Hospital food someone received in Japan after giving birth. Same in Croatia, via comment.

I'm not all that interested in party affiliations in this case.

What bothers me is mostly the public reactions coming from Hollywood. People who have known for years and couldn't be arsed to speak up.

And I'm not talking about the victims of this, I'm talking about the high profile male folks. Especially those guys who now come out with lines like "as a father of a daughter" -- are they such sociopaths that they need a daughter to give them a moral compass?

Also, what are the odds that Weinstein is the only "open secret" of this kind? Which is the kind of question that was asked when authorities were finally going after Polanski, because people knew about that shit as well and didn't say a word.

Wasn't Weinstein also the thundercunt who defended ol' pedo Polanski very vocally? Maybe Hollywood should tune it down on the rape culture a bit, lest they lose their liberal street cred.

One for your collection: Recordings Capture Brutal FBI Tactics to Recruit a Potential Informant

"A lot of racism comes from projection. White Americans have a stereotype of black people being criminals purely because they can’t acknowledge that it was actually white people that stole them from Africa in the first place. Today, you have the spectacle of black men being gunned down by cops who, by way of mitigation, release footage to show that the victims were running away. This is what happens when you don’t understand or even acknowledge history. You end up in a situation where, when slavery is the elephant in the room in your relationship with African Americans, you think it’s OK to say that you killed one of them because he was trying to escape."

Frankie Boyle

Good piece in the Nation on the current state of Russiagate.

Appetizer:

These imperatives have incentivized a compromised set of journalistic and evidentiary standards. In Russiagate, unverified claims are reported with little to no skepticism. Comporting developments are cherry-picked and overhyped, while countervailing ones are minimized or ignored. Front-page headlines advertise explosive and incriminating developments, only to often be undermined by the article’s content, or retracted entirely. Qualified language—likely, suspected, apparent—appears next to “Russians” to account for the absence of concrete links. As a result, Russiagate has enlarged into a storm of innuendo that engulfs issues far beyond its original scope.

To be honest, I did not expect them to be as open a platform as they were for as long as they were.

Once the platform had enough content that was interesting to enough people out there to make it a noticeable alternative to "old media", it was clear that it's only a matter of time until the corporations buying the ads had to choose between TV and YT, since TV "news" was going down. So they did. Bam, no more business model for news and political/religious commentary on YT. Good luck getting commentary on war crimes in Jemen or apartheid in Israel monetized.

And now that so many content creators get their income through Patreon, it'll be interesting to see how long Patreon remains neutral.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roS6oFjCDhc

Two interesting articles on the nature of fiat currencies today.

First, Stephanie Kelton has an op-ed in the NYT titled How We Think About the Deficit Is Mostly Wrong.

Second, J.D. Alt notes that Italy is dipping its feet into MMT territory.

Frankie Boyle's audiobook Prometheus is available for free on his website.

<iframe src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/84e5PXkR-GZZAtvYh.html" frameborder="0" width="485" height="266" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

Delete the style part of the embed code, and the percentage chars while you're at it. Seems to be working, for the most part.

<iframe src="https://streamable.com/s/8iun2/fayfyi" frameborder="0" width="485" height="388" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/71iezl/squirrel_find_a_way_to_get_rid_of_opponent/

Pure gold: https://www.centrism.biz/

Browse through the sections, values and policies most of all.

Appetizer:
"Centrist politicians

These charismatic stage managers for capitalism enchant voters with thrilling tales of the imminent economic prosperity that will grow without limits forever. Their slogans, selfies and well-rehearsed hand gestures help voters understand that better isn't possible, but feeling better is. "

I know Hollywood likes to go tacticool on weapons, particularly in popcorn flicks, but those USP Matches look even more ridiculous in her hands than they did in Jolie's.