Like, I get that’s it a brainless theocratic dictatorship, but it seems odd that a country/society with a shortage of babies would restrict fertile women to a select few.

No.

The scary thing is that in my (limited, anecdotal) experience, people who do this kind of thing truly think they’re not the only ones. It’s very likely that they’ve grown up seeing family and friends use slurs casually, so their problem with “SJWs” isn’t just that we’re uptight, it’s that we’re lying.

Also, I did not get properly excited about running into someone from my hometown on the internet! Did you go to MHS? What year did you graduate?

I’ll have to ask my mom where she heard it — she loves telling that story.

He lives in my hometown, and for years, there’s been an epic rumor that he pissed off the contractors who built his house so much that they drywalled over all the outlets and switches, and he didn’t notice until after he signed off on the work. No idea if it’s true, but it gets repeated around town.

They didn’t get those facilities until a few years ago, so I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on that. Otherwise, your point is solid.

Yo I gotta send these to my Ph.D. advisor in case they ever stop selling his beloved New Balance 624's. He’s gonna be so psyched.

He’s surprising (and angering) many conservative Catholics, the type who are more upset over birth control than poverty (and who will never admit that the former can help with the latter, but I digress). People in my extended group of acquaintances are freaking the F out and are alternatively “praying for his soul”…

There’s a dude I always see the paved multiuse trail near my place who rides a unicycle. And he doesn’t just ride it; he’s decked out in all the usual cycling gear, including a Camelbak, and he rides pretty fast. It’s...unexpected. We also get a fair number of serious roller skaters on this trail.

Always relevant:

I don’t blame you at all. I should mention that lots of liberal folks who wouldn’t say the n-word are pretty comfy with respectability politics and your garden variety dog whistle terms, so it’s really about degrees here.

As long as this doesn’t happen:

“I think they don’t think we’re serious and sincere and have actual thought processes for holding the views we do; they think the things we say about tolerance and not using bigoted language are some kind of dishonest argumentative trick”

Now that you mention it, I remember the high school coaching incident, there was an article in the Courant at the time.

It wasn’t this one (the article I’m thinking of was published not long after Aaron’s arrest), but damn, this is a super interesting article, so thanks for sharing!

Shoot, there was a fantastic article about his family and background after this arrest, but I can’t remember where I saw it. Not sure if it was the Boston Globe, Hartford Courant, or NY Times, but I can’t seem to find it now. Anyway, his brother DJ played at UConn (full disclosure: I knew him there, tangentially, and…

This is an interesting question for you to ask, considering you have the reasoning skills of said 5-year-old.

Nope, not him — someone at USC. Ah, fuck it, I’ll just say it: it’s Paul Ronney. I’ve moved away from our mutual field of research, so it’s not like he can do anything to me now.

I know a guy who went through astronaut training (does that make him technically an astronaut? not sure) and was an alternate but never got to actually go on a mission. Probably because he’s a GIANT DICKHOLE. He’s a faculty member at USC, so anyone in-the-know will be able to figure out who it is, but fuck it, he’s an…