From at thread:

I was briefly engaged to a Magic Pixy Girl. Luckily, my ship deployed soon afterwards. She quickly forgot about me for the next guy of the month, Magic Pixy Girls can't understand commitment. By the time we got back, it was obviously over.

We ran into each other 16 years later, doing Christmas shopping. Aside from the wall hitting her hard, she hadn't changed much. Still in a ratty apartment eking out her existence working a couple of part-time jobs, still doing the 'artsy' stuff we did in grade school. I showed her my pictures of my wife and children in front of my house. That was a mistake, although I didn't realize it at the time.

She killed herself that night. A Home for Magic Pixy Girls would have been much more humane.

http://alphagameplan.blogspot.ca/2017/01/so-sad.html

Make of that what you will.

If you can forgive repeated abuse of the word "key," this is a neat factoid-based article: Women hit the wall for a reason.

I saw Lew in a Brentwood grocery once.

Also, I admire the righteousness of Twitterer Thompson's resistance to responsibility:

All views here are my own, and not those of the BBC. Obviously, as I don't even work there.

Fake but accurate?

A 14-year-old African American girl who set up a fake white supremacist Twitter account and sent out a tweet threatening violence at her Maryland high school has been charged with a juvenile citation.

http://heatst.com/culture-wars/maryland-high-school-student-behind-fake-racist-account-koolkidsklankkk-charged-by-police/

For those who are interested: The Economist reviews what appears to be a fairly interesting book about Edward Snowden, which probes whether he worked alone or in cahoots with a foreign intelligence service.

If you can forgive repeated abuse of the word "key," this is a neat factoid-based article: Women hit the wall for a reason. ~ Crid at January 13, 2017 2:15 AM

The next one about there being no global warming hiatus is also interesting.

http://reason.com/blog/2017/01/13/court-sentences-dad-to-hard-labor-for-ma

Apparently, it's even too dangerous for a 20 year old to walk that mile.

Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a reputation is insignificant next to the power of the Donald J. Trump twitter account?

The outrage mob’s target-of-the-day is L.L. Bean, after it was revealed Linda Bean, granddaughter of the founder and a member of the company’s board of directors, donated money to a PAC supporting Donald Trump for President.

The anti-Trump group Grab Your Wallet called for a boycott of L.L. Bean stores, even though the company itself has offered no political position on Trump or anything else for that matter really. This is how it usually starts.

Suddenly, however, the left finds itself somewhat outmatched and ill-equipped, because now they are up against the most powerful pushback tool they’ve ever faced: Donald Trump’s Twitter account.

http://heatst.com/politics/donald-trump-twitter-bean/

Where have you gone, Mrs. Free Speech?

Short answer: not Berkley.

http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2017/01/12/left-wing-extremists-uc-berkeley-dox-student-milo-event-hosts-post-personal-details-workplace-address/

Ein volk.
Ein reich.
Ein führer.

All we need now is a call for some lebensraum.

Johannes Pinnel, a spokesman for the regional court in Wuppertal, outlined the court’s decision in a statement. Three German Palestinians sought to torch the Wuppertal synagogue with Molotov cocktails in July, 2014. The local Wuppertal court panel said in its 2015 decision that the three men wanted to draw “attention to the Gaza conflict” with Israel. The court deemed the attack not to be motivated by antisemitism.

http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/German-court-calls-synagogue-torching-an-act-to-criticize-Israel-478330

Nice of you guys to appreciate the Second Amendment. Good luck with your training. You do realize that you'll fight the way you train?

In fact, another piece on reacting to the election, by Tim Kreider in The Week, is titled "I love America. It's Americans I hate." Writes Kreider, “The public is a swarm of hostile morons, I told her. You don't need to make them understand you; you just need to defeat them, or wait for them die. . . . A few of us are talking, after a couple drinks, about buying guns; if it comes to a fascist state or civil war, we figure, we don't want the red states to be the only ones armed.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/01/13/donald-trump-class-rural-white-democrats-glenn-reynolds-column/96413412/

"we don't want the red states to be the only ones armed.”

Will they follow Biden's advice and fire a warning shot into the air?

Because that's how you stop a riot.

Be careful of what you wish for. You may get it.

You People Wanted the Politicized Life? Congrats, You Got It

...

It is, frankly, not the world I wanted. The idea that the political and personal and professional should all be hopelessly intertwined—that we should all live a politicized life—has long struck me as foolish and unhealthy. But it’s the world we have. Hooray, you won: the politicized life is here to stay.

http://freebeacon.com/blog/people-wanted-politicized-life-congrats-got/

From HuffPo:

On Wednesday, Donald Trump said Americans were paying too much for prescription drugs because big pharmaceutical companies have too much power in Washington. “We have to … create new bidding procedures for the drug industry, because they’re getting away with murder,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “Pharma has a lot of lobbies, a lot of lobbyists and a lot of power.”

The murder spree continued into the final hour of Wednesday night, as 13 Senate Democrats proved Trump right by joining 39 Republicans to vote down a bill designed to lower prescription drug prices.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-rush-to-prove-trump-right-on-big-pharma_us_5877edd4e4b0b3c7a7b05c29

Politicians. What would we do without them?

Forget it, Jake, it's Philly.

To understand Kenney's reasoning, you have to know that the new tax technically is applied at the wholesale level. That is, the city is charging a tax on the transaction that takes place when a business, like a sandwich shop or grocery store, purchases soda (or the syrup used to make soda in a fountain) from a distributor. In the mayor's mind, it seems, distributors and retailers are supposed to eat the cost of the tax and continue selling their products at the same price as before the tax went into effect.

In the real world, those sandwich shops and grocery stores, of course, are adjusting the retail price of sugary drinks to make up for the added cost imposed by the tax. Some of them have posted signs to inform customers why drink prices have skyrocketed.

Kenney doesn't like that. He called those efforts "wrong" and "misleading" and suggested that it could be an extension of the expensive fight put up by soda companies, retailers, and even the city's Teamsters Union in a failing effort to prevent the tax from passing in the first place.

http://reason.com/blog/2017/01/11/philly-mayor-blames-price-gouging-for-ou

"...a bill designed to lower prescription drug prices."

Unless it's a bill that substantially reforms the FDA and its processes, there is no such thing.

Just repeal. Don't replace with another centrally-planned, deficit-enlarging monstrosity. Let health care improvements come from the bottom up.

Repealing Obamacare Is Just the Start: How to Fix American Health Care, Part 1

Unless it's a bill that substantially reforms the FDA and its processes, there is no such thing.

It looked like it was a bill designed to make importing prescription medications into the US easier, so maybe a little bit of relief, but not much.

Just repeal. Don't replace with another centrally-planned, deficit-enlarging monstrosity.

They have to appear to be doing something, like allowing insurance to be sold across state lines. If they could uncouple it from employment, that would be a great thing.

How many people can buy their car insurance thru their employer?

My jaw dropped - this may be the kidnapping baby I heard of years ago who was "never found." (It WAS in Florida, as I remember.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/01/13/a-newborn-was-snatched-from-a-florida-hospital-she-was-just-found-safe-at-age-18/?utm_term=.9fa78677adec

Btw, there was a better-known case in California in the 1970s - two babies were kidnapped from different mothers (by a nurse!); the second mother was murdered, and the first baby was rescued at age 15 months or so, IIRC, in late 1975. The story was turned into the 1993 TV movie "Empty Cradle," starring Kate Jackson. (One annoying detail: In real life, the first baby, who was biracial, was chosen by the white kidnapper because she - Norma Jean Armistead - was dating a black man. In the movie, everyone who was involved was white - not counting the detective played by Eriq La Salle. Armistead was released from prison in 2015. She should be turning 87 this February.)

I meant, of course, "kidnapped."

Lenona, what is the deal with you?

You have this range of topics where it seems like you've been taking notes for 20 years. And they're not typical topics.

Typical of what?

Kidnappings make for pretty dramatic, memorable stories, real or fictional, after all.

As it happens, a couple of years back, we were discussing whether it makes sense for maternity wards to be spending so much money on security - and I pointed out that even in the 21st century, whenever someone manages to kidnap a baby - that is, to get the baby all the way out of the parking lot - it always seems to be an OUTSIDER who figures out how to outwit the security system, which is pretty disturbing, when you think about it.

Sadly, Lenona is correct on improved maternity ward security.

TOTALLY ruined Hillary's last Bohemian Grove bash. Nothing to barbecue!

That may have been the first year the baby back ribs were pork, now that I think about it.

the first baby was rescued at age 15 months or so, IIRC, in late 1975.
___________________________________

Whoops - Mary Childs' baby was rescued in the spring of 1975, at only 8 months old. Luckily, in an age of no DNA tests, she looked just like her older sister at that age.

Here's that thread I mentioned:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/02/16/more_dumb_stuff.html