Leftovers & Links #63

Fruit you can’t eat until it’s rotten, and it looks like a dog's butthole. Where can I get some?

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100° Fahrenheit… in the Arctic. In Siberia.

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Ingo Rademacher sues ABC over General Hospital vaccine mandate.

“I am entitled to a religious exemption against mandatory vaccination for COVID-19 on the basis of my deeply and sincerely held moral belief that my body is endowed by my creator with natural processes to protect me and that its natural integrity cannot ethically be violated by the administration of artificially created copies of genetic material, foreign to nature and experimental,” Rademacher wrote in an Oct. 11 email to Disney’s HR department.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

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Baseball stats-freak analyzes the careers of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, minus the added boost of steroids.

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An unexpected advantage of working in the office, at least during COVID: I’ve sprouted a small pimple exactly in the center of my nose, but I don’t even have to talk myself into not being embarrassed — the pimple is hidden under my mask.

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I thought by now I was beyond being surprised on this topic, but anti-Semitism is even stupider than I’d thought.

This episode of The Dig podcast is a fascinating and college-level lecture exploring the anti-Semitism and racism inherent (but rarely acknowledged) in western folklore and mythology — the Aryan subtext of Wagner’s Ring operas, the white supremacist backstory of Atlantis, the emergence of ancient German runes that later developed into symbols of the SS, even occult or paranormal silliness like divining rods, pendulums, dousing rods.

It’s the first time I’d heard of Hanns Hörbiger’s theory, once taken seriously, that the Aryan race was created when ice meteors containing “divine sperma” showered down onto the earth.

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As a catastrophic tornado approached this city Friday, employees of a candle factory — which would later be destroyed — heard the warning sirens and wanted to leave the building. But at least five workers said supervisors warned employees that they would be fired if they left their shifts early.

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One-word newscast:

Good news:

• Insurrection

Stupid news:

• Ivermectin

• Muskhole

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‘A police massacre’: Colombian officers killed 11 during protests against police violence, report finds.

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Bugs across globe are evolving to eat plastic, study finds

Possibly good news, but also possibly not. Plastic is in lots and lots of high-tech equipment, and if it starts being devoured, that’s gonna be a problem.

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Car art.

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Jon Stewart, formerly of The Daily Show, has a new weekly show, The Problem with Jon Stewart. Mildly curious, I scanned through the list of episodes he’s done so far, and found one titled or described, “Jon Talks With Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase”.

The existence of this episode deflated all my interest in Stewart’s new show. One of the world’s most evil men, head of one of the world’s most evil corporations, warmly welcomed, smiling and chuckling at Jon’s jokes and dodging any questions? Nah.

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The Library of Congress thinks Wall-E (2008) merits mention in the National Film Registry, so I guess they’ve run out of good American movies.

I’ve never understood why so many people were so rhapsodic about Wall-E. I remember glancing at my watch, more than a little bored and anxious to get home from the theater.

Two big problems for me: #1: the insipid cockroach, which seemed wildly out of place in a movie that was otherwise reasonably intelligent and scientifically sensible.

And #2: the machines' voices, which seemed maximized for mechanized silliness. Sure, it’s a kiddie movie, but even in a child’s imaginary universe, nobody’s going to design machines with such goo-goo da-da infantile voices.

Wall-E was the worst Pixar movie ever, until Brave a few years later.

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Occlupanids. I’m slow. It took me at least a minute to get it.

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Mystery links — Like life itself, there’s no knowing where you’re going:

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Sing along with Doug:
Alpha Centauri, by the Alan Parsons Project
Sincere tip 'o the hat:
Linden Arden • BoingBoing
Captain Hampockets • Follow Me Here
John the Basket • LiarTownUSA
Messy Nessy Chick • National Zero
Ran Prieur • Vintage Everyday
Voenix Rising
Extra special thanks:
Clayton Barnes • Becky Jo
Name Withheld • Dave S.
12/15/2021
Leftovers & Links