Perhaps I’ll switch from the holster pic for my posts about our president.

Happy birthday, davidbain and kaffyr

Happy birthday, geckoman and noveldevice

Alameda schools have sane dress rules.

Thanx to Body Impolitic

Now I understand the shooting of Botham Jean. Having marijuana in one’s home has frequently caused the police to break in and shoot people. It is by far the greatest danger the drug presents. And the police officer is lucky to be the shooter rather than the shootee because living in a place that can be mistaken for one with drugs is almost as dangerous for the same reason.

There are people who enjoy exercise for its own sake. There is no good reason to make them feel bad about it. [Huffington Post UK]

Thanx to andrewducker

Happy birthday, kestenbaum

The Buckley-Vidal battle [Lapham’s Quarterly]

Thanx to Arts & Letters Daily

Idiots assume attractive Black woman couldn’t possibly know how to code. [Bored Panda]

The tiny archipelago of Palau (pop. 20,000) dares to have diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan) rather than the People’s Republic of China. As a result, the latter is boycotting Palau, including making it impossible to search for Palau on the Chinese internet. [Guardian]

Happy birthday, otherdeb

Extended metaphor [Twitter]

Today marks 26 years off drugs
(Fun drugs: I still allow Western allopathic medicine to keep me alive.)

Happy birthday, johnpalmer

I don’t care what anyone says; I like Manolo’s alleged art. [Artnome]

Thanx to andrewducker

It says here that Cynthia Nixon’s bagel order was “horrifying.” (She ordered lox on a cinnamon raisin bagel.) What horrifies me is the possibility that the candidate I’m going to vote for might lose because of bagel incorrectness.

Of course it seems likely that this sort of thing amuses pundits but has never once decided an election. There seems to be one of them every year. (Gore Kerry got caught putting incorrect cheese on his cheesesteak, so Bush lied and said he hadn’t done the same, but that’s not why he won. I would vote for a candidate with good ideas even if she put mayo on a cheesesteak.)

The whole thing is symbolic. (Symbolic of junk, as Mel Brooks would say.) I the politician love you people so much that I will choke down whatever alleged food you love. As long as the people who think “That’s just your education talking” is a reasonable argument get one vote each (and I see no better alternative), we have to be able to get down on all fours and look at things from the voter’s point of view.

Reminder: I am not a reactionary; I am a condescending liberal elitist. Just because people think that being a successful businessperson is a qualification for the presidency, and that Trump was one, doesn’t mean they should face financial ruin if they dare to get sick.

Charles Pierce does not want us to forget that John Bolton is a bloodthirsty maniac and that Ben Sasse is almost displeased enough with the Trump horrors to do something about them.

How Stephen King entered academe. [The Ringer]

Guide to figuring out the age of an undated world map [XKCD]