Tuesday Link Encyclopedia

Have you considered the oppressive nature of pumpkin spice lattes before buying one, you oppressor?

Maternal and offspring fitness interests are aligned in certain domains and conflicting in others, which may have led to the evolution of fetal microchimeric phenotypes that can manipulate maternal tissues.” This is a crucial and often ignored area of research. I’ve experienced both the positive and the negative effects this study discusses and was stunned to discover how clueless doctors are about this phenomenon.

Raising tax rates on the highest earners will not have any impact on income inequality. The kind of economy where it did is dead. It’s not coming back. The time has come to stop fantasizing about its rebirth and start engaging with the new set of circumstances.

Kids’ palates are so undeveloped that they are incapable of eating school lunches that consist of anything but grease, junk, and garbage.

A really good observation on the weirdness of American dating practices.

In a wide-ranging interview Friday, Fiorina also explained her opposition to abortion rights in the most personal way since her campaign officially started last fall. “I myself was not able to have children of my own, and so I know what a precious gift life is,” Fiorina said.” Ah, well, this explains the weird fixation on the imaginary “kicking fetus” video.

Russian ambassador to Poland blames Poland for WWII. Apparently, the new Russian definition of the word “diplomatic” is “capable of antagonizing everybody in sight with extreme assholery.”

The absolutely ridiculous things American psychotherapists are taught about sexuality. Please be very careful before you contact one for help with sexual problems. Instead, consider doing Skype sessions with specialists from Europe.

[Russian] A really good, honest post about the reasons why life in Haiti sucks so badly. Great photos, too. It’s only in Russian or Ukrainian that one can read insightful posts on the topic and not find the same idiotic regurgitation of the evil French and the nasty reparations.

I never heard of Garbage Pail Kids before but we had something very similar in the USSR in the form of little poems. These kinds of things perform hugely important functions for kids, and only idiots would try to censor them in any way.

Australians refuse to punish even the most egregious and horrifying kind of domestic abuse because the perpetrator is a woman.

The extremely bizarre situation of the NY school janitors.

The offensive and disturbing way in which a Chicago news station celebrated a Jewish holiday.

Do read this great report about the time when Obama humiliated Trump. It’s hilarious.

Microaggressions

Russians broadcast Obama’s speech at the UN General Assembly with this really effeminate, affected male voice speaking with an accent that Russian-speakers identify as pissy and elitist and delivering the translation of the speech in a way that drowned out Obama’s actual voice.

Not That Into Work

Republicans – both in Congress and on the state level – have adopted the strategy of stopping all work altogether whenever anything is the least bit not to their liking.

Commentators are trying to come up with all sorts of political and ideological explanations for this phenomenon but I’m thinking that everything is much simpler: these folks are just not that into working and look for any excuse to avoid doing any work.

An Inscrutable Mystery

A Muslim father strangled his 19-year-old daughter to death after learning that she had been caught shoplifting condoms to have sex with her boyfriend, who she had been forbidden from seeing.

Asadullah Khan, 51, admitting killing his daughter Lareeb in the early hours of the morning on 28 January as she had brought ‘dishonour’ to the family, reports Germany’s Bild newspaper.

I’m posting this in response to the timid and mumbly question by blogger Echidne as to the possibility that the gender norms of migrants who are coming to Germany might not be entirely in tune with those of the “receiving population.”

Hmm, what a mystery. How can anybody possibly find an answer?

Crazies of the World, Unite!

Hey, folks, and do you know who agrees with the crazy Russians that NASA discovered water on Mars to advance scary ideological purposes?

Rush Limbaugh.

The Hidden Purpose of Finding Water on Mars

The Chair of the Education Committee – once again, the Education Committee – of the Russian Parliament made a statement that NASA found water on Mars on purpose in order to distract the world’s attention from Putin’s speech at the UN General Assembly.

If after this you don’t feel profound compassion for Obama who has had to spend 1 hour and 40 minutes in a conversation with the source of this idea, I’m not sure you are capable of compassion at all. Obviously, a reasonable conversation is not possible with these people.

Violence in St Louis Intensifies

Over the weekend, there’s been a shooting in downtown St Louis and six separate instances of bullets hitting cars on the highways leading to and from St Louis.

The local newscasters are now asking viewers to call if we have any ideas on what to do about the insanely high level of violence in St Louis and the climbing murder rate.

By the way, why are my posts about violence in St Louis always downvoted? Are people jealous that I’m not writing about violence in their areas, or what?

Putin: “We Can Be Better Americans”

Putin finally got to deliver the speech at the UN General Assembly that he’d been so desperate to give. Huge expectations had been built in Russia over this speech. People were told that Putin was about to reveal something so massively important that the world needed to sit up and listen.

Putin came to the General Assembly, opened his mouth and. . . said nothing. Nothing even remotely different from the same tired old stuff he’s been saying for years.

“Americans didn’t manage to be good Americans. Please elect us to be Americans, and we’ll promise to be much better Americans than these current Americans.”

Everybody has heard it a million times already but poor deluded Putin seems convinced that the problem is that people don’t understand what a great deal he’s offering.

This is why people in Ukraine and Syria need to keep dying: their deaths give Putin an opportunity to reiterate, yet again, the same boring message of “We can be much better Americans than the current, etc, etc.”

The Pain of the Unloved

Rebecca Schuman really loves her baby. She publishes one endless post after another about that very fortunate, happy little girl. For those who were not this loved as children, catching a glimpse of Rebecca’s worship of her baby does not come without a pang. There is nothing more destructive to a human psyche than the knowledge that one’s parents did not love one coming to the surface, and Rebecca’s paeans to her baby have the potential to force people to face this deeply hidden truth.

When that happens, a human psyche finds itself on the verge of destruction. So people react violently in order to counteract the horrible threat. They revert to the persona of a wounded child and try to remove the danger, screaming as hard as they can to drown out the memory of never having even a shred of the riches that Rebecca’s daughter enjoys.

“You are ugly!” they vociferate with the voices of rejected, scared little children. “Go kill yourself! I will tell on you! You are hurting me! Go away!”

I hope nobody thinks I’m trying to excuse these fuckers. It is a – no, wait – it is THE  responsibility of every adult to deal with our psychological garbage and avoid spreading it around other people’s lives. It is nobody’s duty to self-censor in order to spare you from freaking out over the shit you are too irresponsible, immature, and stupid to take care of. A person who feels pain and reacts by persecuting others and sending them hateful messages has no excuse.

These people’s punishment, though, lies inside themselves. The untreated wound festers, hurts, poisons their entire lives. Rebecca will go on adoring her baby and enjoying her existence. And the former unloved children will live their entire lives beating back the painful truth and wasting all of their life energy on this impossible task.

Here is the whole story.

Rauner: A Deranged Maniac on the Loose

So as I’ve been telling you, Big Government Rauner whom the devil has inflicted as governor on the state of Illinois is preventing the medical insurance of university workers to pay for our health care procedures.

The workers keep paying the premiums, there’s a ton of money in the system, the only problem is that Rauner is refusing to release that money for no reason other than being a lazy, hateful fucker.

What’s even more ridiculous, the fact that workers can’t get any medical care dies not constitute “a qualifying event” for us to seek alternative coverage. We can’t switch to our spouses’ insurance plans or seek coverage through Obamacare. Our only option is to exist without medical care indefinitely while Rauner lives large on the state dime in his mansion.

It’s the most insane thing I have ever had the misfortune to observe. Thousands of people are robbed of their money and denied medical care because of a whim of one deranged, hateful fellow. You’ll say we are to blame because we elected this piece of garbage. And yes, you are right, we are paying for our own collective idiocy. Let this situation at least serve as a warning to people who vote under the influence of empty clichés and silly lies.