Friday links! From each according to his abilities edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
Rick Santorum donates another unit of language to internet culture.

Rick Santorum donates another unit of language to internet culture.

You think it’s his hand that makes this GIF funny, but it’s his facial expressions. Does Rick Santorum understand the awesome contributions he has made to internet culture? Letting us re-coin his name would have been plenty. But last night, he give us a meme we can use to belittle one another on MMA discussion boards for centuries. Richard John “Rick” Santorum walks the history of online discourse a god, remaking the terrain as he goes, yet he thinks he should settle for being president. Yeah, bro, our society needs your leadership skills. Today is Friday, and each of us contributes according to abilities he may not know he has. Won’t you take according to your needs with me?

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Friday links! What must be done edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
The author in his wasp suit

The author in his wasp suit

A few weeks ago, I noticed yellow jackets flying in and out of the gap between my stair and the siding. “I don’t need to do anything about this,” I thought, and went inside to vomit. Then this week, as I was chaining up my bicycle, one of the greatly increased number of yellow jackets stung me on the calf. “That’s it,” I said. “I’m going to do something if this happens again.” Yesterday they got me twice, on that one big vein that runs over the top of the ankle. I could feel the venom going up my leg. Generally, it is against my ethics to kill living things; I’m the guy who catches spiders in a rocks glass and turns them loose outside. My personal code also forbids doing chores around the house. But wasp appeasement had clearly failed, so I went to the hardware store and bought toxic spray and foaming sealant. Today is Friday, and we all must do what must be done. Won’t you poison whole societies with me?

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Friday links! Half-remembered pasts edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment
Parker Posey in Kicking And Screaming

Parker Posey in Kicking And Screaming

First of all, sorry for scaring everybody yesterday. I’m still vertiginous, and the Missoula health care system is still unwilling to care for my health on shorter notice than it takes to quit a job at Taco Bell, but I have not given up on life. One reason I will not just sicken and die is that I live in a tower of iron will. Remember the six months in 2007 when I broke my hand, dislocated my shoulder and tore my transverse abdominus? This is not as bad as that, although I’m pretty sure music was better then. It’s hard to remember, because drugs were better, too. Today is Friday, and I suspect that everything was easier in the past, but I can’t prove it. Won’t you compare epochs with me?

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Friday links! It’s only fair edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment
Senator Randy Paul (R–KY) invites you to watch him take a dump.

Senator Rand Paul (R–KY) invites you to watch him take a dump.

After children have lost their other innate abilities—when they can no longer recognize facial expressions or manipulate objects, but instead swipe feebly at whatever images they hope to change—they will still have a keen sense of what’s fair. Fair is I get what you get. If you are, for example, one of a numerical minority of Americans whose parents were legally kept as slaves five generations ago, and you are twice as likely to be born into poverty and roughly one fifth as likely to successfully hail a cab, it’s unfair that I don’t get to say the n-word. I thought racism was supposed to be over, but here we are giving people special privileges. Today is Friday, which is totally unfair to Thursday, when you think about it. Won’t you forget where we came from with me?

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Friday links! That settles that edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, Uncategorized 0 Comment
The windshield of a care in which an unarmed black man and woman were killed by Cleveland police in 2013. Photo by Aaron Josefczyk

The car in which two unarmed people were killed by Cleveland police in 2013. Photo by Aaron Josefczyk

Sometimes it seems like a controversy is going to go on forever. For the rest of time, pillars of the business community will demand that schoolteachers carry guns for safety, and Their Eyes Were Watching God will remain an important book even though it sucks. But great controversies settle. Temperance is over. Nobody has been called upon to recant his model of a heliocentric system lately, and gay marriage might become boring within our lifetimes. Maybe the insoluble problems of our age are the settled facts of history. Today is Friday, another cut in the thousand by which disagreement lives for a while and dies. Won’t you answer the big questions with me?

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