SO super sexy science

I love this thread because Trump is obviously a shining example of white male privilege and mediocrity, but his Presidency also flies in the face of the American Dream that’s shoveled down our throats from the time we start school.

Study.  Work Hard.  Be Great.  And You Will Succeed.

The fact that Trump is wholly unqualified for the job he got, the fact that he’s completely unsuited for it, contradicts that.  It’s an uncomfortable looking glass for a lot of mediocre white people who’ve been given things they don’t deserve.  It’s hard for them to admit that Trump is a lying fraud who has no business being President and only got there because he’s white and put on a good show because that means privilege is real.  It’s right there in his orange face.

Plus, the myth of moving up the economic ladder becomes harder to believe if you admit that someone who is not qualified and does not deserve the position they hold is sitting in the chair through no efforts of their own.  That would then mean the inverse is true, that you can in fact work hard and want it just as badly as the next guy and still fail.  

Now he starts every phone call with a Pokemon update. He gets all the names wrong and asks me what a Dragonite is called every time he brings up the “fat fighting orange dragon”

“I have a cool pineapple head now!”

“I was down to my last stripey ball trying to catch the blue dragon snake. I told him if he ran away I was gonna be so mad.”

“And the gym had one of those big fat orange dragons!” (he still can’t remember what a Dragonite is called)

BUT THEN. but then. he’s also like, OUTRAGEOUSLY into it now? He’s level 27 and talks about how “the gym wars are brutal, babe,” and how long it takes to take down a level 10 gym? (LEVEL T E N)

And a couple weeks ago he called me to talk about the merits of the old-style Gyrados (which he pronounces guy-rad-os sorry I can’t stop him) that has the dragon breath move, versus the new ones that don’t because Niantic made a change. And he has like 6 Gyrados because his work is by a Magikarp nest or something? HOW MANY fucking magikarp do you catch for 6 gyrados? He’s about to evolve two more. H E L P.

and he says shit like, “Learning about individualized values really radicalized my thinking.” and he means it. Before he evolves ANY pokemon he googles CP estimates and has a pokemon calculator??

This morning he called me because he finally has enough Dratini candy to evolve a fat fighting dragon and wanted to talk about which Dragonair he should evolve. (One with high CP but bad IVs, one with medium-high CP, but okay IVs, and one with the lowest CP of the 3, but A+ IVs) And at this point he’s so far beyond my skill with the game (he’s been higher-leveled than me for months now) that I don’t even know what to tell him. I literally can’t advise him.

Team Instinct. I told him I was Team Valor when I first told him about the game and he was like, “Okay I’ll join your team babe!”

And then idk he forgot?? And when his account crashed after a week he did a Pikachu restart (that should have tipped me off about the impending obession tbh) and he picked Instinct again.

I ain’t even mad bruh. He so clearly belongs in Instinct. He’s happy there. It’s his natural habitat. Before work he goes and meets up with some other Instinct people to take the Georgetown Cupcake gym in DC. It’s super cute.

Then he goes to work and keeps the game open so he can grab Magikarp every couple minutes. Apparently his work is like ON a friggin nest.

He keeps his Pokemon Go habit a secret at work. Nobody knows. On his lunch break, he says, “hey I’m gonna go for a walk” and goes on a 12-pokestop loop. He makes sure to hit up the local Dratini and Pikachu nests (the presence of which is UNFAIR AF). He also take a few minutes to reinforce ‘his’ gym, by which point has been under attack a few times.

At work, he keeps his phone on data instead of wifi (he has unlimited data. For some godforsaken reason he went through 30GB/mo BEFORE Pokemon Go.) because that means his avatar jumps around a bit more?? He says he opens and closes the app a few times to reset it and get the GPS connection to reset and nab him a few pokemon.

He has 114 Pikachu candy. I hate him. Apparently he’s watching the anime almost every night. He’s on season 2. I think he’s just gonna go through and watch it A L L which is a prospect so terrifying it needs no explanation.

Out of the 6 Gyrados he’s evolved, he’s kept the top 3. He sent me some screencaps the other day of his current top-contender Magikarp and the pokedex entry, where you can see he’s caught 585 of them.

Five hundred eighty five. Who tf has TIME for that??

Apparently he still hasn’t decided which Magikarp to evolve.

He has started wearing yellow shoes for #TeamInstinct pride lol:

Guys, I wanted to let you know about a personal decision I recently made. I don’t really feel like discussing it, but I want to put my position out there. Please be respectful. This is a really long post, but please read the whole thing.

I’m taking the brakes off my car. This isn’t a rash decision, so please listen up.

A few weeks ago I saw a car accident - two people went through an intersection at the same time. Both slammed on their brakes at the same time and collided. Fortunately no one was seriously injured.

But then it occurred to me - if they had just gone through the intersection, they wouldn’t have collided. The brakes CAUSED the accident!

So, I decided to do my own research and what I found was *staggering*: Hundreds of people every year are seriously injured by unnecessary braking. One time, I was driving in the snow and I just lightly tapped my brakes and it caused my car to COMPLETELY LOSE CONTROL. My brakes could have very easily gotten me killed. Even more astoundingly is how often brake pads will warp and distort rotors, causing bumpy rides and squeaky wheels.

And you know what? I also found that decades ago brakes weren’t even used! People would control their vehicle’s speed with downshifting and engine braking. Maybe it’s just coincidence, but back when engine braking was used there were almost no automotive fatalities. There were NEVER brake caused car accidents.

After doing some more digging, I found a nefarious plot - Mechanics: The very people who we trust to work on and care for our cars - get PAID to install and change brakes! You might THINK they care about our safety, or our cars - but they’re just in it for the $49.99 brake pad installations.

So I talked to my Mechanic about taking the brakes off my car and I was disgusted by how poorly he treated me. He accused me of being ignorant, when I was the one that looked up how much rotational torque brakes can put on your rotors. He didn’t even know how much torque a rotor can take before being warped!!! He said “rotors are designed to be compressed, that it isn’t actually a problem” just completely dismissing me.

Then he had the NERVE to say that my personal choice had consequences, that I would affect everyone around me. Well I’ve had it with him, I’m looking for a new mechanic. The problem is that so many mechanics are bought and paid by the automotive industry that ALL of them are insistent about my car having brakes. Most of them won’t even look at my car for other reasons, saying that a brakeless car could cause damage to their shop and other cars. What a bunch of bullshit, they just don’t like those who believe in alternative braking techniques.

Now of course big government is getting involved, saying that I *MUST* have brakes. That this isn’t just about me, and that I could hurt people. What happened to personal freedom? What happened to liberty?

So all I’m saying is, do your research. Don’t just listen to the NTSB and big automotive. I made a personal decision for my family, we just said no to brakes. We’ll be using natural remedies like Gravity, and putting our feet on the ground to stop. After all, if that was good enough for me when I was on my bike as a kid, it’s good enough for my children in my car.