Precisely - the manufactured drama, reality-TV route is a tool for wringing whatever cash you can out of someone who is on their way out of the business or who doesn’t have the talent required to maintain a lifelong career (see Hulk Hogan, Kim Kardashian etc). It’s a bit of a last dash, bridge-burning route for the…

Meanwhile, a guy just wandered into the Canadian PM’s residence in the middle of the night while RCMP security staff were apparently having a nap, and the PM fought him off with an Inuit carving. Admittedly, I’d probably rather fight an RCMP officer than Chretien, who did not fuck around (see “Shawinigan Handshake”).

My partner and spent some time in rural France, and observed that all of the people there just drank wine from regular tumblers. Both being clumsy as fuck, we decided to stop replacing all of our broken stemware because “it’s more authentic” (also we are clumsy as fuck and stemware is essentially a trap). So we invite…

It’s like, early in life, Trump decided to become the living, breathing, personification of the adage that money can’t buy class. One of the most ridiculous human beings to ever walk the earth.

Yeah, my “ha-ha” joke dinner party equipment remains constrained to things I can find at thrift stores or in my parents’ storage room. I would definitely buy these glasses for $3.99 at Value Village, though.

I’m also sick of hearing the masturbatory self-congratulations of “self-made” entrepreneurial rich kids. You can legitimately make a tonne of money off a Youtube account, but increasingly the prominent Youtube stars are just scrappy go-getters making their own way with only a video camera, a sparkling personality, and…

I grew up in a trailer park that flooded every spring. When I was 4 years old, my best friend and neighbor got angry at me for something and took all of the toys from my yard and put them under his trailer while I was out with my parents. I couldn’t retrieve the toys because the crawl space under his trailer was…

My partner is an archivist. The backlog of processing donations is a huge problem worldwide - it’s a pretty under-resourced field almost everywhere (Australia and New Zealand seem like they might be better for some reason?)

We do have a lot of trees and water and bitumen that is incredibly costly to extract and process, but while our country is technically huge, most of it is just barren wasteland, and our per capital immigration rates are more than twice that of the US. So you’re right the US is different from Canada, but I’m not sure…

A significant portion of Trump voters genuinely think Hilary Clinton is a communist baby-killer who wants to take away their guns. I really don’t understand how people think Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren could have won a general election in the United States. It’s just... it’s impossible.

I mean, if you are in the highest tax bracket and then spend every penny of that income on gasoline, alcohol, cigarettes and random unnecessary consumer goods, the sales taxes might get you up to almost 50% of your income. And now that I think of it, probably the sort of person who spends all of their money on gas,…

That made me laugh so hard. Good riddance to that guy. He sounds like Canada is some communist wasteland with gulags or something. If you take into account how much Americans pay for insurance and health costs our higher tax rates are a massive bargain for almost everyone.

These sort of look like clothes for the rich white guy who wants to be wearing pajamas but can’t quite get away with it.

It’s a tricky one, right? The flip side of course being that I’ve met and talked to some neo nazis in my day, and these are not people who are reading primary source material to justify their bullshit.

I’m not either, but I’m going to go ahead and guess that you are also not a history buff fascinated by World War II. I’d be shocked if more than 1% of these purchases are ideological. Most interest in Mein Kampf in Germany is likely academic. I posted elsewhere, but I knew a guy who did his PhD in history in Germany…

Once it’s public domain, you can re-write it as Mein Kampf and Zombies, put a stock image of a kitten on the front, self-publish it through CreateSpace and sell it on Amazon. Clearly you’d make all the money doing this.

I think we both posted this necessary context simultaneously. I knew a guy who studied World War II history in Germany at the graduate level like ten years ago, and he was only allowed to use Mein Kampf as an in-library reference item, and only then when he had a signed permission note from his professor, signed off…

More than because of the rise of the Alt-Right, it’s worth considering the possibility that the sudden surge in interest in Mein Kampf in Germany might have something to do with the fact that when the book went into the public domain last year, it marked the first time it was legally available in Germany for 71 years.…

I’ve also never understood the idea that all civilians (ie. not competitive athletes) must have trainers and coaches. If that’s what motivates you and you can afford it, sure, go for it. But for most decently self-motivated people with decent research and comprehension skills I think it’s a huge waste of money. The…

Yikes - I don’t think the Kardashians should be allowed within a hundred feet of a vulnerable person working through past trauma. Drama queens who are looking to get on TV by slamming a guy they dated for six weeks? Sure, fill ‘yer boots. But this sounds like a terrible, unethical idea.