People like Will Shetterly:

"I have no regrets for voting for Nader twice, and I'm a little sorry I voted for Obama. I knew he was a neoliberal, but I thought it would feel better than it did to finally be able to vote for a black prez."

They only had to prove they weren’t racists once. With that achievement unlocked, they’re free to vote for the candidates they actually approve of.

There are frequent discussions online about how to end an unwanted visit by Jehovah’s Witnesses. The general consensus is that the sure-fire “stop bugging me forever” technique is to quietly, sincerely say, “I’m sorry, I’ve been disfellowshipped”, which means you’ve been kicked out of the Witnesses, and talking to you can send them to hell, too.

I seem to have found an even better way. I was working from home on Thursday, when I got the knock on my door. I answered it to find a stunning young hispanic woman leading a troop of Watchtower-holders, whose face fell the moment she saw me.

In halting English, she asked, “do you know if your neighbors speak Spanish?”

Or, well, not:

"You know, this is what happens with communism. It’s a great concept. On paper it makes perfect sense. But once you put a human being in power, it shifts. We saw it in Russia, we’ve seen it all around the world. It’s nuts. But, I keep my fingers crossed."

--- Whoopi Goldberg, lamenting that the late Kim Jong-il's legacy was just an implementation problem

…unless you’re, y’know, actually homeless, instead of being a contributor to the new society:

The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a “counter” revolution yesterday --- because they’re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.

For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad.

1. Occupy Wall Street (read: “skip classes; someone else is paying for it anyway”).

2. Select generic slogan that would be just as meaningful applied to Congress, unions, or any local school board (“no more corruption”).

3. Use Google Translate to convert idiomatic English into ungrammatical Chinese that means something entirely different (“not corrupted any more”), and scrawl the resulting Hanzi characters onto a poster with a marker.

4. Feel proud of this dubious accomplishment.

What tone-deaf idiot wrote this?

A Brand New Brand
We've been eager to share something exciting with you, and now it's time:

Your Asian Art Museum sports a new vision, a new brand promise, and a new logo unveiled this week. We're reinventing ourselves to engage a broader audience.

Our Vision is to spark connections across cultures and through time, and our brand promises to: Awaken the Past, Inspire the Next. We'll use art to unlock the past and bring it to life, and act as a catalyst for new art, new creativity, and new thinking. We'll feature more contemporary art, often drawing connections to historic art in our collection. We invite you to experience the beauty and depth of Asian art and cultures, and to be inspired.

Our new logo reflects our Vision. It says we have a new perspective. It's bold and confident. And, it invites all to engage. (Did you know an upside-down A is a mathematic symbol for for all?)

Come see how we're starting to live our new brand.
...

It honestly reads like a letter to shareholders after a corporate takeover, not a museum newsletter sent to members and patrons. And the logo itself? Eh. Not bad if you’re making add-ons for Adobe products, I suppose.

“Bend over, taxpayer.”

Saw a “news” article yesterday where someone attempted to prove his moral cleverness by showing the lack of a significant national response on the 10th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and that what was written about Japan at the time was largely concerned with building up our peaceful relationship. Apparently he not only doesn’t understand the difference between Pearl Harbor and 9/11, he’s managed to overlook all the ways that we still, to this day, remember World War 2.