If someone did this to me, I’d respond with a eight quadrillion character email that consisted only of LOLOLOLOLOLOL.

Economists like to pretend that such things as politics and values do not exist, when in reality without examining politics and values, economics as a meaningful enterprise cannot exist.

Another reason for the aliens to kill us all.

I estimate that I was left alone in cars for 100-200 hours before the age of 10. Maybe more. It’s not like I counted.

No car seats then, so my parents would say, “If you get hot, get out of the car and walk around.”

And I’d say, “OK.”

And that was that. When you treat everyone like a dumbass, here’s what you end up with: dumbasses.

Funny to see reminiscing about Livejournal now that all has moved to tumblr.

I remember when fanfic was written on BBSes and newsgroups.

Damn.

When I was very young and heard the song “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” I thought it was saying “Sittin’ on the Grits.”

Because at the time I had no idea what “ritz” was or why you’d put it on, but I did know what “grits” were and obviously sitting on them wouldn’t be that good of an idea.

Among the clinically insane, the “open carry” people are some of the worst.

The normal, responsible gun owner who enjoys sport shooting but keeps their gun locked away responsibly and knows you don’t need a mini-arsenal to enjoy guns is a dying breed. However, the development of the paranoid, highly insecure right winger who feels this pressing needs to “prove” the manliness he is secretly worried he doesn’t have is? Now that’s a gold mine.

Fun fact: I’d be more effective with a single shot bolt action rifle from 300 meters than most of them would be with a spray-on-command semi-auto from 100 feet.

Because they don’t actually care about shooting or marksmanship. They care about demonstrating – ineffectively – their masculinity.

It’s hard to think of anything I care about less or find more boring than soccer (football).

Maybe bingo. But they seem awfully similar to me. Both are a bunch of people in a confined space doing nothing for a long time.

You know your profession is a complete shitshow when you use math to attempt to disprove something that is obviously occurring.

Unfortunately, all of the focus on Piketty is a net negative because if conservatives and neoliberals manage to convince everyone that Piketty is wrong (which is likely; they own nearly all the media), then that will be in most people’s minds a de facto refutation of the actuality of the startling increase in inequality.

So when “economists” disprove using poor math something that is completely obvious, I wonder how anyone in that field is allowed even to speak. Because inequality is obviously rising – every statistic shows this – the question is only the mechanism.

One of the reasons I have problems with much of mathematical modeling is that in most fields it’s just as social as anything else: in other words, it is almost always used to justify existing prejudices and the status quo, not to discover anything.

How long till eggnog appears on the store shelves?

It has been too long. Too long.

Yeah, I know, it’s pretty easy to make. But that’s not the point. I like it when other people do it.