Tag: Snark

Rover McRoverface?

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They only want K-12 students to help, so talk to your younger friends, or the children of your younger friends, and get them to suggest “Rover McRoverface.”

You could also suggest “Wade” as in “Rover Wade”, if you want to see someone’s head explode:

NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is beginning to take shape. Earlier this month, crews installed some of its legs and six of its wheels. Now, the vehicle needs a name, and for that, NASA is turning to students. Beginning in fall 2019, NASA will run a nationwide “Name the Rover” contest open to K-12 students in the US. The spacecraft will need a name by July 2020, when it’s expected to launch.

The contest is part of NASA’s ongoing effort to engage the public in its Moon to Mars mission, which will search for signs of microbial life, characterize the planet’s climate and geology and pave the way for human exploration. If you’re not a K-12 student but want to get involved, NASA is also accepting applications to judge the contest submissions.

This May be the Most Epic Exchange on Twitter

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Jim Carey, comedian and anti-vaxxer, made what any sensible person would be a fairly anodyne statement about the wages of fascism:

If you’re wondering what fascism leads to, just ask Benito Mussolini and his mistress Claretta. pic.twitter.com/uc2wZl0YBu

— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) March 30, 2019

Alessandra Mussolini, honest to God fascist and grand daughter of il Duce, took umbrage:

You are a bastard

— Alessandra Mussolini (@Ale_Mussolini_) March 31, 2019

Again, a fairly anodyne, and typical, response, at least for a fascist daughter of Mussolini.

But Twitter user, and Italian cartoonist, Sted (@zerorisposte) has a response that knocks it out of the park:

🙃 pic.twitter.com/C8FjM9wcT7

— sted (@zerorisposte) March 31, 2019

This is just beautiful.

My First Thought Was That They Were Rebroadcasting Trump’s Speech

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That was my fist thought when I read a report of a new Russian Weapon System that induces nausea, vomiting, and hallucinations:

The Russian Navy reportedly has a new weapon that can disrupt the eyesight of targets as well as make them hallucinate and vomit.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported that a Russian military contractor has installed the weapon on two Russian warships.

The weapon fires a beam similar to a strobe light that affects the target’s eyesight, making it more difficult for them to aim at night. During testing, volunteers reportedly used rifles and guns to shoot targets that were protected by the weapon. The volunteers reported having trouble aiming because they couldn’t see.

Additionally, about half of the volunteers said they felt dizzy, nauseous and disoriented. About 20 percent of the volunteers reported experiencing hallucinations.

The weapon, called the Filin, has reportedly been installed on the Admiral Gorshkov and Admiral Kasatonov, two Russian warships. The weapon is expected to be installed on more ships that are currently being built.

This is actually not as far out as it sounds.  A phenomenon known as Flicker vertigo, as well as a flashlight type device that has been mooted for law enforcement use, have been known for years.

Still, it’s an opportunity for me to make a cheap snark, so I took it.

T/t naked capitalism.

Truly America’s Finest News Source

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I am referring, of course to The Onion who just penned, “Kamala Harris Assembles Campaign Staff Of Unpaid California Prison Laborers.”

It is a reference to her office, when she was California state Attorney General, her office literally argued against the release of prisoners from California’s overcrowded prisons because they needed the slave labor.

Both the Wisest and the Snarkiest Thing that I have Heard this Year

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In an analysis of potential murder charges against PG&E for the California fires, Yves Smith related the following from an email exchange:

Arbeit Macht Frei Slave-Labor Was the Original Public-Private Partnership.

This is brilliant.  It may be the most brilliant and snarkiest thing that I’ve heard for last year as well.

Snark of the Day

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I am not a fan of Nancy Pelosi.

Whatever her personal politics, it is clear that as speaker she is hostage to the big dollar donors in her official capacity as Speaker, and her obsession with “pay-go” is a disaster for the party and the country.

That being said, her characterization of Trump’s wall proposal as a, “Beaded Curtain,” is brilliant:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) joked in a recent interview that President Trump‘s proposal for a wall along the southern border has shifted from a cement structure to a “beaded curtain.”

“First of all, the fact … that he says, ‘We’re going to build a wall with cement, and Mexico’s going to pay for it’ while he’s already backed off of the cement — now he’s down to, I think, a beaded curtain or something, I’m not sure where he is,” Pelosi said in an interview with USA Today published Tuesday.

I love it.

The Joy of Reading a Bad Review

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I have only a passing knowledge of the Amazon TV show Transparent, and even less knowledge of its showrunner, Jill Soloway, still, when I came across this review of her memoir, She Wants It, I realized that I had stumbled on a gem, one one that might make Rex Reed, master of the snarky review gasp in awe.

Also, unlike Reed, Andrea Long Chu actually gets into the weeds of the book, and not how Soloway looks, or dresses, etc., which to my mind puts her a pretty big step above Reed.

She demolishes the recollections of a narcissistic asshole on their own terms:

As a lightweight behind-the-scenes look at a critically acclaimed television series, Jill Soloway’s new memoir She Wants It: Desire, Power, and Toppling the Patriarchy is just south of worth purchasing at the airport. As a book about desire, power, or toppling the patriarchy, it is incompetent, defensive, and astonishingly clueless.

This is a story about someone who responds to criticisms of her TV show by taking “a glamping writers’ retreat” to El Capitan: “We had a shaman come. She did magic incantations as we lay on the floor of a yurt.” It is an unwitting portrait of a rich Los Angeles creative type with a child’s knack for exploiting the sympathies of others, a person whose deep fear of doing the wrong thing was regularly outmatched by an even deeper distaste for doing the right thing. The nicest thing that can be said of this oblivious, self-absorbed, unimportant book is that it proves, once and for all, that trans people are fully, regrettably human.

Those are the first two paragraphs, and it goes on to skewer Peter Thiel (who I should note is literally a vampire who wants to use the blood of the young to extend his lifespan) in only 7 words, along with lambasting former Transparent star Jeffrey Tambour, Louie C.K., and Lena Dunham

Still she conclusively shows, with Soloway’s own words, that they are not as much of a self absorbed asshole as Soloway is.

This is beautiful, and I know two thing for sure:

  1. I never want to be on the bad side of Andrea Long Chu.
  2. If I ever need a speech writer, I want her.

 There are tears of joy pouring down my face.

Snark of the Day

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How do you say “dead woman walking” in German? Today, the answer to that question is “Angela Merkel” after the German leader announced that she would be seeking neither re-election as chancellor in 2021, nor re-election as head of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party this December.

—Marshall Auerback

In truth it’s more serious than this witticism posits, as Merkel, taking the baton from Gerhard Schröder, did some very bad things:

But there’s another side to this story. However highly regarded, Chancellor Merkel has repeatedly led governments, coalition or otherwise, that championed the neoliberal dismantling of the country’s “social market economy,” especially in services. Her government also pushed and prodded the rest of the European Union in a comparable direction.

In Germany specifically, the end result has been the growth of a two-tiered economy, which has heightened economic insecurity, created declining living standards for much of the population, and exacerbated inequality. In other words, too little “social,” too much “market.”

The combined beggar thy neighbor/beggar thy citizenry policies have been a disaster, but they are integral to the neoliberal project.