Oooh, that’s got to sting. K-Mart and Sears are dropping the Trump brand from their lineup, once again citing declining sales. The Trump brand isn’t good enough for K-Mart? Wow.
I can’t understand the problem, though. I mean, what K-Mart shopper wouldn’t want a $567.45 Trump Lamp? Look how classy it is. That is the best lamp. The greatest! Definitely worth half a grand. Donald probably has one exactly like it, except that his is covered in gold.
Sorry. I used to post links to online polls all the time, just to mock their worthlessness, but I sort of stopped as it sunk in that people were still taking them way too seriously. Here’s one that’s sort of interesting, though: Fox News has a series of online poll questions asking what you think of Trump’s performance on various issues. And the respondents are generally hammering> him!
Did I say this was a Fox News poll? I did. It’s just really weird. The votes are in the tens of thousands right now, and it’s a landslide against Trump.
Where were these people on election day?
I get so much spam. Because my name is on the about page for Freethoughtblogs as some kind of official leader (really, I’m not — I keep telling everyone it’s total anarchy here, with all these writers going their own way), I get all this email from commercial outfits that want free advertising — they tell me they have written an article that is just perfect for our site, and they’re willing to let me publish it for free (sometimes they even offer to pay me for the privilege). It’s often clear that they have no idea what they’re doing, they’re just looking at traffic rankings and trying to get their site injected into the stream. They’re pathetic. Like Patrick here:
Hi there,
My name is Patrick, I am the main editor at redacted.com
Hi, Patrick. Did you know that redacted.com is a shit site selling worthless or dangerous diet pills? Aren’t you a little embarrassed to be a shill for such patent garbage?
While browsing your site, I noticed you have an amazing article from this page:
Yes. It’s a good post. She writes lots of interesting things, I’m glad you noticed. But did you actually read what she wrote, or, Patrick, were you just randomly requesting attention on sites that used certain keywords? It’s all about how you shouldn’t judge people based on their bodies.
My team actually just published a comprehensive article on 44 Quick Effective Weight Loss, Body Shape Exercises for Women which I think your visitors would truly appreciate and add value to your awesome article.
You can check it out here: http://redacted.com/weight-loss-body-exercises-women/
Gosh, Patrick, it looks like you didn’t even glance at Yemmy’s article. You just saw the magic phrase “losing weight” in the URL.
If you were willing to add our link to that page, I would be more than happy to share it to thousands of our social followers to help you gain some visibility in exchange.
Ummm, no. We gain nothing by shilling for your crap page. You’re not looking to help us out at all — you want to tap into our readership to get more traffic to your worthless site.
I’m doing you a favor by not posting a link, because I don’t think our readers would like you very much.
Let me know what you think and thank you for your consideration!
Cheers,
Patrick
What do I think? Fuck you, Patrick.
And then there’s Sam.
Hey PZ,
It’s disappointing to see that we have not been able to (re)connect in the last several months even after so much outreach.
We thought this would be an easy win-win considering the success we’ve seen in the past with publishers like yourself. We’ve been able to utilize the scale of our network to generate a higher ROI and much more.
If you can spare a few minutes I would appreciate knowing what your priorities are so I can reach back out should we develop new offerings that are relevant to you.
Best,
Sam
You’re disappointed, Sam? You’re trying to play the guilt card? You’ve been working so hard to be my profitable friend?
Fuck you too, Sam. Better yet, how about if you and Patrick get together and fuck each other for me.
I know, you don’t have to tell me. I’m a terrible CEO for FtB. I’m just not diplomatic at all.
Behold the majestic crag in all its glory! With a little surveying work, the highest point in Stevens County, Minnesota has been identified, at 45.745271 N, -95.830586 W, a dizzying 1272 ft above sea level.
You see it, don’t you? And of course it’s covered with corn stubble.
All this talk about immigrants lately had me wondering about my European roots, so I did a little bit of digging.
My father’s side of the family is hopeless. I think they came over to the Americas from England and the Netherlands in the bilge, along with the rats, and almost immediately lit out for the frontier, where ever it was, probably because they were all ruffians and scalawags who got chased out of any civilized settlement. They were immigrants, all right, but I don’t know of any reliable records. They’ve been here since the 17th century, I think, and probably up to no good.
My mother’s side is easier: all Scandinavian farmers. I knew my great grandparents with their strong accents and their house decorated with Swedish and Norwegian accents, and that’s where I learned to recite the Lord’s Prayer in Norwegian (don’t ask me now, I’ve completely forgotten).
My great grandfather, Peter Westad, was born in 1880, in Minnesota. He was American by birth! My great-great-grandfather, Jens Westad, was also born in America in 1850, also in Minnesota. It clearly took them several generations to acculturate. My great-great-grandfather, Dyre Westad, was apparently born in Norway, but that’s all I know about him.
The surprise, to me, was that it was the women who were all more recent immigrants. I guess those Norwegian bachelor farmers who were living the hard farming life in frigid Minnesota had to write off to the old country for their brides.
So, my great-grandmother, Christina Stephenson, was born in 1884 in Transtrand, Sweden, and came over to the US in her early 20s to marry Peter. I had to look up Transtrand: current population is 386, so I guess it wasn’t too great of a shock to move to northern Minnesota.
My great-great-grandmother, Marit Olsdatter, was also an import, born in Flesberg, Norway in 1849, and brought to the US to marry Jens. Flesberg seems a bit more cosmopolitan now, with a population of 2500.
I hadn’t realized what a lovely example of chain migration was in my family history, where one or a few pioneers establish a foothold and then bring in friends and family at later dates to build up a community. It’s also an example of how immigrant families adapt over time, where time is several generations.
It’s also what’s going on with families from Somalia and Syria and all those other countries our government wants to ban — which is nothing less than an effort to disrupt that pattern of chain migration which is so important to accommodating people to a new country. There’s no difference in the general pattern between a Scandinavian family in the 1850s and a Somali family in the 2000s — let ’em live and grow and they will be a productive part of the American culture.
What part of your family would have been wrecked by current policies?
I had another thought: those radical immigrants, coming in and challenging the established order, are one of the concerns of the powers-that-be. The Scandinavians had them, too, like Joel Emmanuel Hägglund from Gävle, Sweden, better known as Joe Hill. A labor activist and songwriter, he was killed by The Man in 1915.
We need more Joe Hills. Maybe they’ll come from those Muslim countries this time around.
Our legal fund has reached its goal of $20,000 in less than 5 days! It feels good to know we have that level of support.
Don’t stop, you can keep adding to the pool, but now we get to pay our lawyer in full, and push the case on to the next step. Depending on how that goes, we may have to ask for more donations, but for now it’s all smooth sailing.
Our legal fund has hit $17,486 — we’re really close to our primary goal of $20,000. We’re breathing a sigh of relief right now, since this is going to mean our legal costs for this first phase of the battle will be met (our lawyer is working on venue issues and other such significant preliminaries — it seems silly to have a trial in Ohio, where none of us live, and where Carrier did not live until right about the time he put together his lawsuit). Once that’s all settled we’ll know better what direction the case will go.
He’s supposed to be a smart guy. Maybe he’ll realize this is a losing argument for him, he’ll drop the whole thing, and we can all get back to writing, teaching, doing science, fighting for justice, and crushing Donald Trump, all much better uses of our time and money.
The year’s celebrity death toll begins its inexorable rise: Mary Tyler Moore has died. I tried to tell you, there was nothing special about 2016, 2017 — every year — will kill again and again and again.
P.S. I don’t hate spunk.
They have addressed an important controversy, and have wisely arrived at the correct answer. Pizza should be served with pineapple. I will go further: the perfect pizza is one with pineapple and jalapenos.
On the subject of pineapple, I will tolerate no disagreement. I’m a little more flexible on the jalapenos. Back in my day, when I was dating my wife-to-be, we’d typically head out to Shakey’s Pizza Parlor up on the hilltop of Kent, Washington, near the high school, and we’d order a Hawaiian pizza, always, with pineapple and Canadian bacon. That was the best pizza, until I discovered the joys of hot, spicy peppers combined with the sweetness of pineapple…my wife could not follow me into that den of sinful pleasure, but I forgive her, and we haven’t divorced yet.
In the first 24 hours of our fundraising campaign, we’re almost 3/4 of the way to our conservative goal of $20,000. When we hit that, though, don’t stop! We set a goal to cover our current expenses, but we know more will be coming along, depending on how far Carrier wants to take his foolish suit.
It’s sad, too, because he has to be spending at least as much money on his lawyer, all for an unattainable award (he won’t be able to squeeze $2 million out of us; we’re operating on a shoestring as it is), on a journey that, win or lose, is doing a heck of a lot of damage to his reputation.
