A TV show written and filmed before the 2016 election, which is set in a fictional 1960's US, in which the Axis won World War II and now occupies the US, in which a resistance radio station is broadcasting anti-Nazi messages, has angered Trump supporters because hating Nazis is something that only "libtards, gays and weirdos" do.

While I've never had any real doubts of its validity, this is the strongest proof yet of cleek's Law.

I'm re-reading Dune right now. It's been 30 years.

Towards the end as the Fremen, lead by Paul, are preparing for battle and talking about how the Harkonnens have been harassing the citizens of the cities and driving them out as refugees, there's this exchange:

Paul glanced at Gurney, saw him studying Stilgar. “Tell us, Gurney, why were the cityfolk down there driven from their homes by the Sardaukar?”

“An old trick, my Duke. They thought to burden us with refugees.”

Got me thinking about Syrian refugees, the effect they're having on Europe and the US, and wondering if Russia might be up to something more than just propping-up Assad.

Sometimes people are amazing. Someone put up posters #Trump's sexual assault monologue all over the East Village, NY #internationalwomensday pic.twitter.com/a0XQMLrob3

— Very Vero (@Sincerely220) March 8, 2017

“There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships who worked even longer, even harder for less,” Carson noted. “But they too had a dream, that one day their sons, daughters, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness.”

The best people.

A wizard did this.

All kinds of things can cause these lapses in memory, from chronic dementia to a temporary head injury. So, some patients are alert, conversant, and are otherwise “with it” enough to understand the gravity of the news I end up breaking to them. It’s actually a fascinating moment, and I have become deeply curious as to what each patient’s reaction will be. Each time now, I stop, take a big breath, look them squarely in the eyes, and then I reveal to them the full, undeniable truth of the situation: The president of these United States is Donald J. Trump. I pause. I do not break eye contact.

For the most part, it isn’t pretty.

One elderly woman let out a startling moan, the kind of sound I would have expected if someone had told her that her cat had died. Another blinked twice when I told him. “Really?” he said, in disbelief. “Come on, doc, you’re shaking my leg.” One patient accused me of playing a trick, although I have not yet been accused of bringing fake news.

...when the nation's highest law enforcement official is a blatant perjurer?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions had two contacts with Russian envoy Sergey Kislyak during the presidential campaign, Justice Department officials confirmed. The Washington Post first reported the meetings Wednesday.

When he was asked in his confirmation hearing what he would do if there was evidence anyone associated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had communicated with the Russians, Sessions replied that he wasn’t aware of any such “activities,” and added, “I did not have communications with the Russians.” A questionnaire he filled out for the committee also asked whether he had had contact with the Russians, to which Sessions, according to the Post, wrote, “No.”

I'm sure the GOP will get right on this.

Beer's solid cousin, bread, is based on four basic ingredients: flour, water, yeast and salt. And yeast you can get from the flour itself, if you're patient. Salt is there entirely for flavor - it doesn't help the yeast grow; in fact it retards the yeast. And for flavor you don't need much, but you'll miss it if it's not there.

But imagine if, one dark day, some asshole baker somewhere decided to cover up the taste of his shitty flour with a ton of salt. At first, people were like "Eww. So salty!". but eventually, the idea caught on because some people started treating really salty bread as a challenge. "Woah, so salty! How unusual! This bakery is Pushing The Limits!" Not too long after that, hip bakers everywhere wanted to make the saltiest bread they could. They started using different kinds of salt: rock salt! fine salt! sea salt! salt scraped from the ball sacks of sweaty football players! And that's all anyone made for years and years.

But people finally figured out that salt is not the point of bread, it's a component.

That's how I feel about IPAs (and all their over-hopped relatives), which currently take up a good 75% of all the beer shelf space in my local supermarkets.

/rant

It may not be a common word, but shushu gets major points for being one of those words with such a nuanced definition that you feel like a language master when you finally use it, like “zeitgeist” or “vis-à-vis” in English.

The kanji for this word are shu (“guard/protect”) and shu (“tree stump”). What does guarding a stump have to do with keeping outdated traditions? Here’s the story:

There was a Chinese farmer during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) who was lazy and not very bright.

One day he saw a rabbit run head first into a tree stump, break its neck, and die, which got him an easy meal for that day. Then, the farmer thought, if I just wait by this stump, then another rabbit will come along and do the same thing!

So the farmer quit his work and spent the rest of his days guarding and watching the stump, waiting for another rabbit to come. Of course that did not happen, and the man became the laughing stock of the village.

So if you need to poke fun at someone for sticking to something long after they should’ve let it go, feel free to shushu them and tell them the story about “guarding the tree stump.”

Celestine Omin tweeted:

I was just asked to balance a Binary Search Tree by JFK's airport immigration. Welcome to America.

BoingBoing explains:

Celestine Omin is a Nigerian software engineer who works for Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's company Andela, founded to give talented African coders an entree into the leading American tech firms; this week, he flew to the USA on a B1/B2 visa to meet with the company, but he found himself detained at the border.

The CBP guards who detained Omin after his 24-hour flight were skeptical that he was a real software engineer. They apparently googled "quizzes to give to software engineers" and told him to answer ten questions (e.g. "Write a function to check if a Binary Search Tree is balanced" and "What is an abstract class, and why do you need it?") to gain entry into the country.

OMG