“When Rainn’s on the exercise ball bouncing up and down, and I come over and I stab it with the scissors. In every other take we did, I stabbed it and it just slowly goes down. And the camera angle was that he just slowly ducked behind the thing and it was incredible. On the last take they were like “do one more.” And I remember going over and I went “boom”! And I must have hit the seam or something. And it exploded. He hit the ground as hard as I’ve ever seen a human hit the ground. If you go back and watch that episode, I just dive out because I am crying laughing.” – John Krasinski
You know those little things that keep bread bags closed? Well, the internet would like to tell you about them. If you’re not doing anything too important right now, I think you should visit HORG (that’s the Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group) and explore a beautiful, obsessive, hilarious taxonomy of occlupanids.
News reports and personal accounts from people who knew him show that
Brett Kavanaugh lied again and again at his Senate confirmation
hearing. How can this sputtering, raging, serial liar possibly be
considered for the role of a Supreme Court justice?
In last Thursday’s confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh lied repeatedly
about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony that she was sexually
assaulted by him at age 15.
Kavanaugh repeatedly lied that her account had been “refuted” by
witnesses. He also lied about his behavior in high school and college.
And he lied many times about policies he worked on during the presidency
of George W. Bush.
“Kavanaugh is such a brazen liar that many of his false claims have been entirely refuted by reporting,” Media Matters for America says in this comprehensive list of his lies under oath before the United States Senate.
Kavanaugh repeatedly claimed Ford’s accusation has been
“refuted” by others who she said attended the party – even though the
other attendees have said no such thing. Kavanaugh seized on the word “refuted” when responding to Ford’s report, claiming in five instances
that the three people who Ford says were at the party when Kavanaugh
sexually assaulted her had “refuted” her account. That’s an obvious
misrepresentation of what those people have said. They have actually all
said that they don’t recall
the party in question – a major difference from saying something
didn’t happen. And Ford’s friend Leland Keyser has said that although
she doesn’t remember the party in question, she believes Ford is telling the truth.
Kavanaugh said he “did not travel in the same social circles” as Ford, but he did. During prepared remarks, Kavanaugh said
that Ford “and I did not travel in the same social circles. It is
possible that we met at some point at some events, although I do not
recall that.” But Ford testified that she went out with one of
Kavanaugh’s friends, whose name appears 13 times in Kavanaugh’s calendar.
Kavanaugh attempted to fabricate an alibi by suggesting he
did not drink on weekdays and was out of town almost every weekend night
of the summer of 1982. Kavanaugh claimed
that the incident Ford described “presumably happened on a weekend” and
suggested that he and his friends didn’t drink during the week because
of their jobs while adding he was “out of town almost every weekend
night before football training camp started in late August.” In doing
so, Kavanaugh attempted to falsely imply that he did not attend the type
of get-together that Ford described. Kavanaugh’s lie is readily
apparent in the calendars he provided the committee and a contradictory statement
he made acknowledging “the calendars show a few weekday gatherings at
friends’ houses after a workout or just to meet up and have some beers.”
In particular, great attention has focused on his July 1 calendar entry – a Thursday – that showed he was having “[brew]skis” with some of the people Ford said were at the party.
Kavanaugh said he had no connection to Yale University prior
to attending undergrad and law school there, but he was a legacy
admittee. While denying that he was a heavy drinker in college who drank to the point of blacking out, Kavanagh said,
“I got into Yale Law School – that’s the number one law school in the
country. I had no connections there; I got in there by busting my tail
at college.” In fact, Kavanaugh’s grandfather Everett Edward Kavanaugh attended Yale, making Kavanaugh a legacy student.
Kavanaugh denied every blacking out from drinking and
downplayed his alcohol consumption as a young man, but numerous Yale
classmates say he was a belligerent drunk. Kavanaugh became
angered under questioning from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) after she asked
him if he ever blacked out from excessive drinking. In response,
Kavanaugh pressed Klobuchar if she had ever blacked out and claimed that he doesn’t have a drinking problem. The New York Times reported
that “nearly a dozen” of Kavanaugh’s classmates “said they recalled his
indulging in heavy drinking, with some characterizing it as outside the
norms of college life.” His freshman roommate James Roche said Kavanaugh was “frequently unusually drunk” and would become “belligerent and mean,” while classmate Charles “Chad” Ludington said Kavanaugh was “a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker.” Classmate Elizabeth Swisher called
Kavanaugh’s claim he never blacked out “a lie” based on her observation
of his behavior at the time. Classmate Lynne Brookes told CNN that she
and her former classmates were texting each other during the hearing
that Kavanaugh was lying about his college drinking habits.
I had been briefed that pack-bonding with humans they would be working with would be essential to any mission with them, and that it was relatively easy if one came bearing gifts. The Hotri matriarch who had been assisting him with his preparations had given him a tip that one of the humans he would be paired with excercised at the nature trails near the launch field at a regular time in the morning.
Sure enough, I arrived at the location and found a lone human running along the path showing signs of exertion. He slowed to a stop near me, intaking more atmosphere than I thought a creature of that size would be physically capable of processing. I lifted my crest in a display of friendly excitement.
“Greeting, human co-worker! I am Va’a’an, I look forward to serving with you!”
The human did not speak, instead bending double and showing intensifying signs of distress. I was very concerned. “Human? Do you require medical assistance?”
“Nah nah… oh god… whew!” The human checked his chronometer. “Haa… sub-fifteen… getting better. Hi there. Whooo… I’m good I swear.”
“You do not seem ‘good,’ human co-worker.”
“Good as I can be for running five kilometers. Gimmie a minute… M’name’s Craig… nice t’meet ya.”
“Greetings, human-Craig! As I said, my na-“ I stopped as my second brain finished with the math needed to convert kilometers and minutes into something understandable. “That is very far. I am now certain you need medical attention.”
“Nah!” Human-Craig straightened up. “I’m just outta shape. Nice to meet you, Van.”
“I must insist. Any creature running half the distance you just did would be at risk of expiring from exhaustion.”
“Bro, chill. Five K is basic conditioning for human athletes.”
“Running such extreme distance is a sport?”
“Literally the oldest. We call it a marathon. Forty-two kilometers.”
“What.”
Human-Craig nodded, stretching his limbs, a behavior that at least made some biomechanical sense. “Yep. Current Earth-gravity record is just under two hours.”
I stayed silent, considering the evolution that would be required to perform such a feat. I knew humans evolved as pursuit predators but what insane creatures were they chasing?!
But human-Craig felt the silence was awkward and appended more information. “Yeah. First marathon was by some Greek to announce the victory of some war in ancient times. Ran the whole way, shouted ‘we won’ and died.”
honestly my number one piece of advice for students is to like. be pragmatic about studying. because lbr doing your headings in perfect calligraphy with a £5 brush pen isn’t going to improve your grades. re-writing and re-writing your notes until they’re instagram-worthy isn’t going to help you retain the information. planning in a £30 bullet journal which you’ll then feel pressured into making really aesthetic spreads for when a £5 planner would do the same job isn’t going to make you a better student. yes, 100% take pride in your notes and by all means treat yourself to nice stationery every now and again but pls don’t waste your time and money trying to reach some unattainable studyblr goals.
actually, writing and re-writing a thing is a really good way to help retain the information… and making things pretty and aesthetic may not directly help your grades but it does make you more likely to keep going back and looking at what you’re supposed to be doing when it’s fun and pretty and a lot of people find that helps keep them on track a lot easier.
like, don’t waste your time and money if it’s not actually helping you and you’re just doing it out of some weird peer pressure or whatever but also don’t shame the people doing it because they actually find all of this really helpful.
That’s interesting cause that’s not what I took from this post at all, and nor did I read it is attempting to shame people? (I mean it might be, I might be missing something.)
I saw it more as a “don’t let unhelpful ideals of perfectionism bog you down” because for so many people (myself included) making something Perfect becomes more of a priority than actually Doing The Thing, which is where it becomes unhelpful and more of a time sink than a productive learning method.
And a large part of being an unhealthy perfectionist is also telling yourself “if I only had xyz prop or thing, then this would be doable” when in actual fact the $5 journal works just as well as the $30, and the thing holding you back isn’t that you’re notes aren’t pretty, it’s that you’re fixating on superficial imperfections as a reason for why you cannot do something and progress to where you need to be.
I know for a fact I’m perfectly capable of rewriting the same sentence 60 different ways and not absorbing it at all because I’m trying to stop feeling like a colossal fuck up whenever my handwriting doesn’t look consistently neat. And I know I’m not the only one.
So yea, rewriting something over and over can help you memorize it, and as the post says, treating yourself to nice things is nice, as is taking pride in your work.
But also realizing hey, you don’t need to achieve absolute perfection to be good enough, is also very important.
So if you’re someone who is struggling with this, make your cheap ass journal pretty if it helps, take pride in what you do even if you smudge the ink. Treat yourself to that nice pen, smudge the ink anyway. Use the stickers, stop saving them for a self imposed arbitrary moment of perfection that may never come. Allow yourself to progress. You’ll be a lot happier, and heck, you might finally learn your notes.
