Twitter lets me outsource my trolling.

Most men lie about being robbed, especially if they've been drinking.

— roxane gay (@rgay) August 19, 2016

I won't say there's an analogy here, but we have a drunk guy who was in a scary situation, and his story sorta kinda hews to the facts (also, language barrier), but there are omissions and inconsistencies and...let's be careful how hard we are on him, no matter how satisfying a target he makes.

Both J, Robot and E. Messily sent me The Detectives Who Never Forget a Face. But it was my own detectivework that turned up this quiz, Are You a SuperRecognizer? I myself am very good at recognizing websites from the words on them.

Legal advice on reddit.

NYC Parks Department, take the rest of the day off.

NYC parks department on naked Trump statue: "NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small."

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) August 18, 2016

Have you noticed that like 80 percent of women track athletes are gorgeous? Why should that be? My theory is that, even more than in other sports, world-class runners have to be biomechanically sound, which means, among other things, symmetrical--and symmetry is an important component of female beauty.

Mcmc is in town. Anyone else? Any ideas as to where?

E. Messily writes: oh my god, the whinging.

Anyone who knows the slightest thing about Gabriel and me should have some idea of the typical clothes we wear every single day

Why the fuck would the dude at the admissions counter know the slightest thing about you and Gabriel?

Heebie's take: Everybody give it up for those folks you love to hate, the fatuous Victorians from 2016 Portland! She goes on and on about how little vacation time and money they have, but they scrimped and pinched to make ends meet, and are to visit the Breitbart Gardens outside of Victoria.

Once arrived, the admissions guy says, "No costumes. Strict policy." The Victorians say, "These aren't costumes." Long drawn out suffering by the admissions counter guy ensues. What you should do is click through and scroll down to the dialogue between the Victorians and the guy at the counter. Or don't, because these guys are the worst.

Gabriel asked, "So, where do you draw the line? These honestly are the clothes we wear every day, and there really are firm principles and good reasons--"

John Tomlinson cut him off. "Well, I'll give you an example. Just last week we had a couple in and he was dressed as a bumblebee and she was dressed as a ladybug and we told them they couldn't come in that way --but they were more reasonable about it that you're being and they were willing to change clothes!"

He's comparing our lifestyle to people dressed as insects?

The continued level of insult in this whole situation was astonishing.

shorter version.

Very interesting medical story of a woman with a rare disease and a knack for online research (who is not my roommate).

I know this isn't a new topic, but it's an increasingly unavoidable message, and I find this sort of thing depressing:

The main conclusion is that vigorous physical activity (the more explicit, clinical term for "exercise") doesn't cancel out the negative impact of time spent being sedentary, which appears to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease (the leading cause of death) and diabetes, even among people who exercise regularly.

I enjoy exercising, but I also enjoy sitting around on my ass when I'm not exercising. How much ass-sitting is too much ass-sitting?

The Tea Party was eaten alive by grifters and conmen. Sounds about right.

An analysis found 10 conservative PACs whose treasurer was Scott MacKenzie spent 92 percent of the $17.5 million they raised on operating expenses, and less than 1 percent on candidate support.

This one is great:

For example, conservative activist Larry Ward created Constitutional Rights PAC.... The New York Times reviewed Constitutional Rights' filings and found: "Mr. Ward's PAC spends every dollar it gets on consultants, mailings and fund-raising--making no donations to candidates." Ward justified the arrangement by saying Political Media discounts solicitations on behalf of Constitutional Rights.

Poor babies.

via

It's SFW, but still likely to trigger net nannies.

One week from Wednesday, gun opponents predict the campus at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin will be covered with students hanging dildos from their backpacks for the first day of classes.

10,000 people rsvp'd to the event on FB, and they've got 4000 dildos ready to hand out. As a message, it doesn't make much sense, but it sure is funny to me.

WTF.

"Under those eight years, before Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States. They all started when Clinton and Obama got into office."

- Rudy Giuliani, earlier today.

I mean, I mean...I don't know what to say.

Via E.M.

1. Betsy McCaughey is part of Trump's new economic team not all named Steve:

(It was McCaughey, for instance, who originally floated the bogus specter of death panels that Sarah Palin subsequently whipped into a national frenzy.) She would take the data, then crunch, twist, and warp it beyond recognition, and let loose with the most hyperbolic, alarmist interpretations imaginable. (During a radio interview with the now deceased Fred Thompson, McCaughey asserted, "Congress would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.") Any time anyone called her on what the head of the AARP called her "fraudulent scare tactics," she would just insist that they needed to read, say, page 365, paragraph 3, footnote 16 of the Obamacare bill. And on those occasions when they did, and pointed out that the facts did not support her claim, McCaughey would just spout more twisted data and page numbers.... Not even Jon Stewart could break through the woman's impenetrable sheen of bullshit.

(via E. Messily)

There is never any reason to pick one crazy Trump story over another. Shall we talk about Ivana and Putin's girlfriend being besties? Shall we talk about Manafort being on the payroll for his old boss?

2. This Texas wackadoodle is scared that aborted fetuses will give her AIDS:

During a hearing earlier this month that weighed the state health department's proposed rule to bury or cremate fetal tissue (also known as: conservative politicians' latest attack on abortion access), Carol Everett worried aloud of the threat of contracting STDs and HIV from an infected woman's fetal remains through the sewer system.

"What if one day something horrible escaped into the sewer system?," she asked, eliciting laughter from pro-choice advocates in the room.

Let's laugh merrily at her ignorance instead of thinking too hard about the damage she's perpetrating in Texas by diverting funds to her fucked-up pregnancy crisis group.

The kids were asking this morning why I had to go to work, and it puts something of a point on things when you explain to a three- and five-year-old that college is insanely expensive in this country and literally the only reason I go to work is to keep them from having to pay for it. (Part of the point, of course, is that we're fortunate to even have the choice between staying at home and their being debt-free, but the other part, that this choice kinda sucks anyway, is more broadly applicable).

When I left the grocery store today, with $300 of groceries (ie my cart was super full, not that it was full of flashy valuables), it was pouring rain hard. The grocery store had stationed two kids in ponchos. They offered me an umbrella, and told me that I could leave my groceries under the awning with them, drive up, and they'd load the groceries. I eagerly accepted the offer.

Afterwards, I could absolutely not get the kid to accept a couple dollar tip. He politely declined, and I said, "dude, really, take it," forcefully enough that he had to put his foot down and really refuse.

What is wrong with these kids?! This kind of thing has happened before to me. I absolutely can't imagine a manager telling their staff that they can't accept tips if the customer is insistent, so I think it's the kid's own doing.

My theory is that they've got a rigid rule in their head, "Tipping is for restaurants", and not a more general, "tipping is for the service industry" rule, because they basically haven't been in any service situations besides restaurants. And so since they're unaware of the larger cultural custom, it feels like awkward charity.