to hook them with the concept, and that's meant basically explaining the synopsis in the title. "Ressurected in the Demon world with only a toothbrush and a can of catfood". Not a real title, but similar.

It's peaked - a guy wrote a light novel where the title doesn't stop on the cover, the title goes for the entire length of the book. In Japan they call it "nagaitatoru" which just means "longtitle".

It's impossible to write the whole title but

“My Life Is Just As Wrong As I Expected After Traveling to Another World Where I’m Surrounded By Cute Girls At A Magical High School And Am Also The Fabled Hero of Legend, But Before I Tell You That Story I Have To Tell You This Story, In Which I Was Walking Along With My

Then a page later:

... When She Told Me We Needed To See The Headmaster Because She Had Been Taught That The Mark On My Hand Was The Symbol Of The Reincarnation Of The Legendary Dragon Hero Of Legendary Literature, And I Said That Was A Cool Thing To Be Taught Because At Our School The Only Book We Learned Was Atlas Shrugged, And She Asked What That Was And I Told Her I Was The Book Our Society Based Its Philosophy On A Speech From, And She Asked Me To Recite The Speech, Which I Did, And The Speech Went “For Twelve Years You Have Been Asking…

The title of this light novel literally includes the entire Galt speech from Atlas Shrugged. At that point it's literally a flex about just how long the title is.

[demagogue]

That would be nagaitaitoru. The second word is just the word "title" said phonetically, tai-to-l(u).

[Cipheron]

Yeah I just cut/pasted it from the source, about half the links spell it either way.