Let's Drink Beer and Shoot Things

The writings of a white 20something. You can't find that anywhere else.

[letsdrinkbeerandshootthings]

[clickholeofficial]

We salute our heroes. 

[bransonreese]

[notcaycepollard]

the twitter thread the artist created after this was one of the best situations i have ever seen in my whole life:

[serpentking456]

Somebody give this ignoramus a piece of actual shark skin and tell him to rub his face with it, let him find out just how “smooth” sharks really are.

[bransonreese]

Somebody did. I use it as a pillowcase because it’s so smooth.

[severepaperhideout-deactivated2]

But buddy.

Shark skin feels exactly like sandpaper. It is made up of tiny teeth-like structures called placoid scales, also known as dermal denticles. These scales point towards the tail and help to reduce friction from surrounding water when the shark swims. … In the opposite direction, it feels very rough like sandpaper.

((Here m8 https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/fish/discover/sharks/basics ))

[bransonreese]

Buddy. It’s smooth. The link you sent me led to a website that described how smooth they are. I dunno, maybe you don’t know how to read?

[rudolph-the-rednosed-reinqueer]

There👏🏼 are👏🏼 different👏🏼 types👏🏼 of👏🏼 sharks👏🏼

[bransonreese]

and 👏 they’re 👏 all 👏 smooth👏

[existentialismandmakeup]

I think about this post a lot

[paulftompkins]

BRANSON IS THE GREATEST

[mst3kgifs]

This is looking good, guys! We’ve got just four more mountains for you to climb, then we can call it a day.

[letsdrinkbeerandshootthings]

Enjoying my new five dollar little dinky work fan

[mst3kgifs]

You don’t get to be the Queen of All Media by just letting your minions pick and choose their own titles.

[mytamakomysookee]

[kentremendousblog]

Trump is Bad at Politics

Not enough attention is being paid to how bad Donald Trump is at politics. Not “leadership,” or “policy,” but the actual game of politics, where you move chess pieces around and pull levers and such to get what you want.

Case in point, yesterday Trump tweeted, out of nowhere, this:

Huh. That’s weird. Just a random plug for a TV show from the leader of the free world. Well, let’s go ahead and see what Judge Jeanine Pirro says on tonight’s show…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/25/trump-asks-his-supporters-to-watch-fox-news-host-who-calls-on-ryan-to-step-down/?utm_term=.3226783ba7e7

Oh. She threw Paul Ryan under the bus. What an odd coincidence.

Here’s Reince Priebus, in that same WaPo article:

On Sunday, during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” White House chief of staff Reince Priebus called Trump’s tweet and Pirro’s call for Ryan to step down “coincidental.”

“There is no preplanning here,” Priebus said, adding that Trump promoted Pirro’s show on Twitter “because he loves Judge Jeanine” and wanted to do her a favor.

According to the searchable Trump twitter archive, Trump has only tweeted about Judge Jeanine one other time in his life. 

What I imagine happened was something like this:

AHCA goes down in flames.

Bannon/Trump/whoever need someone to blame, because it definitely wasn’t the President’s fault, as he spent nearly two and a half weeks working on this and barely went golfing three times.

They decide to blame Ryan. Makes sense.

They strategize. Call around to surrogates. Jeanine says she is down to kneecap Ryan. They say, great, tonight on your show, let Ryan have it, and that will start a slow triangulation, where we slowly put the pressure on, gradually, from different corners of the –

Trump tweets HEY EVERYONE WATCH JUDGE JEANINE’S SHOW I WONDER WHAT SHE WILL SAY THERE HAS BEEN NO COORDINATION OBVIOUSLY AT ALL I AM JUST A FAN OF HERS AND I FEEL LIKE EVERYONE SHOULD MAYBE CHECK IT OUT BECAUSE WHATEVER SHE SAYS IS USUALLY SMART AND ACCURATE SHE IS SMART EVERYONE WATCH NOW DO IT WATCH HER SHOW

And then the people who are not terrible at politics sigh, very loudly, and grit their teeth, and claim that this was a coincidence.

He is so bad at this.

[mst3kgifs]

Dude.

[letsdrinkbeerandshootthings]

So you’re on a YouTube music rabbit hole and you find out that an Oasis song you really like was also the opening to an Anime series (like for real). It fits without ever seeing it I guess, but I have to wonder what the Gallagher brothers’ reaction was. Probably a lot of swearing in a sort of middle England way.

[mst3kgifs]

But what will happen to all my rowdy friends?

[lastowka]

[craigcalcaterra-deactivated2020]

Out of Touch

In the wake of the Meryl Streep thing, Republicans are saying that this is why the left is out of touch with typical, working Americans. The last four Republican presidents, by the way, have been (1) a billionaire reality show host; (2-3) scions of one of America’s wealthiest, most patrician east coast Ivy League dynasties; and (4) a literal Hollywood actor. So maybe spare me.

Anyway, I just read the Streep speech. To be offended by it you have to be either pro-mocking the weak and powerless or just tribally pro-Trump. There’s no partisan politics in it. There’s nothing about economics or policy separate and apart from “be kind to the weak and powerless.”

If that’s what passes for controversial, we’re basically screwed as a society.

[jennyhoelzer-deactivated2016120]

[thesaramonster]

[letsdrinkbeerandshootthings]

it me

[screenshotsofdespair]

[craigcalcaterra-deactivated2020]

Abolish the Electoral College

It’s easy for me to say this now because my preferred candidate just lost in the Electoral College despite winning the popular vote. I thus appreciate that it looks self-serving for me to say this.

I have, however, been opposed to the Electoral College since I first studied it in depth 25 years ago and would be no less opposed to it if the situation were reversed. You can choose to believe that or not. If you don’t, you won’t care about anything else I write here and will assume I am viewing this through a partisan lens. If that’s the case you may as well move along and save yourself some time.

It is, however, a fact that I would be against the Electoral College even if it had elected Clinton despite Trump winning the popular vote. I’m against it even when it does not work such anomalous results. As I said the other day, Donald Trump is the fairly-elected President of the United States. I do not claim that he was illegitimately elected. This is the system we have and both he and Clinton knew it going in. The results will stand. And they should. 

But the system should not stand. It is an idiotic system whose sole argument in favor is tradition which is no argument at all. It’s an anti-democratic system born of corrupt historical compromise which has lost any utility it ever had if, indeed, it ever had any utility. We are a nation of people which elects the most powerful leader in the world based on acreage. That is utter madness. Let’s talk about it some.  

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