What do we want?
To be hideously dystopic!
When do we want it?
In your vagina!

Obviously Mimi Smartypants is always great, but the latest entry somehow cracked me up extra.

*Real Simple footnote: I also got mad at this smug-yet-somehow-compelling magazine recently, for suggesting that if you need to change a light bulb and it is too hot to touch, you cut a tennis ball in half and use that as a sort of handle. So a tennis ball has to die because you can't wait a minute? Calm down, tweaker.

I probably shouldn't say "Calm down, tweaker" to my students when they're over-excited.

...Chromatophores are blinkin', I'm thinkin'
It's all over when I squirt out ink n'
Oh, makin' my mind blow
That's why you don't f*** with the cephalo
Bro, I got to maintain
'Cause a squidda like me is goin' insane...

SCIENCE! at the link.

Helpy writes in: How long can you leave wet laundry in the laundry machine, before taking it out and putting it in the dryer or on the clothesline, and have it not count as ookie?

Last night I took the laundry off the line and ran a new load, planning on unloading the new load and putting it out to dry as soon as the old one was done. But I forgot to put it out. In fact, the laundry sat wet in the machine for 24 hrs. Is it ookie? Has it grown mold? Do I need to wash it again? I say no, but others may be more sensitive to ookieness.

Heebie's take: I assume you're waiting on our answer before removing the laundry, right?

As far as I can tell, the dryer can kill anything that grew in the washing machine. Except on occasion you never get rid of little green spots. (The only time I got a lot of little green spots was when I went to soccer camp in Florida in high school. You trained twice a day, and then put your soggy t-shirt in the corner of the room, and at the end of the week, you have a soggy pile of ten t-shirts with a lot of little green spots.)

Obama's first published attempt at an autobiography, as far as I know.

Our friend is selling their minivan, and we're resigned to getting a minivan in the future, and while this is slightly earlier than we might have otherwise bought one, it makes sense to jump on this opportunity.

The back of the minivan is full of bumper stickers. I may feel like a jerk when I scrape off "Practice Loving Kindness", written in faux-Hindi alphabet, but it's going to happen.

NickS writes: Items for the Beloit list 18 years from now.

I find it odd to consider that it is likely that in two years, Archie Goodwin and Andrew Wiggins will be playing in the NBA (and, yes, I know that Ender's name was "Wiggin" without the "s").

It should make me smile, but honestly I find it a little bit weird to have such different pop culture references cross like that.

Heebie's take: Kids that are born today will always have known...that...Akins is a tool? that time keeps on slipping into the future?

How to raise taxes in Texas. Step one: elect breathtakingly delusional judges.

"I Was A Teenage Narc" is a weird, compelling read.

I think I may not get enough sleep in my usual routine -- we're in a cabin on the Delaware in PA, and I'm sleeping about 10-11 hours a night.

Splitting wood to make kindling is surprisingly satisfying. There aren't many things I do that require an ax. And now that I've had some practice, I hardly ever miss the wood completely.

There's probably no way to write about an anthropologist who studies evangelicals without either reducing the evangelicals to dumb hicks, or academicians to awestruck liberal elitists peering into a petri dish containing the heartbeat of America. This article is mostly the latter.

Nevertheless, I find the premise interesting - that one trains their brain and forms habits of the mind, and this can be harnessed equally well for, say, CBT, or for listening for God's voice.

But look how patronizing!:

Hanging out with believers--whom she found "smarter and more varied than many liberals realize"--has given her some insight that could double as political advice. "If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear. They should talk about the kind of people we are aiming to be and about the transformational journey that any choice will take us on."

The Mindset List for the Class of 2016 just makes the Beloit faculty look seriously out of touch. Also I've never heard of The Romper Room. Marveling that today's 18 year olds have only been awake for a decade does not excuse you for sleeping though that same decade.

This legitimate rape thing is spawning some amazing aftermath. Just lie back and enjoy it, Akins.

Have we discussed unconditional basic income propositions here before? Feasibility, human nature? I have an opinion, but I don't want to defend it until I see a bunch of your opinions.

Sometimes it's daunting to return to the internet after a few days offline. But hesistate/lost/etc.

Neb left this in my facebook feed. Neb. Anyway, aside from Cracked's too-cute-by-half writing, this list of the 6 most insane acts of writing is interesting. The only one I've heard of is Jean-Dominique Bauby, the The Diving Bell and the Butterfly guy. Which really is a beautiful book.

Just the other day, I learned that we're undergoing a worldwide helium shortage:

Where Congress once mandated that the federal government keep a reserve of this crucial gas, it reversed course several decades later. In 1996, Congress moved to privatize the federal helium program, requiring all of the government's helium supplies to be sold off by 2015. "The legislation in 1996 says we were supposed to get out of the helium business," says Joe Peterson, the Bureau of Land Management's assistant field manager for helium in Amarillo. "The hope was by 2015, by the time the reserve was sold down, that new sources of helium would be online and take up the demand. However, it has not happened yet."

Oops.