Chaos Theory

Oh lord

"Back in Spring 2016, 23 participants went into the wilderness of the Scottish Highlands, contracted to create a new civilization, sans technology, media, and modern comforts. It would all be filmed for a television program, which would document the evolution of this new society and the struggles it would face.

However, unbeknownst to the stars of "Eden," the livelihood of the program took a turn. Viewership took a nosedive just four episodes in, dipping from 1.7 million viewers to 800,000, causing the network to take the show off the air. Despite what appeared to be a cancellation, producers pressed on with their work without informing contestants that the show hadn't aired since August."

Update #50: greetings from the Resistance

Trump Life:

• Another suspect for leaking calls attention to himself on Twitter.
• Stop Saying Donald Trump Is Mentally Ill. He is a “reality” artist, building an evil new society. We must realize this to stop him.
• You may now think the tax returns don't matter, but really, it shows important clues and stuff. 
• How to Not Take Trump’s Tweets “Literally”
• Donald Trump Sees Himself in Andrew Jackson: The president deserves the Jackson legacy, but not for the reasons he’d like.
• A Brief History of Donald Trump Calling Out ‘Failing’ Celebrities on Twitter
• Trump Stands by ‘Wiretap’ Claim — Even As House Intel Committee Rejects It
• Another moronic quote about his Twitter.
• Oh joy, rallies every 2 weeks. 
• Trump’s new budget plan will cut all funding to the NEA, NEH
• Justin Trudeau brings Ivanka Trump to see Come From Away.
• "Fun little side note for those of you who (like me) are allergic to even the word 'Trump':
  I run a gift shop that carries a game called Lord of the Wings: A Bird Trump Game. It's a lovely and educational and beautiful gift, but I have heard multiple customers mention that just the word 'Trump' being on there ruined it for them. I passed the feedback on to the publisher, and they responded that because they have gotten *so much* feedback like this, the next print run will have the word 'Trump' removed. That's how toxic his brand is. It's so toxic that market forces responded."

David Cay Johnson interviews:

• "Yeah, I must have gotten under Donald’s skin pretty deeply, that he has issued this tweet, whoever heard of me. I don’t know. Donald and I have been talking to each other for 30 years." "And, you know, Amy, the White House did something actually quite unethical yesterday. I have been dealing with White Houses since Richard Nixon. I’ve been at this 50 years, and I’ve been dealing with White Houses since Nixon. I have never before sent the White House a document to allow them to comment on it and have them take my exclusive story and give the information to other reporters. And that’s what they did. They never responded to me. They instead went to other reporters and said, "Here’s what’s going to happen." That is just the most base, unethical conduct by the White House Press Office that I have ever seen.... And when I was on another TV station today, the producer said to me, you know, "Did you know Trump gave out your story just before it went public at DCReport.org?" And then I went on The Rachel Maddow Show a minute later. And that really is just not the way you do things. It is—it lacks honor. Of course, Donald Trump lacks honor, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Donald Trump doesn’t have any idea what honor is."
• Old 2016 interview: "Donald doesn’t know anything. And if you listen carefully to what he says, it becomes apparent. He was asked by a Hugh Hewitt during one of the debates, the right-wing radio talk show host, about the nuclear triad. That’s the capacity of the U.S. to deliver a nuclear bomb from a submarine missile, a land-based missile or an airplane. His answer indicated he had no idea. Well, it turned out Hugh Hewitt had asked the same question months earlier on his radio show, and Trump didn’t learn in between. Trump talks as if the president’s a dictator. When he ran casinos, he didn’t know the games, he didn’t know the odds, he didn’t know how to handle customers. All he knew how to do was take money out of the organization, which weakened it, and that’s why his casinos were among the first to fold.... I mean, if Marco Rubio, who is pretty much an empty suit, has to school you on something this basic, that should have screamed to people back in December, "This man has no qualifications!"...Donald has done business all his life with mobsters and criminals, because it’s a way to make money.....Why did Donald Trump need to write that letter, which could have cost him his casino license? Because he needed this guy to be his friend and not his enemy. What was going on that Donald Trump needed a drug trafficker to be his friend and not his enemy? And that’s a question no one in the news media has been asking.....And that’s an essential element to understanding Donald Trump. You don’t exist, Amy, I don’t exist, as a person. That’s why he talks about women the way he does, in these degrading terms. Donald doesn’t see other people as people. He sees them as things to be used....This is a man who gives awards to himself. How juvenile..... I did not appreciate, until I worked on the book, that while Donald holds himself out as a devout Christian—"No one reads the Bible more than me"—while he has all these pastors embracing him as a good Christian man, Donald aggressively, thoroughly and at great length, in many forums, denounces Christianity. His personal motto is "always get revenge," whereas the message of Jesus Christ was "turn the other cheek." And these ministers, some of whom I’ve written to and haven’t—they haven’t responded at all—continue to embrace him. And I find it very troubling. Donald has beguiled them with flattery. If they continue, now that my book is out, if they know about it, to do this, they are then deceiving their flocks, and that’s evil. But Donald himself doesn’t care about these things. He will tell you any lie. He can’t quote a single line from the Bible. Not one. And yet he says, "No one reads the Bible more than Donald Trump." If you ask him, "Well, what do you like in the Bible?" "Oh, there’s so many. There’s so many. I just—there are so many, I can’t choose."

The Evil Empire:

• "There is simply so much garbage pouring out of 1600 Pennsylvania on any given day that it's beyond the capacity of any human to properly comprehend and become outraged by all of it."
• Paranoia seizes Trump’s White House
• The Grown-Ups Are Locked Out: Trump is depriving Tillerson, Mattis, and McMaster of any real influence or support.
• Senators Feinstein and Grassley grim and silent after Trump-Russia briefings with Comey
• "Everyone pause to give a slow clap for Stephen Miller, strategic genius, giving court reason to strike down White House travel ban."
• Oklahoma State Senator fails the live boy/dead girl test
• Onion: Report: It Unclear Whether Opposition From Every Sector Of American Society Will Have Any Effect On Healthcare Bill Passing

Town halls:

• "Ok, guys: my terrible, terrible, terrible senator is having a town hall on Friday, and I am going! (She scheduled it at absolutely the least convenient time she could find: at a college on spring break, on St. Patrick's Day, in a town with a big parade, an hour before the parade begins. Fuck her. I am taking a vacation day from work and going.) What should I ask her? Assume she is 100% on board with every aspect of the Trump agenda."
• "And some Republicans have been avoiding the meetings. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska decided he should show up."

International life:

• Americans Are Moving All the Way to New Zealand to Get Away From Trump
• I don't watch The Bachelor (but apparently this relationship is already dead in the water?), but will the dreaded visa process keep Nick and Vanessa apart? Basically the only even somewhat working option is for them to elope immediately, which isn't good but still better than her trying to get one involving a job, apparently. Thanks, Trump!

Fear and loathing: 

• Of course that happened.
• Does due process bar the government from revoking its promise of liberty to DACA beneficiaries?
• "Texans who live in the path of President Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico have received the first letters, called a “Declaration of Taking,” from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. One of the notices, received by Yvette Salinas, offers her family $2,900 for 1.2 acres near the Rio Grande. Even if her family does not accept the federal government’s offer, their land can still be seized through eminent domain."
• I want to break it off with my brother the Trump fan.

Video:

• TrumpMingle
• Politicians and con artists and Trump.
• A hair surgeon explains what's going on with Trump's hair.
• A body language expert analyzes Trump's "unique" handshakes. She claims Trump really likes people and Abe likes him back because he's leaning in.. HE'S BEING YANKED ON, THAT'S WHY!
• Stephen Colbert Attempts to Communicate With President Obama Via Microwave
• About that Snoop Dogg video....

Hell if I know:

• How arrogance can make even an obnoxious person popular
• Witchcraft's appeal in the era of Trump
• Iron Fist Star Finn Jones Says Trump’s Election Influenced the Show’s Negative Reviews: Look, I hate to defend the dude on any point, but if you made a boring show--and like every review I've read says it's duller than shit--that ain't Trump. We WANTED it to be good so it would distract us from Trump. (But seriously, I'm not even gonna bother to watch it. I wasn't interested in "Iron Fist" in the first place and after kinda slogging through Luke Cage, which was less interesting than I expected, I am so not in the mood.) 

Washington Post:

• "In what is easily the most important survey finding of the early days of the Trump administration, the left-leaning Public Policy Polling finds that Americans are generally united in their disdain for ketchup on steak. Over half (56 percent) say they disapprove of the practice. Only 27 percent are okay with it. And another 17 percent don't seem to care either way. Even more surprising, disapproval for putting ketchup on steak cuts across lines of race, gender, age and politics -- with even a slim majority of ardent Trump fans declining to back their champion on this one."
• A Trump book riddled with falsehoods will no longer be sold by the National History Museum: "Linda St. Thomas, a Smithsonian Institution spokeswoman, said museum officials can vet only so many items before they go on sale at the Smithsonian’s various gift shops. She said she wasn’t sure whether the Trump book was fact-checked. “I don’t know if we read all the books we sell. They will certainly take a look at this,” St. Thomas said. “We’re talking about thousands and thousands of items that come through, and some of them are geared for certain shops. This book has a very limited time period.” On Saturday, after The Washington Post published this story, the museum tweeted: “The book is no longer available for sale in our shops pending a review by our historians for factual accuracy.”
• "Donald Trump has been president for all or part of 33 days. He has averaged four falsehoods or misleading statements a day(!) in that time. There hasn't been a single day of Trump's presidency in which he has said nothing false or misleading."
• "A group of 17 Republicans in Congress signed a resolution on Wednesday vowing to seek “economically viable” ways to stave off global warming, possibly putting them on a collision course with President Donald Trump who has called climate change a hoax."
• "A Republican congressman from Texas is caught in a firestorm after he told a constituent to “shut up.”
• "Nunes delivered a reasonably strong rebuke of Trump on Wednesday for his tweet that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower, saying that if the tweet were to be taken literally, “clearly the president was wrong” (meaning Trump)."
• The evidence of Trump Tower being wire-tapped just does not exist
• "House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) says Obamacare is in a “death spiral,” and he should know: He’s the one who cut the power to Obamacare’s engines and pointed its nose downward. President Trump says, “ObamaCare is imploding and will only get worse,” and he should know: He’s the one who placed the explosives under Obamacare’s foundation. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), co-author of the GOP health-care bill, says of Obamacare: “We’ve arrived at the scene of a pretty big wreck.” And he, too, should know: He’s the one who dumped oil and tire spikes on the road."
• Why leaking his own tax return would be a smart media play by Trump
• Trump tweeted that Snoop Dogg would get ‘Jail Time!’ for his mock-assassination video. Here’s why that’s wrong.
• "Trump’s current finances are set to face a new test with the coming April 18 tax deadline. He has steadfastly refused to release his returns, pointing both to ongoing audits and to his belief that Americans do not care to see them. However, a Pew Research Center survey in January found that 60 percent of Americans believe that Trump has a responsibility to release his returns. All U.S. presidents are automatically audited every year, as prescribed by a guideline in the Internal Revenue Service manual in place for presidents and vice presidents since the 1970s. Trump could urge Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to change that provision, legal experts said. Trump has not said whether he would do so."
• Well, one holiday event is happening: President Trump will roll out the green carpet for St. Patrick’s Day at the White House

The Resistance:

• 4,000 postcards written for Ides of Trump at one party. Things people are saying. Pictures people are sending. 
• Fart Against Trump. Translated: "This is the greatest protest movement in the history of mankind. On March 21, 2017 at 23:05 CET, over 7 billion people are to send a giant fart towards the White House."
• Federal Judge Halts Trump’s Second Attempt at a Muslim Ban Hours Before Going Into Effect
• "So this post has nothing against the trolls. I thank you trolls so much. It fills me with hope and power to see you all furiously posting so as always accuse me of whatever lies you want … Journalists do better, it’s embarrassing. Trolls see you on the next one!”
• “But, my God, I would not be able to look at myself in the mirror if I felt strongly about something and didn’t speak up. I think it’s about how you speak up. We’re allowed to disagree. If I state my case and people don’t want to go see my movies as a result, I’m okay with that.”
• I appreciate your honesty.
• Democracy Delivered will send postcards for you.
• http://calltrumpout.com/
• https://resistrepeal.org/
• https://taxmarch.org/
• "Health care politics resonate like nothing else. They cut across President Trump's coalition like a scythe. If you're looking for the political battle that will damage President Trump and his party it is Obamacare repeal."
• One thing you learn watching legislative politics for a long time is that when a party has a huge amount staked on passing a piece of legislation, they usually find a way to do it, even if it seems all but impossible on the surface. ... The success of reform in 2010 is a good example of the rule of thumb I'm talking about. With all this said, on its face, things are looking pretty dicey at the moment for Obamacare repeal."
• "But when 127 major companies sign a protest letter against the worst president in American history, it makes a difference. It makes headlines, creates a certain kind of energy, adds to the fire and the mindshare of resistance. Put another way: Question the authenticity of the gesture all you like, but in times of brutal social calamity and the flagrant destruction of democracy and our fundamental humanity, we need all the help we can get."

Update #17: The Tomlin Rule

The Tomlin Rule: “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.” Why have I not heard this quote before? It's my WHOLE LIFE. 

• First They Marched, Now More Than 13,000 Women Are Planning to Run for Office
• Why It Feels Like Years Since Trump’s Inauguration
• Seeking a Sense of Belonging in a Divisive Era
• “The Trumps are using the White House like the Kardashians used reality TV, to build and vastly expand their overall business enterprises.”
• Thanks, Pete.
• “The pull of fate is undeniable.”
• Seth Meyers.
• Full Frontal goes to Scotland.
• Trevor Noah.
• "President Donald Trump's "wall" along the U.S.-Mexico border would be a series of fences and walls that would cost as much as $21.6 billion, and take more than three years to construct, based on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security internal report seen by Reuters on Thursday."
• Where Countries Stand With Donald Trump: A Cheat Sheet
• Federal Judges Refuse to Reinstate Trump's Immigration Ban
• Nobody cares if you break the law, la la la Conway
• Nobody cares about the Russians either.
• Chuck Schumer found Super Bowl ads inspiring. All that diversity!
• Five Things Americans Can Do to Beat Trump
• A Definitive Timeline of Donald and Melania Trump's Relationship: "She ran into Donald just at the right time. She was just about out of money, at the end of her rope and about to move back to Eastern Europe," Also: "A student asks if her husband weren't rich, would she still be with him. She replies, "If I weren't beautiful, do you think he'd be with me?"
• Nordstrom is doing just fine, thanks. Why? 
• Interview with Evan McMullin.
• The Ides of Trump: Send angry postcards to the WH on March 15. 
• Captain America is getting into it with the KKK.
• Ivanka is now trying to disavow her own brand.
• WE THE PEOPLE ASK THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO PROPOSE A NEW ADMINISTRATION POLICY: Confiscate all social media accounts of President Donald Trump and prohibit further use.
• List of march events.
• How to run for office.
• Take Trump off Facebook
• Illustrators Against Trump. "Here in L.A., illustrators from studios including Disney, Sony, Nickelodeon and DreamWorks have gotten together to collaborate on the picture book Not My President. A crowdfunding campaign is in progress, and proceeds will support the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and L.A. Justice Fund. The creators are describing the project as a "children's book for adults," because although the colorful drawings look as if they were created for kids — the color orange figures prominently, go figure — their subject matter is darker than a Grimm's fairy tale and real to boot."
• The Emperor Has No Balls. (Gross statue pic within.)
• People to follow.
• "A Democratic congressman is introducing legislation as soon as next week that would require a psychiatrist at the White House,"
• The statistics of Trump's approval ratings.
• Purrsistent T-shirt collection.
• Democratic Jewelry.
• Nasty Woman Clothing.
• The 25th Amendment, explained: "Let that sink in — one vice president and any eight Cabinet officers can, theoretically, decide to knock the president out of power at any time. ...The 25th Amendment exists as a failsafe that can be used if any president truly does appear to be unwell — as long as the people involved have the courage to actually go through with it, and the competence to carry it out without causing an even greater disaster."
• "But pure escapism doesn’t work in an environment where you can’t escape the world, nor do you necessarily want to: It’s delaying your flights, or keeping a friend from leaving the country, or threatening to affect your health care. Perhaps we’re looking for a host who addresses our reality rather than one who creates an alternate one for us to slip into."
• Another SNL volunteer.
• There goes LA.
• Trump "speech" generator. 
• Good luck with this.

Washington Post:

• Keith Olbermann's doing a show called "The Resistance."
• Nooooooooo idea what to do about Obamacare.
• French manicures, Bud Light and fly fishing: How Trump staffers are changing Washington
• Fake news has lost all meaning.
• What Trump is supposed to be doing while he's tweeting.

Puppy Bowl, explained

Duh, let's just point some cameras at puppies and call it a day!

The Great Pottery Throw Down

I'm curious.

"I’m not saying I had a powerful negative reaction to Sarah Palin’s Alaska, but watching it I could physically feel myself turning into Bernie Sanders."

"Only Palin could make Kate Gosselin seem like a lovable, relatable everywoman by comparison."

“There’s air cannon, trebuchet, torsion, and… women?”

You're never going to get to see that Punkin Chunkin special now, but here's the writeup about it anyway.

“I always wanted to put a live kid through a Rube Goldberg machine where they would be the pinball in [the game] Mouse Trap.”

Double Dare: it smelled like death!

"We tried [to do poop-related obstacles] but they were not allowed. We couldn’t show a butt, but we could do a mouth. We could do a nose. We even got turned down for an armpit at one point in time. I’m still not even sure why."

At the beginning, we didn’t know it was going to be the messiest show on Earth until we really started to develop it.

Usually it was predicated on a couple of criteria, amongst which was, “What’s messy?” So that led us to a giant nose that you have to pick. And then when we got the idea for the One-Ton Human Hamster Wheel, it was just, “Let’s take things and make large versions of them.”

 We tried [to do poop-related obstacles] but they were not allowed. We couldn’t show a butt, but we could do a mouth. We could do a nose. We even got turned down for an armpit at one point in time. I’m still not even sure why.

Somebody was just asking me today about the gumball machine, and I said, “It was enormous. It was so high that it almost grazed the light grid overhead.” And they asked, “Why would they build it that big?” And I said, “Because they could.” Nickelodeon, god bless them, in those days, they were either just complete loonies or they had no idea that you needed to control these maniacs, but they really gave us a lot of creative freedom.

“Look, this is the Sundae Slide. You should try and go up the side,” and so forth. “When you come down, lift your feet up. Try and put your butt right into the whipped cream instead of your feet, so your feet stay dry and you’ll do better on the obstacle course. It may feel more messy, but you’re going to do better.” “Grab the flag but don’t carry it with you. Stuff it in your shirt, and move on to the next.”

Marc Summers, host: You might as well have said stuff in Spanish, French, or Japanese. They never heard a word of it, because we’d say, “On your mark, get set, go!” and they forgot everything, and then when they couldn’t do it, they couldn’t understand why. We gave them every hint that was legally possible, and they wouldn’t follow through on it.

I think after five episodes I went, “Oh, my god, they really don’t give a crap about the prizes. They just want to get goo all over them and be given permission to jump into a vat of green mess and get completely covered head to toe.”

I still have memories of how, when [the whipped cream] fell, it curdled. We cleaned up, but you never got it all. Over the years, we’d do some of the same obstacles. We’d clean them all, but every year when we got them out of storage, they’d still smell like sour milk.

Robin Russo, production assistant: I can’t eat whipped cream to this day. I can’t smell it, and I can’t look at it.

 When you fill a tank that big with baked beans, you want to get your money’s worth. So all week, we got 25 episodes out of the baked beans. The end of the week comes, and they’ve been under the lights all week long, sitting there at night stewing away. We go, “How do we get rid of all these baked beans?”

[Steve Pannepacker] called the honey wagon. You know, the guy who brings the big sucker truck that sucks out septic tanks. He’s parked outside on 7th and Arch in Philadelphia, and he runs a big, long hose into the baked bean tank that’s been there all week under the lights and sucks it out.

John Harvey, announcer: He came back in and said, “You guys know what I do for a living? This is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.”

We were always asked about the waste of food. That was a hot topic of conversation while we were shooting the show. It always bothered me greatly. The first time I was asked that, I was stunned. They said, “Don’t you feel like you’re wasting food? There are starving people in the world.” I was just amazed. Really? Somebody who is starving would want our whipped cream and chocolate syrup? It just seemed silly.

Klinghoffer [eventually] made [something] up, because he was the best at this stuff. [He would say] we would go to food warehouses and try and find product that was dated that they couldn’t sell in supermarkets or to restaurants anymore, and they would sell us the dated stuff. It was more B.S. than I can begin to tell you, but we just got tired of dealing with people saying that we were not helping homeless people by throwing eggs and using pudding.

From that point, they always looked at the kids’ applications, and if any kid had a parent who was an attorney, they never got on the show after that."

 

Better than you'd expect

Paris Hilton works at a gas station.

God, we live in a weird world

• Trained falcons take down paparazzi drones.
• What an awesome way to get rid of female chess players in competition!
• 'What does it mean when an Insta-animal stops being merely cute and starts being, say, a lymphoma patient with a few months to live? Is the joy of a few hundred cute cat pictures outweighed by the eventual burden of mourning a creature you never even knew? Does everyone else get this deeply invested in the digital lives of other people’s faraway pets, or do I need to get more hobbies?"
• OH JUST BREAK UP ALREADY YOU MORONS. Also, ewww.
• Fighting Trump with angry beauty queens.
• "But polarization is so intense in the United States today that a cardboard cutout with an “R” on it would get about 43 percent of the vote, and one with a “D” would get about the same." (Washington Post)
• "It’s easy to understand why a viral tale of a passive-aggressive roommate getting called out for her subtweets has delighted the Internet. But the fallout hasn’t, arguably, left any of them much better off. Because a feud between two frustrated roommates so captured the imagination of the Internet, two college students are now justifiably terrified that their reputations will never recover. And even though Jessica has found a satisfying outlet for her frustration, choosing the nuclear option is going to have consequences beyond her viral fame." (Washington Post)
• "After 15 months, the suspension of disbelief has become so ubiquitous that we hardly notice anymore. We are operating in an alternate universe where the geometry is non-Euclidean, facts don’t matter, history and logic have disappeared." (Washington Post)
• "But like its counterparts the blood moon, the super moon, the blood super moon, and so on — all of which have made their way into the popular lexicon in recent years — the black moon has become, for some, a harbinger of the apocalypse. How, exactly, will the second darkening of Earth’s only natural satellite in a 30-day period usher in the destruction of life as we know it? Unclear. But some people have taken the bait." (Washington Post)

Are we just hoping for some kind of natural apocalypse so we can get the hell out of this life? Just wondering.