Kidding, I briefly wondered but couldn't be bothered to check.
1: Easy, tiger. We all remember the '90s. Mmmmm, Playstation 1 graphics.
We all remember the '90s.
Whoah, let's not go too far here.
Maybe unnecessarily presidential, probably easy enough to guess. I know the author of the second piece. She's pretty awesome. Frankly, not sure why she works out over there when she could go to the YW instead (where everyone else in our social circle goes, so maybe that's why.) Anyhow, yeah, I mean, kinda silly thing to do, but totally reasonable when you hear the explanation.
Clearly, the problem is that people who write comments on the Internet are terrible.
I don't think the explanation lets her off the hook for not realizing that she looks funny. I mean, absolutely do things that look funny. The consequence is that you look funny.
Well, sure, it's funny, but it's viral because she's fat.
I'm not going to defend that part - people are indeed assholes about fatness.
I think it would be funny if ANYONE, of any shape/size, were sitting in a chair on a treadmill watching TV. However, I think the quality of the mockery would be different, and I'm not very comfortable with the mockery that's based on her size rather than her behavior.
Yes to 11. Mara called me fat tonight to try to hurt my feelings, because only a mean FAT mom would make a child leave a playground. Other friends and I had been talking about when and how that becomes a clear negative term rather than a neutral descriptor, and clearly it's some time before 6.
12: A friend's kid was reading some book that had as an aside, something about a kid being teased for being fat, and was genuinely mystified. I think this was when she was 9 or maybe 10.
I mean, the OP also basically said 11. "Let's separate insults about her body from people who were laughing at her behavior." The problem is I think mostly nobody was laughing at the behavior, however funny it would have been on its own. As 9 says.
I only laugh at pictures of cats asking for cheeseburgers.
The link has no photo, fwiw. And it still made me laugh.
Yes, it went viral because she's overweight, and that is shitty. But all the emphasis on the back story and "if they only knew there was a House marathon on!" still strikes me as funny.
The link in the OP doesn't contain the photo, but the original post that it's reposting does.
Mostly I feel sorry for the person waiting to use the machine.
Oh, I had misread and assumed it was the photo from the comments. Now I'm all confused because in the photo teo linked to it seems like all the humor is coming from the situation (with perhaps an assist from overalls) since the person in the photo isn't fat. Whereas with the other photo I totally understood why people were arguing that everyone's just laughing at a person for being fat.
I take no position on the photo or its use, but under any just regime the one-sentence paragraph in the narrative personal essay would be banned.
And then it happened.
I had my picture/brief video taken by strangers a week or two ago while doing something outré, and keep worrying that it's all over the internet by now. It wasn't titillating, didn't fit into existing narratives about Bay Area assholes, and it was probably impossible for me to look fat under the circumstances, so it might have gone nowhere. Or perhaps it's all over Black Twitter. I'm going to sleep now and will leave you all to speculate.
(sorry Halford -- last 2 sentences should have been two distinct paragraphs)
I was just typing away in a comments box, minding my own business, making paragraphs - you know, just writing - and then I realized I wanted to emphasize something. The site I was posting on re-flows the text depending on the width of the window and I didn't want my point to be lost in a sea of words all crammed together.
So I made the point its own paragraph.
Weeks later, I got a frantic text message from a friend I hadn't heard from in years attached to a gif showing a cat at a keyboard in front of a screen with a copy of Word 97 showing Clippy. The cat was pawing the "return" key. The caption read, in all caps: SO I MADE THE POINT ITS OWN PARAGRAPH. My friend's text message said, only: "did they copy u?"
OT: NMM2 Dicky Attenborough. People of 90 do fall off their perches and he had a damn good innings, but why can't some of the bastards kick off?
I understand this, because before we signed up for cable the gym was my place for watching Jeopardy on the elliptical. (I guess we could have gotten it over the air, but meh, lazy.) Thankfully Wheel comes on afterwards to guarantee I don't get too in shape. Never would have thought of just using a chair, does seem a bit like cheating.
Mmmmm, Playstation 1 graphics.
Triangles! Our graphics are better, but our misogynists are the same.
re: 25
I'm just hoping the fates have something really nasty saved up for Tony Blair:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/24/tony-blair-advice-kazakh-president-protesters
Some kind of tragic combined public immolation/prolapse, or something.
26. People who have followed Doonesbury down the years will notice that Blair is here re-enacting a long story arc involving Duke, the strip's resident psychopath. We can only hope that the parallels continue, that Nazarbeyev is ejected from Kazakhstan, moves into Blair's house and takes over all his stuff.
Looking at 18: that photo is funny, man.
Having seen the photo in 18... a) she's not fat and b) she's not easily identified (although I suppose her friend and her mother figured out it was her, so I'm on flimsy ground here). Aren't there a million people who coud look exactly like that if they were sat in the same spot?
People who have followed Doonesbury down the years will notice that Blair is here re-enacting a long story arc involving Duke, the strip's resident psychopath
OMG, you're right. There's even a lovestruck Chinese suitor whose affection he doesn't return, but whom he keeps around because she's useful.
And of course, Tony Blair's acid benders are legendary.
He did play in a band named after a Grateful Dead album, but I think that's as far as it went. People I know who knew him as a student are unanimous that he was almost praeternaturally boring.
What Grateful Dead song, turned into a band name, would be the most boring band?
Probably "Sunrise".
Or "Eyes of the World". That would be a boring band circa 1990, the Tears For Fears / Jesus Jones era.
Ugh, what if there was a whole Drums PLANET?
"Kevin Drums" is what they call it when Mickey Hart just plays an earnest, reasonable 4/4 beat for an hour and a half.
Bonus points awarded to Halford for 42.
There's a great video explaining the four on the floor beat.
20: did you read the comments she got? They were laughing at her for being fat. Your assessment of her as not fat has nothing to do with that.
I don't even see fat. Which is why I can't make a roux.
Annals of diplomacy. Fuckers are letting that "special relationship" status go to their heads. (H/T LGM).
That's fantastic. There's also the immediately prior tweet:
British EmbassyVerified account @UKinUSA
200 yrs ago today, British redcoats marched down Penn Ave to set fire to the White House.
Finally, a causus belli. Let's finish the job and take Toronto.
That should have been #finishthejob #takeToronto #theyburnedtheWhiteHouse #moderndayredcoats
We'll start the invasion by sending in Burger Kings!
Emergency legal bleg:
The IRS is trying to ream me out almost 10k on account of money I send back into the US from abroad, to pay off my student loans. They're saying it's taxable income, even though it's my own money I file returns on every year.
I asked my parents stateside to hire a tax attorney, and they came up with this, which seems crap somehow. Does anyone know anyone good? Ugh.
For 10k it's almost certainly not worth it to hire anyone actually good. A volume tax defense shop is probably fine. I can ask around but you can't afford a $400/hr tax lawyer.
53: Yeah, I agree it's not worth it to go top shelf. My fear though is that a volume place won't be at all well prepared to handle my practically sui generis situation.
52: Rather than hiring an attorney, I'd suggest finding an enrolled agent. Your parents should be able to locate one near them.
52: How is that even possible? Erg!
45: That commenters are misogynist assholes doesn't prove anything. If it did no youtube video would ever have been legitimately funny.
56: Even the IRS agent seemed to implicitly recognise the situation is ridiculous, but the law says money over a certain threshold coming into a US bank account from abroad is taxable, so from their end, it's that simple: I have to pay taxes on it.
You probably should have talked to the lawyer before you sent the money in.
58 doesn't make it sound like hiring a lawyer is going to help much... I trust you've carefully reported your foreign bank accounts every year?
Do you mind disclosing the threshold? I just want to make sure I don't need to do any ninja accounting myself; I do send money back each month to pay for various debts.
60: Yes, where required by law. Some years my liquid assets were below the threshold for reporting.
Woops, I gave up my identity, oh well.
61: I actually don't know. I chuck over about 5k a year, so that was enough.
Hm, I do that much as well. I won't worry about it until the IRS come knocking, I suppose.
God, sometimes I really hate dealing with this sort of crap. I haven't once reported a foreign bank account, which is maybe a mistake, but I believe I'm under the required threshold (it looks like you need $50,000 in assets for married, filing separately). As far as I'm concerned, permanent residents of another country (and legit ones, not tax haven seeking people) just shouldn't have to deal with the US tax system at all.
I'm so confused, google doesn't bring up anything about a tax on bringing money in, and lots of people saying it's fine. Maybe my google-fu is getting weak.
How are they supposed to tell you are legit and not tax having seeking if you don't deal with the U.S. tax system?
65: Noooo it's 10k, not 50k.
There's two kinds of reporting, I think one kicks in at 10K and the other at 50K.
You should probably talk to an accountant about retroactively reporting that, the penalties are pretty awful.
67: Somehow every other country in the world manages it, so maybe one could ask around.
68: No, I'm still fine. There's not a bank account with $10,000 in it in my name anywhere.
70: Also, honestly, I'm at this point willing to say fuck it, I'm not going back. I have zero plans to live in the US in the future.
How can moving 5K give you 10K in taxes? That's super weird.
74: It's over several years. What they want to do is charge me back taxes, penalties, and administrative fees, which come out to close to 8k, and would clear my obligations and also allow me to transfer money into the US for the next 10 years tax free, as long as it's for the sole purpose of paying student loans. An IRS agent also has to come out to my parents' home and set this all out formally, and I have to be present on conference call.
That's the compromise they came up with after chatting with their legal dept for 10 minutes. I told the guy I'd think about it and talk to some people and he said the case will be over a year old very soon*, and after that things can get very serious. I told him that was intimidation and dissuading me from legal counsel as is my right, and he backed down a bit.
*They say they sent stuff to my parents' house twice via UPS, since 2013, but my parents never received anything. They have my address in Germany, as I file a tax return every year, but they've never tried to contact me there.
Holy shit, and now my dad's saying the whole thing is a scam: http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRS-Reiterates-Warning-of-Pervasive-Telephone-Scam
Ah, now that makes much more sense than the rest of the story!
My google-fu is fine after all!
If it's a scam, you can deduct it from next year's taxes.
I was really confused about how your parents got looped in to what should be private between you and the IRS. Also UPS struck me as really weird, surely the IRS only uses USPS.
It's a scam. The IRS doesn't use UPS, only US mail, and googling the 888 number they gave, seems clear it is a known scammer #.
THANK GOD
Do you use your current (foreign) address when filing with IRS? Is there some other reason why the real IRS would be trying to send things to your parents' house (btw, they always send certified mail, not UPS). It really does sound like a scam, though one wonders how they could possibly have found you and your weird situation to target.
82 before 81. Well, that solves it. Any idea how they could have found it?
Great. Here's a scary thought to disturb you're reacquired peace of mind. How did they know enough about you to contact you (or your parents) on that scam?
Just send out a relatively specific scam to lots of people and you'll hit a few that it actually matches. I get all kinds of spam about my non-existent fifth-third bank account but I'm sure if you email a million people some significant number of them have an account there.
That they could find you in particular really does seem like the weirdest part of the story.
Hey! One less thing to worry about. That is an absolutely crazy story.
Are you on some sort of list of Americans abroad? Also finding your parents is super weird.
If they contact me, we'll know they've infiltrated Unfogged.
They wrangled a good long while on the phone with my parents - who are not slick, so they may have actually started with very little info, and gotten a lot out of them indirectly.
Yikes. Glad you found out in time. We've gotten numerous messages on our answering machine from scammers claiming to be from the IRS.
An IRS agent also has to come out to my parents' home and set this all out formally, and I have to be present on conference call.
One of the scammers was set to show up in person? Maybe it would be a good idea to contact the authorities so they could nab the guy.
Or just have your parents invite them in, shoot them in the doorway, and plant a gun on them.
53: Tax lawyers in your area only charge $400/hr. I think a "good" one here would be $500.
$400/hr was the cheapest possible rate I could think of. Our legal market is more expensive than Boston, in general.
FIRST WE SPAM MANHATTAN THEN WE SPAM BERLIN.
95: $500 is on the cheaper end of very good at a small firm, but obviously you know that markets better than I do.
Gets you a lawsuit against Obama:
Contract for BakerHostetler to handle GOP lawsuit vs. Pres Obama "agrees to pay...at a blended rate of $500 per hour for...attorney time."
Perhaps they cracked the foreign bank's database and looked for US citizens.
I'm minded of the Leverage episode (and I remember hearing this was quite real) where scammers conspired with IRS employees, got lists of people with a back taxes repayment schedule, and strongarmed them into putting the entire repayment amount on a credit card.
47 is fantastic. And the US can get all upset about it right after they stop celebrating Independence Day.
47 is fantastic. And the US can get all upset about it right after they stop celebrating Independence Day.
Oh, is UPS not mail fraud?
I can't remember offhand, but they talked to you on the phone, so that's wire fraud. Same deal.
Interesting - I wouldn't have guessed, but various places online say using UPS or FedEx or similar services for fraud does constitute wire fraud, because they're interstate carriers.
107: Yes, it's in the statute ("sent or delivered by any private or commercial interstate carrier"). Wiki says (w/o citation) that it wouldn't apply to a UPS mailing that doesn't cross state lines but that sounded wrong and on a very quick look several circuits disagree.
Mail fraud, that should be, obviously.
Weird, that was the only reason I could think of that they wouldn't just use USPS, since that seems like a tipoff. Maybe they believed wikipedia.
I'm still curious how they figured out to target you. It seems that they only have your US address which may narrow it down a little. It seems rare enough a situation that they probably have a list somehow (rather than say looking at your parent's trash).
Thank you everyone for your help. I'm trying to sort out with my dad what they knew from the beginning and what they got from him. He's being vague and somewhat uncooperative, which makes me think they actually got quite a lot from him, and he's now embarrassed about it. Once I sort that out I'll report this to the Treasury.
Glad you've got it worked out, ffeJ. The thread was crazy to read through - what a relief that it was a scam.
Re: 47 etc.
Did everybody else know, per Wikipedia, that the US and UK pressured the Free French NOT to allow African troops to parade in the liberation-of-Paris parade down the Champs Elysees 70 years ago? That's pretty fucked up.
What if the scam was coming from inside the blog?
sorry ffej, that's hella creepy. it does sound as if they pumped your dad. you do have to declare the maximum USD amount held at any point in any and every foreign bank account in your name, but you know this, probably. I do this also, obviously, and have to file estimated quarterly payments, but one quarter late because overseas filers get an automatic chance to defer to june 15th. but obviously they can only tax your income one time, and indeed only start to tax you at all once you've made over a certain amount of money. god, how creepy and weird. but the irs will always use the us mail and have your ss#. it will be interesting to see if they had it when they called your dad, right? that would be the real sign you got hacked somewhere along the line.
113 is quite startling and I wonder why Morgan was so willing to give Bedell Smith and the US army its way on that. I suppose one could read his memo charitably as "look, Colonel, you know how the Americans are about this sort of thing, and if you want their support you need to lose the coloured soldiers pronto" rather than actually endorsing the statement (which was after all made by his boss). Still not great.
(BTW I think, Natilo, that you're misreading Wikipedia a bit on that. 2e DB was not purged of black troops just for the victory parade - it was purged of black troops for the entire battle for Paris.)
Britain caved to American demands on Jim Crow fairly consistently throughout the war (cf. the Nat Bookbinder affair). They excused themselves by saying that relations were strained enough as it was and this was not the ditch they wanted to die in.
What would have happened if Brooke had gone to Eisenhower and said, "Look, if you want to appoint these Confederate revanchists to lead your armies, that's up to you, but please remind them that they're in Europe now and, German policy notwithstanding, we do things differently here", I don't know. Would the Americans have taken their ball home?
119: good point. As I think I noted elsewhere, we'd already irritated them more than somewhat by renaming the M4 Tank the "Sherman".
121. I fully understand Eisenhower's reasoning, which was effective, if not glorious (but once you're in bed with Stalin, why strain at a gnat?) My point was whether it would have been possible for the Allies to insist that while the Americans were free to organise themselves as they pleased, they could not impose their prejudices on the armed forces, let alone the civilian populations, of other countries, and if the US officer corps didn't like it they could suck it up until they got home.
As far as I know, Eisenhower was personally as non-racist as any white man of his generation who wasn't a paid up Trot. Definitely less racist than Churchill, to name but one. But that isn't the point.
Weren't the armed forces and civilian populations of other countries dependent on U.S. food supplies at the time?
125. Partly. Also Canadian, New Zealand, Australian, Argentine, South African...