Friday links! Straight shootin’ edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment

Pictured: much radder American flag, same old Mitt Romney.

I’m a straight shooter. I tell it like it is, by which I mean I tell it like I think with little regard for other people’s opinions. People don’t like to hear the truth. It follows that what other people don’t want to hear must necessarily be true. Society may not always welcome a plainspoken truth-teller like me, but that’s the price I pay for being honest. It’s certainly better than admitting that I am a dick. Today is Friday, and we’ve got a whole mess of uncurved shooting in our link roundup. Much of it is not what strict rhetoricians call true, but the gun still fires with an impressive bang. Won’t you peer down the barrel with me?

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Friday links! Clash of civilization edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

Not the good kind of Clash.

We think of the clash of civilizations being waged in epic, epochal struggles among disparate cultures, but what if the clash is more like the rattling of the knife drawer? What if the primary clashing of a civilization—a modern, pluralistic civilization with really good phones, say—were with itself? Probably, the participants in that civilization would feel all kooked out, torn between their particular values and the universal desire to help one another. To resolve the dissonance, they’d likely have to declare parts of their own culture foreign, just to achieve the dissociation necessary to struggle against themselves. Such a civilization could only self-destruct—how else could it win the clash? Fortunately, we modern people don’t have that problem. We’re the foremost civilization in history, and we’ll be fine just as soon as we wreck China, European socialism, evangelical Christianity and the Dallas Cowboys. I’ll just grab one of the carving knives and we’ll—hang on. Sorry, this drawer sticks. Won’t you listen to the clanging with me?

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Friday links! Correlation vs. causation edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 4 Comments

When you get right down to it, everything that happens happens because of everything else. Sure, I took the kettle off this morning because it was whistling, but I also did it because Dowager Empress Cixi’s resistance to reform slowed the pace of industrial development in China, leading to a 21st-century state where it’s still profitable for kids to make housewares. Of course, I wouldn’t have bought that kettle at Montana Target had I not gotten into grad school many years ago, caused in part by a story I wrote about a person born with his heart on the outside of his body. So thank you, Kids In the Hall, for this morning’s coffee. It’s not so much that correlation is not causation as everything is causation, and correlation is therefore not that special. Today is Friday, for some reason, and our link roundup is full of startling forces that may or may not determine the course of our future. It’s all in how you look at it. Plus some of it is in immutable truths that could easily kills us no matter what we believe, but those will only be discernible in retrospect. Won’t you look back with me?

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Friday links! Apocalypse nowish edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

The four horsemen of the apocalypse: war, famine, disease, and tweets as sources

I’m not saying that the apocalyptic destruction of goodness and the unraveling of sense are in the near future, but what are the odds that they’re in the recent past? The anthropic principle dictates that the apocalypse is coming, because if it had already happened we wouldn’t be here. Ergo, pretty much every event is a sign of the coming apocalypse, or at least a link in the causal chain. We just have to figure out how to read them. Today is Friday, it’s pretty gray outside, and there seem to be an inordinate number of cannibal stories floating around. One need only check the news to find ample evidence—or at least some pre-schizoid pattern recognition—for the end of days. Come scry with me, won’t you?

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Friday links! What’s your excuse? edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment

So it turns out mono is the best disease ever. You can’t really do anything about it besides rest and drink fluids, which I was doing anyway. Other than encouraging you to look at pictures like this on the internet, the symptoms are not that bad, but it remains a name-brand illness. When you say you have mono, people pity you like, immediately. I’ve been using it for everything. Late to the movie? Mono. Haven’t shaved in nine days? Definitely mono—too tired, skin weak. Thirty-four, jobless, unmarried—how do you think I got mono in the first place? Today is Friday, and I’m pretty much taking the day off for reasons you can guess. Today’s link-round up is half-assed—some might say mononuclear—and smug. I’m ill, literally, and every stupid thing I do is okay because of it. What’s your excuse?

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