Take it easy, Baby! The ‘seasonal culture critic’ that brought you this slap-happy Rudolph takedown, Christina Cauterucci, might be lashing out because of personal issues. It can’t be easy even dealing when your D.C. nightlife blog’s gone under, so what if you’ve already gotten out of school and finally gotten a paying job. You try keeping your inner light alive turning out such work product as a defense of the one-boobed Christmas sweater and an acid-tongued take on why The Real L Word is bad for lesbians. Sometimes, wipes tear, even properly linking a meme is too much to endure. Yet, still, somehow, she's got a solid goddamn point here. I rather like her summation, too:

In real life, there are no Santas with unimpeachable moral compasses. Good people can still end up with coal in their stockings, and sometimes, the people who shame others the loudest are doing the exact things they condemn. It’s never too early to disabuse a child of her respect for authority. [Emphasis added.]

Sometimes it's not called Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer, sometimes it's called Karate Kid or Million Dollar Baby, and maybe you love them for their faults more every year, but they can still be genuinely messed up. While you may've gotten one thing out of it, if you happened to be the target of ridiculously cruel bullying for an intrinsic part of who you are, you might find that existential nightmare to be more stinging than you otherwise would. No reflection on you or your house-of-cards childhood, it's just more obvious when the allegory is impossible to miss.

Good news though, chum. You passed. "Diffabled" is an ideologically acceptable way to refer to the differently-abled. We decided so at the last Thursday night meeting of the disaffected misfits-among-misfits society. Thanks for your unwitting participation in the cruelly indifferent hellscape of our daily lives!

Wait, before we go any further with this, I have to ask: does your allyship include the diffabled?

Well, of course, that's how you get people used to tyranny. You don't make it happen overnight.

Ask yourself what would happen if 19-th century Americans were told that there are cameras and microphones recording their every movement and utterance for the government to store in a massive database and use as evidence against its citizens at its convenience. Or that to be able to travel they need to agree to being groped, and let their children be groped, by government officials. Now these things are normal and nobody seems to be too concerned. People just slowly got used to them.

We gettin’ edgy, we better find a war

There must be somethin’ worth fightin’ for

Peace is so peaceful, ain’t no way to survive

When nobody hates you, nobody knows you’re alive

We got the guns, we got the iPod store

We got The Savior, you couldn’t ask for more

Take it or leave it,that’s the deal of the day

But if you leave it you get it anyway

What could possibly ever go wrong? "This time it's different. This market can only go up."

Hm, maybe. I mean I like to cook quite a bit so I'm not really the best to ask if it's easier, but there's also vegetarian junk food. Pizzas, fries, falafel, etc. As for expensive, I think here it ends up being quite a bit cheaper. Fast food isn't cheap the same way it is in the states (a mcd's menu will set you back ~8 euro, I can cook for around 2 euro a person) so that might be a contributing factor. For example (thai) curries are ridiculously easy to make and still be cheap & tasty, you just throw in some vegetables, coconut milk, spices & curry paste, something protein-y and you're set. In my case it mostly required a different way of looking at food, and I've heard this from a few people who became vegetarian after they learned cooking with mostly meat -- instead of thinking "i'd like chicken with..." or "beef with" you have a different starting point. Not hard to change, just different.

If we do reinforce it, who do we ask to do it? Prison labor? Armed Forces? Lowest bidder?

If we hire a contractor, is the US Government responsible for their future health care or is the government?

Ha, I just found this elsewhere and was going to post it to /t/longform, amongst other places, but it looks like you've beaten me to it. Before I read it I'll ask this: what are your thoughts on the article?

Aaah, just in time. ;-)

The government agencies can choose between two approaches : (1) Work to protect the American public by finding safety holes and telling the relevant parties how to fix them, or (2) Work to give themselves more power by finding safety holes and keeping them secret (as well as using government power to create safety holes whenever possible), while spying on the public to find evidence that is useful to their interests.

One of these choices reflects the government's duty to represent and protect the public. The other reflects a government that is much more worried about self-preservation than representation. I'm sure I don't need to tell you which one is which, but I must ask you which one you prefer.

Get County offices of Dems and Reps to ask that all the other matters including trickle down tax cuts, take second place to getting our Middle Class workers ready for the A I Tsunami that comes.

“It makes me very sad when I celebrate Mass here in the piazza or in the basilica,” Francis said, pointing to St. Peter’s Basilica behind him, “and I see so many cellphones held up.”

I'm going to open my city-state up as a tourist attraction and then ask for no photographs... yeah, that's gonna work. The other problem with this is that the Vatican approves several apps such as the My Parish app in the US as the largest that the churches push, it not only includes info about churches near you but bulletins, daily readings, prayers and an order of mass to "follow" while in mass.

I wonder how he feels about cameras... I also wonder if this is partially a case of old guy doesn't like new technology...

I have a dear old friend who I so admire. He decided to do hospice care for a bit. He, like most, wanted to know things. He would ask people at the end of their lives what they regretted most. It was mostly what they didn't do. This remains with me a lesson.

My great grandmother always said you can judge people by whom they associate with. On that score, /u/NotWearingPants shines brightly. Too bad one can't completely avoid TSA simply by choosing not to fly. Let's remember, they have more of a right to your body than you do, at the times and places of their choosing. It's not really up to you.

Catholic doctrine makes my head spin. More so when there's more than one pope at a time. Like now, right? I don't mean the usual five or six, but the Vatican ones. There's the grim visage of the church, the former Hitler Youth with the soft spot in his heart for serial child abusers. He's the iron fist pope. Then there's the newer, ceremonial pope they wheel out for public consumption. The Latin American socialist with a background in chemistry, literature and psychology. He'd be the velvet glove pope. It's wrong-headed to ask which is the pope. They both are. Kinda like Christianity is monotheistic, except when it's not. Sometimes there's the one god with many names, sometimes they're the father, the son, the holy ghost. They're popes, iron and velvet, plural and singular. As long as it keeps the peasants from rising, I suppose it doesn't matter.

Exactly. You can ask Steve Jobs about that.

Obviously he planned this, but since he mentions the soldiers, I'd like to ask something. Is this more disrespectful than sending soldiers to fabricated wars that can't be won, and then letting veterans go homeless or die due to lack of job opportunities or proper health care once they get back?

What's the delicate way to ask? What's the meaning you meant to convey by 'merd?'

If you're looking for the good news about Monsanto you should ask one of their countless internet shills. Maybe you could try the next desk over from yours.

That's the fun, though, in reading popular science coverage: how full of shit is it? Mostly, or entirely? Typically it's in proportion to how popular it's trying to be. Anything from iflscience.com or sciencealert.com is likely to be alamentary. You know when you see kurzweilai.net, though, you're in for a coprophagist's delight.

A five-day-old blog spins crazy, innumerate, future tense hype about how the sun will only ever rise from now on. What's not to believe? Where do I shove my credit card into this thing? Baby needs a new pair of shoes.

if they're using ouija boards to ask Steve Jobs what to do.

If they are,he's not listening...Just wait till one catches fire on a flight. Don't they test these things?

At this point I'm wondering if they're using ouija boards to ask Steve Jobs what to do. Apple would be great if it hadn't been from the beginning a one-man company.

The insurance business, for instance, depends on the fact that insurers charge customers more than their insurance is worth; that’s fair enough, since if they didn’t do that they wouldn’t be viable as businesses. What isn’t fair is the panoply of cynical techniques that many insurers use to avoid, as far as possible, paying out when the insured-against event happens. Just ask anyone who has had a property suffer a major mishap.

Selling insurance has become like selling bottled water. You're essentially throwing money for free at the company. But that's the most free and open system we've ever had! Don't you feel good being so free and open?

The war never ended. It's older than Godzilla, and it's likely to make more of a mess, too.