Friday links! Dueling hacks edition

Kim Jong Un approves of cinnamon twists.

We all know that the most effective form of government is a powerful chief executive who inherited his position and never got a chance to fail. When times are tough, you want a rich kid with a long resume in the family business. That’s how my grandparents’ generation won World War II: their parents won World War I. But what happens when two Little Lord Fauntleroy types square off? If you were to pit, say, Fred Trump’s kid against the cleverest public-school graduates in New York, you know who would win. Same goes for Kim Jong Il’s kid against the savviest apparatchiks in North Korea. When two such people square off, though, the resourcefulness that comes from being sucked up to your whole life cancels out on both sides. They are left with only their positions to defend them, plus their unimaginable wealth. Today is Friday, and two of the biggest assholes in the world are ready to win a nuclear war. Won’t you pit hack against hack with me?

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Kanye West explains problem of social networking, accidentally

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian on a zipline tour of Mexico with the dude who owns Girls Gone Wild.

Normally Combat! blog does not concern itself with celebrities, for the simple reason that we are much more interested in ourselves. It is a widespread problem. Anyone who has taught Intro to Creative Writing knows the power of the autobiographical story to fascinate exactly one person. What happens to us is wildly compelling; even if the plot isn’t great, the setting at the center of the universe makes it terrific. What happens to others is boring. It seems like a perfect system, but there’s a flaw. Kanye West found it a couple weeks ago, when he tweeted and quickly deleted the following:

Then Kim was like, “oh, someone mentioned me on Twitter.”

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