Years ago I overheard (eavesdropped upon) a telephone conversation between a public parks official and a golf course owner.
Parks Official: No sir, you cannot
Parks Official: No. They are a protected species
Parks Official: You CANNOT shoot them
Parks Official: Or poison them, no. Or trap them
Parks Official: If you like, we can-- no, I'm it. I'm the ranking official here. There's nobody above me. My boss? You mean... the governor's office? Sure, I guess. Okay bye
After he hung up, he gave me this thousand-yard stare before answering my unvoiced question.
"There's a flock of flamingos at the 9th green disrupting golfers. He wanted permission to go out there with a shotgun and take care of matters, but sensed there might be... legal ramifications. So he called us."
I laughed. "Does that happen often?"
"Oh, we get calls like that a couple times a month."
Country clubs should be burned to the ground and their golf courses turned into community gardens i am 10000% serious
Was golf created for the sole purpose of hoarding ridiculously large amounts of land just to brag about how little they use it?
Yes, literally.
WSU Vancouver (in Washington)'s Corpse Flower is blooming today!!! It's on display!
I am there at this actual moment!
I AM SO JEALOUS
PLEASE DESCRIBE THE SMELL ALL I EVER SEE IS PEOPLE SAYING “BAD” BUT LIKE WHAT DOES IT SMELL LIKE
You could barely smell it but it was like a bag of juicy kitchen garbage smells specifically when it's heated by direct sunlight
Hey for those who don't know, these alternate between producing one leaf and one big "flower" (actually it's a ton of tiny flowers together) and there's more than one in the same pot.
The thing that looks like a green tree is an example of the one leaf.
This is one leaf!
My favourite thing about the latest Twitter meltdown is all the artists reanimating their dead Tumblr accounts today and immediately being greeted with hundreds of notes because even a Tumblr account they literally have not posted to in 3–5 years has more active and engaged followers than the Twitter account that they've been updating daily.
Interesting to call this “confiscating” when it’s just making the rich pay their fair share, especially considering all the stolen wealth from the bottom 99% and historic tax evasion.
Besides the obvious, the hidden benefit of this is that it provides an endpoint to runaway growth.
The biggest problem with capitalism, the reason it's so destructive to the planet and to the workers and even, ultimately, to the capitalists, is that, after a certain point, the money's just a way of keeping score. The number at the bottom of the column has no bearing on what you can buy or do; as a result, there's no such thing as enough. The number can always be bigger.
Under this proposal, once you hit $1 billion, you've won capitalism. You beat the game, achieved the maximum score; you're finished. There's nothing more you can accumulate. You now have to find a purpose in life other that the relentless pursuit of profit. (And if we're really lucky, it might be something that actually benefits other people, but even if not, it's unlikely to be as damaging as whatever it is you were doing to get that $1 billion.)
Instead of companies expanding endlessly, like tumors, there's a point where, when all the major stakeholders are maxing out on profit, it makes sense to just hold steady. Keep doing/making/selling whatever it is you do/sell/make, but stop trying to do/sell/make more of it every year.
The problem with a tumor--what makes it cancer--is that it keeps growing and growing, until eventually it's taking up so much space and consuming so many resources that the surrounding tissues can't function. The tumor doesn't have to do anything better than the other tissues in order to crowd them out; it just does it faster. Stop the uncontrolled growth, and it's something you can live with.
Stopping the uncontrolled growth of capital means more opportunities for multiple businesses--big and small--operating in the same sector, since it doesn't make sense for any one company to gobble up too much of the market share. That, in turn, means more choices for customers--and workers, since they can take their skills to another employer doing similar things. It means less waste, as there's no longer an economic upside to spewing cheap goods out of a fire-hose before you even know whether anyone wants to buy them. That could mean slower, more thoughtful use of resources in the first place, but at minimum, it's going to mean not manufacturing products only to immediately throw them away.
me: *covered in scratch marks* i am still a powerful and respectable wizard, you know
my imp krongus: *doubtfully* yes, my lord
me: i did eventually kill the mouse with a needle for a sword
krongus: it’s just that it was so close, my lord
Krongus believes that perhaps transforming into your beast form was not the best course of action against this very small mouse
it was a tactical wobble, i’ll admit it
Safety first!
Buckle that shuckle
I feel like this is more for everyone else's safety because a shuckle in a crash is going to be like an untethered indestructible bowling ball
Source: corsolanite
literally nothing funnier than a newly born aquatic mammal realizing they've been cursed to live in water
there should be plushies of the strange but endearing creatures that live in medieval texts margins
HE!!!!
HE!
but also, they
HER 💜
Not a dream
Idk who needs to hear this but
The true death knell for Twitter will be if dril starts updating his Tumblr again.
Dril has a *tumblr*!?
Yeah, over at @worstdril. He was actually a surprisingly early adopter – his archives go all the way back to 2010, though he didn't begin posting regularly until March of 2014.