Category: People

Categories
Funny People

The Worst Things For Sale

A daily blog of the worst things for sale.

Sometimes quite funny, sometimes downright horrifying:

These ladies wrote a book telling people to give their children chlorine dioxide (bleach tablets that you put in a hot tub) to cure their autism. And, unfortunately, it seems like a lot of people did what she told them.

Surely this is criminal? In fact the more I read this blog it’s less funny stuff and more really fucking stupid stuff that horrible or mad people create to scam desperate or stupid people. Apart from this, this is just funny.

Categories
People Sport

Arrow

I’ve seen some of this guy’s stuff before but this video is a pretty good all-round showcase of just how nuts/awesome he is.

Categories
People

Good guys with guns

A pro-gun group in Texas decided to simulate how the Charlie Hedbo massacre would’ve been different had an armed citizen taken on the gunmen.

(Spoiler alert: things don’t end so well for the ‘good guys with guns’.)

Time and time again, the armed civilian “dies” – shot by a round that marks him or her with paint.

In only two cases volunteers were able to take out one of two gunmen in the process…

Twelve volunteers participated in the exercise. Only one survived after running away. No one was able to take out both shooters.

(via Andrew Ducker)

Categories
Animals Humanities People

Corrections

Some highlights from The year in media errors and corrections:

This post originally quoted photographer Tom Sanders as saying it takes him five years to get on the dance floor. It takes him five beers.

– Slate

litmus

– Columbia, S.C. Free-Times Weekly

And possibly the best from The Argus:

goats
Categories
People

PETA, Kant, Toxoplasma, Moloch

This is a good read: The Toxoplasma of Rage by Scott Alexander.

It’s wide-ranging but ultimately about incentivisation of unhelpful behaviour. Why highly publicised examples of things we can often largely agree are bad are dubious, contentious, or false and how they can encourage behaviour and support to the contrary.

As I mentioned it covers a lot (including a vegan pledging to eat meat in a stand against PETA ) but this is a fave passage about signalling in moral decisions:

But in the more general case, people can use moral decisions to signal how moral they are. In this case, they choose a disastrous decision based on some moral principle. The more suffering and destruction they support, and the more obscure a principle it is, the more obviously it shows their commitment to following their moral principles absolutely. For example, Immanuel Kant claims that if an axe murderer asks you where your best friend is, obviously intending to murder her when he finds her, you should tell the axe murderer the full truth, because lying is wrong. This is effective at showing how moral a person you are – no one would ever doubt your commitment to honesty after that – but it’s sure not a very good result for your friend.

 

Categories
Me People

Giving

Giving is clearly the best part of Christmas so why not indulge yourself:

Books for goats, Valyrian Steel

Help Heifer International end hunger and get some sweet things from Pat Rothfuss and his awesome pals (think of a fantasy author, they’re probably in). Donate anything and you’re in the lottery to win rare editions, signed editions, other lovely extras, or if you think I’ve been an especially good boy this year (I have, I really really have) you can buy Longclaw for me and sleep safe knowing that you’ve helped a whole bunch of people feed themselves and that I’m safe from reanimated corpses (other goodies are up for auction).

Child’s Play

A bunch of children’s hospitals have Amazon wishlists, you can buy the toys and games they need so kids in hospital over Christmas have decent stuff to play with. Close to home there’s Bradford, Manchester, Alder Hey, Sheffield, and Dublin, but there are hospitals all over the world you can help out or you can donate directly to Child’s Play.

Wikipedia

Support Wikipedia. You almost certainly use it, and you probably ignore the fundraising message when it pops up. Pay the £3.

If you want to support another cause but you’re not sure who to give to try Charity Navigator or Give Well.

Even if you’re trying to keep Christmas small you are probably going to spend a hell of a lot of money, and a decent amount of it on crap, make sure you give something to a decent cause.

PS: Longclaw.