Also True

Truth

No Shave November

You know, I'm not really much of a "do this for the cause" sort of guy. Probably why I'm generally a libertarian. So I've never been one for "No Shave November", just because I'm usually growing a beard anyways, because winter.

On the other hand, I've just found out that - according to some feminists - men growing a beard to raise awareness for prostate cancer is "problematic". Because patriarchy, or something.

Which pretty much means I'm going to grow a beard every November out of spite. Because while I might not do it for a cause, I will DAMN sure do it if someone looks down their nose at me, sniffs, and tells me that I shouldn't do it.

Xe, Xar, Xir, Xyx, @!^#%

Seen today, commenting on alternate pronouns:

I've simplified life by adopting a single universal alternate pronoun, "b*tch."

Works for me.

Remember, Dilbert is a Documentary

I am sure that, somewhere, someone read this article on what office design says about your employees' happiness, and is currently drafting a memo similar to the following...

Per Business Instruction 3.5.17q, all employees are now required to greet the receptionist (Edit: What's her name again? We have it written down somewhere, right?) warmly in passing, but ONLY if a non-employee is in the vicinity. You are responsible for differentiating between a non-employee and current employees. Failure to warmly greet the receptionist in passing (or to greet without noticeable warmth) in the presence of a non-employee is grounds for reprimand, and possible termination of employment. 

Wasting company time greeting the secretary in any fashion when a non-employee is NOT present shall be construed as a frivolous waste of company resources, and will be dealt with in accordance with the relevant regulations from the Innitech Employee Handbook, Chapters 9 through 14, inclusive. 

Have a nice day.

Teaching != Learning

Yesterday, I learned that if I insult my boss in a humorous fashion, he will reward me by giving me interesting problems to solve!

I'm pretty sure that is not the lesson that he wanted to teach me, but it absolutely is the lesson I learned.

Derp Swap

Conversation on the Book of Faces about this here article.

Headline on FB: "Trump weighs mobilizing Nat Guard for immigration roundups"
Actual Headline: "DHS weighed Nat Guard for immigration roundups"

Ah.  Slightly different, I'd say.  (Once again, MSM, this is why people despise you.)

Reaction was swift:

"HE'S GOING TO ROUND EVERYONE UP AND PUT EVERYONE IN FEMA CAMPS AND THEN DECLARE MARTIAL LAW AND RUN FOR A THIRD TERM AS A DICTATOR!!!" 

"Oh... wait... that was when Obama was President...."

"Yeah, I know. It's like half the country decided to swap their most beloved moments of derp with the other."

Edit: I was just going to snark on the reactions, but the article itself...

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Friday the document was "not a White House document."

"There is no effort to do what is potentially suggested," he said. Spicer called the AP report "100 percent not true, adding that there was "no effort at all to utilize the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants."

A DHS official described the document as a very early draft that was not seriously considered and never brought to the secretary for approval.

DHS official described the document as a very early draft that was not seriously considered and never brought to the secretary for approval.

So, apparently any flunky in the DHS can write up whatever they want, have it shot down by their superiors, and yet - somehow - their blatherings are considered to be The Word Of Trump.

Once again: MSM, this is why people despise you.

In Communist Cuba, Bingo gets YOU!

One (1) Internets to the first person who identifies a single article that fills the board.

"Do you want Libertarians? This is how you get Libertarians."

I Just Winged It

I somehow managed to miss the article that Slate put up that answer the question of How Do I Explain to My Daughters What Happened in This Election?

Which meant that, lacking their sophisticated guidance, I had to fly by the seat of my pants and pretty much wing it...

"Hey kiddo. Trump won."
"Hillary lost?"
"Yep."
"GOOD."

I think it went pretty well.

QOTD, and some advice for the Democrat Party...

"Next time you want people to vote for a lesser evil, make sure they actually have reason to believe it's the lesser evil."

Oh, yeah. I've been there.

"Support Gun Control, You Child Hating Bigot!!"

QOTD

From the friend of a friend on the Book of Faces:

When they said 'anybody can be President in this country', we should have taken that as a warning.

For The Libertarian Bone Fans Out There

She's Already Lost The Critical Sasquatch Vote

I have it on good authority that Bigfoot exists, and is generally uninterested in politics.

His niece, however, votes Libertarian.

QOTD

From Michael Z. Williamson on the Book of Faces:

They're called the "left" because they are never right.

Back From Vacation

Spent some time with the family at an Undisclosed Location [1], and had an absolutely wonderful time. Sun, surf, and swimming with da goils, and waaay too much good food. [2]

Oddly enough, the lovely Mrs. Robb and I did not discuss the zombie apocalypse at any point on our travel to and fro. Instead, when we were on our way home, we ended up on an area of highway that simultaneously had one lane ending (merge right!), one lane becoming exit only (merge left!), and if that wasn't enough, signs warning about construction ahead. With instructions to, you guessed it, merge.

Oy.

The missus mused aloud as to why they do stuff like that, and pretty much fully formed in my head came the following response...

Well, it's completely intentional. They selectively hire sociopaths.

See, after WWII, members of the German Anhenerbe scattered. A couple of them managed to make it to the US, where they used fake papers to get jobs with the Department of Transportation. They encouraged and eventually helped plan the interstate highway system, and used their influence to lay out the interstates in a specific pattern. Hidden in the interstates is a Great Rune that would summon the Old Ones. The traffic moving along the roads powers the Rune - it's kind of like water running a Tibetan prayer wheel. It would take decades, but eventually all that traffic would generate enough power that the Old Ones could pop in for a bit of armageddon.

When the CIA finally caught up with them in the mid-70's, it was way too late. Too much of the roads were already laid out and in use, and the Rune was gaining power every day. The government couldn't admit that it did anything wrong - even knowing that the Old Ones exist is highly classified, need-to-know stuff. It would be political suicide for anyone to even suggest putting together a program to demolish tens of thousands of miles of perfectly good roadways for no apparent reason.

The engineers at the DOT figured out a long-term plan to completely disable the rune by re-routing certain parts of the interstate system slightly. They're doing that now. That's why, sometimes, you see a new section of interstate being put in, and you wonder why those idiots are building a new road when there's a perfectly good one right here.

That takes time, though, and has to be done oh, so carefully - it's kind of like working on a live high voltage wire. When they screw up, the repercussions are painful. Freak weather, reality TV, clown infestations, the 2016 primaries... Meanwhile, every day, all the traffic on the still-effective sections of the Great Run are still slowly powering the cursed thing up. The DOT knew what they needed to do, they just needed to buy some time to get it done.

So they started intentionally bunging things up.

Interrupt the flow of traffic along the interstates, and you change the rate at which the Rune powers up. That's why you see miles of construction cones with nothing actually going on... and when there is something going on, it always seems to be done in the most inconvenient manner.

It only took them a little while to figure out that the best folks to do that sort of planning were - you guessed it - sociopaths. So these days, they actively recruit construction planners that absolutely delight in making road work completely and utterly suck for everyone who encounters it. The negative emotions that they manage to generate that way actually draw additional power from the Rune itself, so it's even more effective than you'd think. Enough so that they've been able to table the idea of nuking New Jersey in 2022. Though from what I understand, that's still on the table as an emergency backup plan if Jersey Shore gets greenlit for another season.

So - next time you encounter road construction, remember that it's completely intentional, and absolutely required to keep us safe from Things Best Left Unmentioned. Our very best - by which I mean, our very worst - men and women are working hard to make sure that each and every construction delay you encounter is even more annoying than the last.

Just make sure you do your part, as well, and curse the misbegotten spawn of drunken illiterate imbeciles who are responsible for turning your particular strip of interstate into a parking lot. There is, quite literally, no better way to show your appreciation for their job well done.

[1] OK, OK. The Outer Banks. Specifically: Avon, North Carolina. As close to Heaven as you can get on Earth, IMHO.

[2] The Captain's Table in Buxton, NC. Give the scallop dip a try.

Join The Club

From a friend's wall of the Book of Faces, where the topic of discussion is the current DNC train wreck. A fellow who I presume is a Democrat commented:

"I'm having a hard time digesting some of what I've seen from people who are supposed to be in the same party as me."

Dude. Welcome to the club.

We're looking for a name. How does "Libertarian" sound to you?

What Is The Sound Of No Man Posting?

On Facebook, I have a handful of folks tagged, starred, liked, and otherwise marked so that Ye Olde Algoythms of Science can understand that updates from them are important, man.

And yet, I routinely miss updates from those people.

As in, multiple times a day.

Today was particularly bad, as the top post in my news feed is now somewhere around 16 hours old. Whereas I usually see 20-30 new posts per hour during the day, for some reason today, I'm seeing a tenth of that.  Folks are still posting - I'm just not seeing it.

I swear that Facebook must intentionally run their internal network with the crappiest UDP implementation they were able to hack together over a drunken weekend back in '03.

... which would explain a lot about Facebook, really.