And so begins our long national nightmare of obsessively watching this number. [Reaches for the Pepto] 2016 Election Forecast

“Culvahouse, a former White House counsel who is managing the vetting for Trump, was the lawyer who vetted then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for the GOP vice-presidential nomination during the 2008 campaign.”

And look how well THAT worked out….

Gingrich, Christie are the leading candidates to be Trump’s running mate

Interesting, and IMO, effective ad. I’m curious to know the thinking behind not saying the word Libertarian.

New Gary Johnson and William Weld Advertisement

More evidence about the fate of humanity, that the Matrix was right about the 20th century being Peak Human, and that 46 is probably a better age to be than 16.

(FWIW, I don’t agree with the resource depletion argument. I just wonder whether we’re going to access space resources before civilization uses up the planet’s, and whether we’ll survive that transition if we’re still governed by neoliberal capitalism.)

NASA Study Concludes When Civilization Will End, And It’s Not Looking Good for Us

TFW you discover SMBC has mouseover captions and now you have to decide how many thousands of back comics you need to read to see what you missed.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal – An accident

This would be excellent. We could call it Trumppence.

https://twitter.com/Slate/status/748627805555003392 Report: Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is Serious Trump VP Candidate

This is somewhere between very amusing and highly disturbing. “Game of Thrones—80s version” Main Theme (80’s Version)

Breaking news: Ted Cruz has a friend. Lee on lack of Trump endorsement: ‘He accused my best friend’s father of conspiring to kill JFK’

I’m certain the bad press from this is worth far less than $700,000. #fuckyourpopcorn Cinemark attorneys want Aurora shooting victims to pay $700K legal fees

I’ve noticed a distressing tendency for otherwise sensible* people to be in favor of this.

*People who generally agree with me Why Labelling GMO Foods Is A Terrible Idea

“But in 2015, the number of wiretaps authorized by US state courts rose by 21% (an alarming figure in its own right, especially since not one of those requests was turned down), while the number of times in which these wiretaps ran into any form of crypto fell, from 22 incidents to 7. For federal wiretaps, the total number of crypto encounters was 4, and one of those was with bad crypto that law enforcement could break.”

DoJ report: less than a quarter of one percent of wiretaps encounter any crypto

“Smith, a well-regarded practitioner of military history and Presidential-life writing, comes straight to the point in the first sentence of his preface: “Rarely in the history of the United States has the nation been so ill-served as during the presidency of George W. Bush.” By the book’s last sentence, Smith is predicting a long debate over whether Bush “was the worst president in American history,” and while the biographer doesn’t vote on the question himself, the unhappy shade of James Buchanan will feel strongly encouraged by his more than six hundred pages.” How Bad Can a President Be?

Absolute travesty. I can’t think of a better way of ensuring that the police don’t serve some communities. For Low-Income Victims, Nuisance Laws Force Ultimatum: Silence Or Eviction

This is surprisingly plausible. Click through on the link to a scenario where this can be used to completely destroy an election. Disruptive Robocalling

In retrospect, I can’t say I’m all that surprised. Attn Brian Greenberg.

xor (Parker Higgins)

For a few weeks in ’98, AOL used 100% of worldwide CD production. “Not a single music CD” was made during that time. http://t.co/57nY42J9Pz

https://twitter.com/xor/status/598263318713749505 How much did it cost AOL to distribute all those CDs back in the 1990s?