Is your love of a good gin and tonic a sign of something deeply disturbing?

F. Scott Fitzgerald's favorite spirit (the author loved it in a Rickey cocktail) has been linked to psychopathic tendencies when consumed in gin-and-tonic form, according to a study by researchers at Austria's University of Innsbruck. The results of the 2015 study demonstrate that bitter taste preferences—like those associated with a gin and tonic—"are positively associated with malevolent personality traits."

The late Bill Paxton made the video for this song:

Interesting article about the alt-right.

I don’t believe that Yiannopoulos endorses pedophilia. I do believe that he exploits vulnerable young men. Not in a sexual way. Not in an illegal way. Yiannopoulos exploits vulnerable young men in the same way that every wing-nut right-wing shock-jock from the president down has been exploiting them for years: by whipping up the fear and frustration of angry young men and boys who would rather burn down the world than learn to live in it like adults, by directing that affectless rage in service to their own fame and power. This is the sort of exploitation the entire conservative sphere is entirely comfortable with. What happens to these kids now that the game has changed?

Whether or not these kids deserve a second chance matters far less than whether the rest of us can afford not to give them one. There are millions of them, after all, and not all of them have the strength of character to recognize their wrongdoing and make amends. They are, however, coming to see their mistake. Some part of them believed that this was a game that would end when Trump became president. That was the big boss, the ultimate defeat of liberal social justice snowflakery. But guess what? You don’t get to check out at this level and quit the game and go back and cuddle your cat. Politics is a whole different kind of game, and the stakes are real, and there are no non-player characters.

The reason the Lost Boys allow themselves to be stolen away to Neverland is that they want to live somewhere they will never have to grow up. By coincidence, that’s also the reason that a great many people voted to place a spray-tanned authoritarian in the Oval Office. Remember, though, that only Peter rules Neverland. What happens to the Lost Boys in that story if they ever start to build memories and change, if they ever started to become adults?

They skipped this bit in the Disney movie, but, in the books, Peter kills them.

For more on perpetual adolescence, NRO:

The inability to move on from adolescent resentments is a strangely prominent condition among American men, as indeed is the inability to move on from adolescence in general. That is one of the unhappy consequences of the low-stakes character of American middle-class life, by which I mean the fact that the difference between being in the 50th percentile and being in the 55th percentile of whatever index of socioeconomic status you think most relevant is not that consequential in terms of one’s real standard of living. The price of being a little bit of a slacker is not very high in the United States, though the rewards for success can be staggering. Life is pretty comfortable, and you can take six years to finish your bachelor’s degree in art history while working at Starbucks, and it isn’t miserable.

SpellTower, Sage Solitaire and Halcyon developer Zach Gage has announced his next game, Really Bad Chess.It's so bad!

Like Sage Solitaire before it, Gage is repurposing a classic title for a new era; this time by making it really bad.

But also good! The premise of Really Bad Chess is ingenious: it's chess, but with completely random pieces.

The 1,100-acre Pinnacle Park west of Asheville remains closed after a runner's foot was impaled by a nail purposely placed on a popular trail that leads to the Black Rock Summit.

Brian Barwatt, an engineer with the Department of Transportation, and the race director of the Assault on Black Rock, a trail race in Pinnacle Park in March, was at the park Monday with the Sylva police chief Davis Woodard, town maintenance workers and other volunteers scouting out more nails.

Since Saturday, 40 nails hammered into tree roots and logs have been found, Barwatt said.

...

“We’re literally blowing every leaf off trail, and following behind with metal detectors. “It was a deliberate effort. Someone hammered 4-inch long galvanized nails and left them sticking out a half- to 1 inch, and at an angle so they’re like spikes.

No kids, it's not the hints of pedophilia that got Yiannopoulos in trouble, it's the hints of gay pedophilia.

80% of evangelical "Christians" voted for the guy who was known to have burst into the dressing rooms of teenage beauty pageants. They voted for the guy who remarked, about a young girl, that he'd be dating her in ten years.

They voted for the guy who repeatedly told people holding microphones that he thought his own daughter was a piece of ass.

And that guy has nearly 90% support from "conservatives", right now.

A gay man musing about gay teens and older men crosses the line. But a straight old man who repeatedly, publicly, treats young girls as the objects of his own sexual desires is the kind of guy who can MAGA.

It's all about principles, you see.

Wow.

The Green Angels, she tells me, are selling a fantasy of an attractive, well-educated, presentable young woman who wants to get you high—a slightly more risqué Avon lady. Not all of the Angels are working models, but they are all young and attractive. In eight years, they have never been busted by the cops. The explanation is simple: Good-looking girls don’t get searched.

If Russia and the United States actually got together and got along — and don’t forget, we’re a very powerful nuclear country and so are they. There’s no up-side. We’re a very powerful nuclear country and so are they. I have been briefed. And I can tell you one thing about a briefing that we’re allowed to say because anybody that ever read the most basic book can say it, nuclear holocaust would be like no other.

T.Rump

In this curator lecture, James Wintle unravels the complex web of stylistic threads that have permeated heavy metal music since the raucous tri-tone progression of the song "Black Sabbath" signaled its birth in 1970. Wintle also discusses how to access heavy metal music and scholarship in the Library's collections.

Library of Congress