Culture

[ACamp1900]

I’m not a savage. I puked in a garbage can. Lol. The place was in the Tenderloin though. So hot travel tip, don’t eat all you can maybe eat Chinese food in the Tenderloin.

Words of wisdom.

 

[Irishize]

Federally guaranteed loans are bad.

Biggest scam in US. Once they became federally guaranteed, every state institution in America got the green light to increase tuition every year while the “value” of the degree & the educational experience not being increased one iota. Shame on all of them.

 

[Irishize]

That’s gross...I got cutoff at an “all you can eat” Chinese food place once.

Lady: “No more for you!”

Me: “It’s all you can eat”

Lady: “You eat too much!”

Reminds me of this bit

https://youtu.be/51rHWly7sHA

 

[connor_in]

Reminds me of this bit

https://youtu.be/51rHWly7sHA

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aLkTuWdKrqY" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I loved John Pinette

 

[ACamp1900]

Chinese food fills me up basically like no other... just saying. There is full and then there is "OMG I think I might have inadvertently killed myself via Kung Pao" full

 

[Irish#1]

Biggest scam in US. Once they became federally guaranteed, every state institution in America got the green light to increase tuition every year while the “value” of the degree & the educational experience not being increased one iota. Shame on all of them.

Plenty of blame to go around (Feds, Lenders & Students). I used to work for USA Funds that changed to USA Group and was then bought by Sallie Mae. If you defaulted on a loan, SLM would get paid by the feds for guaranteeing the loan. SLM (applies to most lenders, not just SLM) could then continue to collect on that loan, so it was something akin to legal double dipping. Students are partially to blame as well. When they can't pay their loan they can call and defer the loan in the blink of an eye. Lenders make it too easy to defer loans. Students don't think about the interest that continues to accumulate. Once the deferel is over their loan has more than doubled and tripled and they start complaining.

The entire system needs to be overhauled.

 

[Bluto]

Reminds me of this bit

https://youtu.be/51rHWly7sHA

That was pretty much it. Lol.

 

[ACamp1900]

I'll be glad to have ACamp in the state. Just wish he weren't damn near in Cali all the way out in El Paso

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

Just saw this... trips me out when I think on how freaking big Texas is.

I've made the drive to El Paso from both my area of So Cal and from Austin. It's only like ~45 minutes shorter from Austin, which when you're doing a 12 plus hour drive doesn't really matter much. It basically feels like the same distance, especially when you consider there is absolutely nothing between Fredericksburg and El Paso, just... Hills have Eyes kind of landscape for just,... hours. You get that too the other way but at least you have Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Cruces to break things up. But yeah, I'm basically just cutting the distance between us in half... it's still crazy far.

 

[irishog77]

Just saw this... trips me out when I think on how freaking big Texas is.

I've made the drive to El Paso from both my area of So Cal and from Austin. It's only like ~45 minutes shorter from Austin, which when you're doing a 12 plus hour drive doesn't really matter much. It basically feels like the same distance, especially when you consider there is absolutely nothing between Fredericksburg and El Paso, just... Hills have Eyes kind of landscape for just,... hours. You get that too the other way but at least you have Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Cruces to break things up. But yeah, I'm basically just cutting the distance between us in half... it's still crazy far.

Yep- puts it in perspective. When I lived in Dallas, I realized Dallas to Nashville is closer than Dallas to El Paso.

Texas is yuge.

 

[Bishop2b5]

Just saw this... trips me out when I think on how freaking big Texas is.

I've made the drive to El Paso from both my area of So Cal and from Austin. It's only like ~45 minutes shorter from Austin, which when you're doing a 12 plus hour drive doesn't really matter much. It basically feels like the same distance, especially when you consider there is absolutely nothing between Fredericksburg and El Paso, just... Hills have Eyes kind of landscape for just,... hours. You get that too the other way but at least you have Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Cruces to break things up. But yeah, I'm basically just cutting the distance between us in half... it's still crazy far.

About 15 years ago, I drove from S. Alabama to S. Cali and when you hit the Texas state line on I-10 east of Houston and see mile marker 810, you realize you're gonna be in Texas for awhile.

 

[NorthDakota]

Yep- puts it in perspective. When I lived in Dallas, I realized Dallas to Nashville is closer than Dallas to El Paso.

Texas is yuge.

For me to drive to chicago is only like an hour or two further than it is to drive to Miami.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

 

[ACamp1900]

Chuck Norris was a Texas Ranger because it was the only state that could fit him....

 

[connor_in]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Even forgetting the content, it is not normal to bother strangers on planes because they are displaying political opinions you think are bad. I’ve seen people in Che shirts and with USSR symbols. Never once thought it would be appropriate to lecture them about it. <a href="https://t.co/9Js3m4HCwM">https://t.co/9Js3m4HCwM</a></p>— (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) <a href="https://twitter.com/AG_Conservative/status/1057968451044737024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 1, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Imagine thinking she looks like the good guy here.</p>— Ashley Rae Ghouldenberg &#55356;&#57219;&#55357;&#56443;&#55357;&#56622; (@Communism_Kills) <a href="https://twitter.com/Communism_Kills/status/1057840752108208129?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 1, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Your friend was scared of a hat.</p>— Insolent Puppy (@InsolentPuppy) <a href="https://twitter.com/InsolentPuppy/status/1057932742132985856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 1, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[Legacy]

Alabama is 9th in nation for student loan debt

The average college graduate in Alabama is carrying about $31,275 in debt, according to a report last year by the Institute for College Access and Success. And 50 percent of graduates here are carrying some kind of debt.

Study covering all colleges and universities linked in article.

This map shows the states where the student loan crisis hits the hardest

Student loan debt in the U.S. now totals more than $1.5 trillion, but students in some states are getting hit harder than others. Students in the Northeast have the heaviest burdens. Nearly 75 percent of college graduates in New Hampshire have outstanding student loans and they owe an average of $36,367 — that's the highest rate in the country,

 

[irishog77]

Alabama is 9th in nation for student loan debt


Study covering all colleges and universities linked in article.

This map shows the states where the student loan crisis hits the hardest

Based on your post, college grads should move to North Dakota or Colorado.

 

[GowerND11]

Alabama is 9th in nation for student loan debt


Study covering all colleges and universities linked in article.

This map shows the states where the student loan crisis hits the hardest

YAY PENNSYLVANIA

 

[GowerND11]

Based on your post, college grads should move to North Dakota or Utah.

FTFY

 

[irishog77]

FTFY

Ha! Good catch!

Boner move by me.

 

[Irish YJ]

Alec Baldwin arrested over punching a guy in the face during a parking lot altercation in NY....

Guessing his temper is a little off kilter still with his new lib show tanking in the ratings. Or maybe he saw OrangeMan and lost it.

 

[Wild Bill]

Alec Baldwin arrested over punching a guy in the face during a parking lot altercation in NY....

Guessing his temper is a little off kilter still with his new lib show tanking in the ratings. Or maybe he saw OrangeMan and lost it.

He seems balanced.

<div style="position:relative;height:0;padding-bottom:75%"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8J0-ZatDHug?ecver=2" style="position:absolute;width:100%;height:100%;left:0" width="480" height="360" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>

 

[ACamp1900]

Would love to be a fly on the wall when he and Stephen get together for the holidays....

 

[Irish YJ]

lol.. i almost forgot about that one. yelling and threatening a 12 year old via voicemail.... what a douche canoe.

 

[Irish YJ]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Hey <a href="https://twitter.com/donlemon?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@donlemon</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/nbc?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nbc</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/CNN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@cnn</a> FOUND YOUR WHITE TERRORIST MALE! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ALECBaldwin?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ALECBaldwin</a> <a href="https://t.co/Ha6t3t2PQ3">pic.twitter.com/Ha6t3t2PQ3</a></p>— Mom Mary (@coff33loveit) <a href="https://twitter.com/coff33loveit/status/1058536168244043776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 3, 2018</a></blockquote>
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[Irish YJ]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Who wore it better? <a href="https://t.co/9ztm1aevYj">pic.twitter.com/9ztm1aevYj</a></p>— USA IN THIS HO! &#55356;&#56826;&#55356;&#56818; (@DC_300blk) <a href="https://twitter.com/DC_300blk/status/1058480728911044610?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2018</a></blockquote>
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[Irish YJ]

Hollywood and libs going full meltdown over something silly..

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://t.co/nk2vKvHuaL">pic.twitter.com/nk2vKvHuaL</a></p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1058388700617498625?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"> <a href="https://t.co/hOgQ4aOEfr">pic.twitter.com/hOgQ4aOEfr</a></p>— Nicola Vera (@nicola_vera2) <a href="https://twitter.com/nicola_vera2/status/1058751910650486784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 3, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">How do you say trademark misuse in Dothraki?</p>— HBO (@HBO) <a href="https://twitter.com/HBO/status/1058424663972478976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Vote?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Vote</a> <a href="https://t.co/IZe7KwQQvk">pic.twitter.com/IZe7KwQQvk</a></p>— George RR Martin (@GRRMspeaking) <a href="https://twitter.com/GRRMspeaking/status/1058437636895821824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Joffrey grew up. <a href="https://t.co/hpL8fjze0j">https://t.co/hpL8fjze0j</a></p>— Full Frontal (@FullFrontalSamB) <a href="https://twitter.com/FullFrontalSamB/status/1058391439523094529?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Not today. <a href="https://t.co/Jg51mGHPO1">https://t.co/Jg51mGHPO1</a></p>— Maisie Williams (@Maisie_Williams) <a href="https://twitter.com/Maisie_Williams/status/1058411693775171585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[Irish YJ]

so in the same NY town....

A lib professor is caught driving around and stealing republican yard signs

And

A local pizza joint raised money to have an American flag mural painted on the side of their building. In response, libs protested by vandalizing the mural, and protesting the pizzeria with "no nations, no borders" signs...

New York professor caught on camera stealing GOP yard signs
https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-york-professor-caught-on-camera-stealing-gop-yard-signs

American flag mural at pizza shop vandalized, protested in small town
https://www.foxnews.com/us/american-flag-mural-at-pizza-shop-vandalized-protested-in-small-town

 

[Bishop2b5]

so in the same NY town....

A lib professor is caught driving around and stealing republican yard signs

I mean, as long as they're protecting us from Fascism and all...

And

A local pizza joint raised money to have an American flag mural painted on the side of their building. In response, libs protested by vandalizing the mural, and protesting the pizzeria with "no nations, no borders" signs...

I think this is our fault for falsely accusing the Left of hating America.

 

[Irish YJ]

I mean, as long as they're protecting us from Fascism and all...



I think this is our fault for falsely accusing the Left of hating America.

people are F'ing crazy.
i know there are unbalanced people on the right, but the left is going full tilt loon and not even characterized as extreme anymore.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

A couple interesting articles on porngraphy have been published recently. The first is titled "How the GOP Gave Up on Porn". Here's a snippet:

The second is that Weiler believes those debates are peripheral to the task at hand, having championed the resolution as a means toward a more specific end. He says American culture is past the point of no return when it comes to porn, and explains that he sponsored the measure for one reason—to start a conversation about protecting minors. “People think I’m some kind of zealot,” he says, “but everything I’m doing is to protect children. I haven’t sponsored any legislation dealing with adults. I’m not trying to make pornography illegal. … People sell all kinds of things on the internet, but they don’t sell them to 15-year-olds because they would get in trouble—gun manufacturers, vaping companies, alcohol distributors. That’s not the case with porn websites.”

In this, at least, he has expert opinion on his side. The community of recognized authorities on pornography is small and secretive; most belong to a private listserv, “SEXNET,” hosted by Northwestern University. In conversations with a number of members, I heard diverging opinions about any number of issues—but a consensus of near-panic emerged when I asked about the science of adolescent porn use and its physiological ramifications. Samuel Perry, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma who has written more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and two books about pornography, says the debates regarding addiction and violence are “ideologically loaded, with some scholars bound and determined to find negative effects, and others bound and determined to say there’s nothing to see here.” When it comes to kids and porn, however, Perry says sociologists are generally and increasingly in agreement that we are facing a multifaceted crisis. Academics are unable to perform experiments that expose minors to explicit content, for obvious reasons, so they are left with third-party research that is often unreliable. Without their own data, academics have largely “remained silent” on the issue of adolescent porn consumption, at least publicly, Perry says, even as it’s “tremendously concerning for people across the spectrum, even the most sexually progressive people in my field, that young people are exposed to things they aren’t ready for and don’t know how to process.”

A possibility, given the meteoric growth of porn in America and the government’s inability to contain it, is that human brains might be changed by processing obscenity at earlier ages. Malamuth, the UCLA professor and godfather of the porn research community, says he has taught a course on sexuality and women’s studies for decades. His tradition was to show a disturbing, explicit clip as part of a lecture on pornography—prefaced with a long warning about what the students were about to watch, and urging those with sensitivities to leave the room. “When I first started showing it, you would have very strong reactions—women crying, people hugging each other, deeply affected by it,” Malamuth says. “But in the later years, after my warnings and after showing the film, the students would give me these strange looks. ‘What the hell was the warning all about?’”

Malamuth continues, “The anti-pornography people argued for years that once people saw enough of this stuff they would become desensitized in a way that’s dysfunctional and could affect their attitudes and behaviors related to violence and women. The pro-pornography people said that once we’re exposed to pornography we’re desensitized in a good way—we realize it’s not a very big deal.” He chuckles. “They’ve looked at the same data and drawn different conclusions.”

That debate will continue, no doubt, but it will take place on the outskirts of modern culture—miles from the ideological mainstream and light years from the political arena. In this sense, desensitization isn’t just an explanation; it’s a national phenomenon. So much so that millions of elementary schoolers have instant access to unlimited amounts of pornography. So much so that lawmakers consider themselves powerless to do anything about it. So much so that news of the president of the United States having a past romance with a hardcore adult actress has met with a collective shrug. “Let’s face it,” says Weiler, the Utah state senator. “The fact that the president cheated on his wife with a porn star has been kind of a yawner.”

And the second is Helen Andrew's review of a book titled Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock:

The problem of pornography has never been worse than it is right now. If that sounds like an exaggeration, consider: Online streaming porn is video, rather than text or image, which makes it categorically more seductive. It is not geographically restricted to seedy parts of town but accessible anywhere with an Internet connection, by anyone of any age. Much of it is free. Barriers to entry on the supply side are nil. The flood of content over the last decade means that producers have to compete for eyeballs, and because they can’t compete on price, the easiest way to distinguish their product is by going to further and further extremes in the content itself. Technology and social change have combined to push pornography to new frontiers: More of it is being produced, and what gets produced is more depraved.

It is baffling that this unprecedented state of affairs has not called forth a twenty-first-century Comstock, but then, the original Anthony Comstock, the antivice crusader best known for lending his name to a 1873 law banning distribution of obscene material through the mail, is held in low regard. His undeserved reputation is the result of a long line of hostile treatments by his ideological opponents, of which Lust on Trial is the most recent.

A professor of art history at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Amy Werbel argues that Comstock’s efforts served to reinforce “prevailing power structures and prejudices” at the expense of “the most vulnerable citizens of the day”—women, immigrants, and the urban poor. Refreshingly, she credits Comstock himself with high motives, but she still depicts him as essentially a fool, a fanatic, and a buffoon.

Missing from this picture of Comstock is the side of him that was genuinely heroic. He was, first of all, physically brave. He survived numerous attempts on his life, including a stab in the face from a pornographer that doctors did not expect him to survive. His mail was full of death threats and, on one occasion, a box of smallpox scabs (he and his wife were immediately vaccinated), to say nothing of the bomb sent to his office, which mercifully failed to detonate. He was the first antivice enforcer in the history of New York City to be immune to bribery, which is all the more impressive considering that he refused to accept either a government salary or the share of the fines to which he was entitled under New York obscenity law. He had only his modest salary from the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, out of which he supported his own family as well as his widowed stepmother and the wife and children of his absconded half-brother.

Far from being a WASP Brahmin, Comstock became Comstock precisely because he wasn’t upper class. There were certain parts of town where New York’s gentleman reformers simply could not show their faces even with the best excuse. A humble dry goods salesman like Comstock was free to seek out vice in its lair. But even after he became their champion, the men who bankrolled Comstock were not about to invite him to dinner at their homes or to their private clubs. As Werbel puts it, with some poignancy, “Comstock represented and worked for the city’s elite, but in reality he was a clerk promoted to a supervisory position.”

If anything, setting himself up as a vice fighter diminished his social standing. Is there anyone lower in the status hierarchy than the professional censor? He is lower than the pornographer he hunts, who might be shunned but is never mocked with such cruelty. In her book, Werbel reproduces several cartoons making fun of Comstock, and they are remarkable for their sheer mean-spiritedness. “Let Anthony’s Punishment Fit the Crime” depicts him as a nude model for an art class, the students cackling at his fat form. When his name was proposed for membership in a local Masonic lodge, “there was an avalanche of black balls such as no man in any society probably ever received,” according to the gleeful report of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Comstock was not so stupid as to be unaware that he was an object of contempt and ridicule. He was sustained in his thankless task by a conviction that he was saving lives. He was originally launched on his crusade when he saw a clerk at his dry goods store drawn by a chance encounter into an addiction to dirty pictures and thence to brothels, venereal disease, and death. Comstock knew that the young men he rescued from the same fate would not thank him for it, but he was firm enough in his mission that he did not care. In order to give the reader an idea of the New England in which Comstock was raised, Werbel notes that during the Civil War his native Fairfield County, Connecticut, “with its high percentage of Christian abolitionists, rallied to the [Union] cause in large numbers.” The sense of duty and selflessness that inspired those abolitionists was inherited by young Anthony intact.

When the end came for Comstockery, it was his social betters who delivered the death blow. Comstock’s power came from the laws that allowed him to seize and destroy pornographic material, and it disappeared when those laws were rendered toothless. It was one very simple tactic that accomplished this legal revolution, and Werbel puts her finger on it exactly: “Defense attorneys were able to insist on expertise in the judgment of obscenity.” For centuries, artistic merit had been no defense against a charge of obscenity; in some jurisdictions it was actually an aggravating factor. Then a new standard began to develop in state courts and, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 1957 decision in Roth v. United States, in the federal judiciary, requiring consideration of a work “taken as a whole” (in the words of Justice William Brennan, writing for the majority in Roth). This opened the door to expert witnesses from university art and English departments willing to expatiate upon the artistic merits of the illustrated Fanny Hill, which, if sufficiently great, would legally outweigh its pornographic demerits.

No point mincing words: This “expertise” was entirely bogus. When English professors lined up to defend Lady Chatterley’s Lover, they were trumpeting their moral sophistication, not their literary acuity. The oldest cliché in the annals of obscenity law is the defendant who points out that, after all, there are some pretty spicy things in Shakespeare and the Bible. (Having researched a number of these cases, I can categorically say that the defense is far more likely to bring up the Bible than the prosecution.) Mark Twain thought he was being clever when he suggested that Comstock should try reading Byron, Rabelais, and Balzac. The joke was on him. Proclaiming that you see no difference between Fanny Hill and the Song of Songs does not demonstrate that you have cultivated a fine and sensitive literary judgment. It proves that you have failed to.

Werbel herself cites experts whose claim to authority is dubious, in spite of their impressive academic credentials. She quotes sexologist John Bancroft, MD, on the connection between sex and humor: Both are a “release of pent-up tension,” and “many if not most of us are scared by or uncomfortable about sex and use humor as a way of reducing those anxious feelings.” A worthy observation, but where is the expertise? Every halfway-insightful person has had the same intuition. The truth is that there is no such thing as an expert in sex—not doctors, not prostitutes, not English professors specializing in D.H. Lawrence. To the extent that there is such a thing, Comstock qualified as much as anyone, from decades of experience seeing its darker side.

Before the Roth case reached the Supreme Court, a Second Circuit judge argued in a concurring opinion that the law Samuel Roth was charged with violating was fundamentally invalid because no expert evidence showed that pornography caused harm: “To date there exist, I think, no thoroughgoing studies by competent persons which justify the conclusion that normal adults’ reading or seeing of the ‘obscene’ probably induces antisocial conduct.” As it happens, we do have data showing that pornography has become a substitute for marriage among young men, with higher rates of porn consumption correlated with lower marriage rates. But whether pornography is preventing marriages or just ruining them, such studies are irrelevant. Sex is not a subject amenable to expertise, only wisdom, and the wisdom of centuries of human civilization tells us that pornography is morally wrong.